Amy Schatz

Comcast has some explaining to do about its Internet policies, thanks to a massive new data request from federal regulators looking into the cable giant’s deal to acquire Time Warner Cable.

It took Federal Communications Commission staff 29 pages to list the 93 questions and requests for data they want from Comcast for their review of the deal.

Seventeen of the questions or data requests in the FCC’s inquiry were related to Comcast’s use of data caps, traffic management, middle-mile Internet interconnection deals and network neutrality policies as well as data related to complaints from Netflix and Level 3 about Comcast.

The companies have until September 11 to provide the data to the agency.

While it’s not clear if T-Mobile’s owner Deutsche Telekom is taking seriously a $15 billion bid from French telecommunications firm Iliad, one thing is certain: The deal would be a lot easier to get approved than any merger with Sprint.

Antitrust regulators wouldn’t likely have many issues with an Iliad deal since the French company doesn’t have any US telecommunications assets and its purchase of T-Mobile wouldn’t consolidate the industry by lowering the number of large wireless carriers from four to three.

The Federal Communications Commission would consider whether the deal is in the public interest as well as ensuring it falls within foreign ownership limits. The foreign ownership issue likely wouldn’t really be much of an sticking point, however, since T-Mobile’s current majority owner is German telecommunications giant Deutsche Telekom. Transferring ownership to a French company wouldn’t really be a big deal -- unlike, say, an acquisition by a Chinese or Russian company with government ties.

Some professional football fans have been flooding federal regulators with pleas to save a rule that keeps local National Football League games from being televised when the hometown stadium doesn’t sell out, thanks to a new push by the NFL to keep the restriction in place.

More than 500 comments have been filed at the Federal Communications Commission since July 21 and commissioners have been getting inundated with e-mails about the issue, according to agency officials. The NFL has convinced some fans that the rule is a good idea, arguing it will help prevent owners from moving games onto cable channels and off free local TV broadcasts.

Newly released lobbying figures show that broadband providers are still far outpacing Internet companies on spending in DC, as federal regulators consider how to write new rules for Internet lines.

Collectively, Internet service providers (and their trade associations) have spent $42.4 million so far in 2014 on lobbying lawmakers and regulators, according to federal disclosure forms. In the second quarter, Comcast spent $4.45 million on lobbying, while the cable industry’s trade group, the National Cable & Telecommunications Association, spent another $4 million.

The discrepancy between the spending by the two industries -- which is nothing new -- continues to be a potential problem for net neutrality advocates who are hoping to convince federal regulators to adopt strong rules on Internet lines to prevent broadband providers from discriminating against some traffic.

Don’t like the idea of Comcast, the nation’s largest cable and Internet provider, getting larger by purchasing Time Warner Cable? You can now officially let regulators know, after the Federal Communications Commission formally launched its review of the deal.

The agency is asking for comments about the proposed $45 billion transaction (including Comcast’s spin-off deal with Charter Communications). Initial comments are due August 25, with final comments due October 8.

The action will be mostly administrative. The FCC has already received more than 10,000 comments about the deal since it was announced in February. The FCC notice also starts an informal 180-day shot-clock for completing its review, although that doesn’t really mean much because the agency routinely blows those deadlines. Comcast reiterated its position that the acquisition is in the public’s interest, but suggested that it knows others may not agree.

Sen Mark Warner (D-VA) has asked the Federal Trade Commission to look into whether Facebook’s experiment on the ability to manipulate emotions on Facebook using the data of 700,000 unwitting users may have violated the company’s privacy agreement with the federal government.

“As the collection and analysis of ‘big data’ continues to increase and as it assumes a larger role in the business plans of Internet-based companies, it is appropriate that we consider questions about what, if any, oversight might be appropriate,” Sen Warner wrote to the FTC.

With just a filing deadline approaching, companies are starting to weigh in on the Federal Communications Commission’s controversial fast-lane net neutrality proposal.

E-commerce marketplace Etsy said that it can’t support the current proposal, which would allow Internet providers to charge content companies to use faster, priority lanes into subscribers’ homes.

“Etsy’s continued growth depends on equal access to consumers,” the company said.

In an official filing with the agency, Etsy said Chairman Tom Wheeler’s assurances that his plan won’t create a fast-lane/slow-lane Internet because the agency would veto any unreasonable commercial proposal weren’t enough.

“The proposed ‘commercially reasonable’ standard and ‘minimum access levels’ give us no comfort,” the company said. “If the proposed rules were in place when Etsy was founded, we would never have achieved the success we have today. Etsy and other startups will suffer if the FCC allows some companies to negotiate priority or exclusive access to consumers.”

Federal regulators have received more than 625,000 comments about a controversial proposal to allow broadband providers to offer fast-lane service on the Internet. None, so far, has been from Google.

The search giant and other large tech companies, including Facebook, Amazon, Twitter and eBay, may support net neutrality rules, but they don’t appear to be spending much time or money in Washington fighting for them.

That’s a sharp contrast from 2010, when those companies, particularly Google, fought a high-profile lobbying war with telecommunications and cable companies over net neutrality, which is the idea that Internet traffic should be treated equally and not blocked or slowed.

The FCC isn’t expected to make a final decision on rules until the end of 2014, so there’s still plenty of time for big tech companies to engage. But their seeming reluctance to get too heavily involved may be a boon for broadband providers like Verizon and Comcast, which invest heavily in lobbyists and interest groups to help get their way in DC.

The tech companies signed onto a letter protesting FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler’s fast-lane net neutrality proposal, but appear to have done relatively little since then. Heavily-regulated Internet providers, by contrast, have been busy commissioning economic studies, reviving “grassroots” advocacy groups, hosting numerous panels around DC and generally building a defense against efforts by net neutrality advocates to push the FCC to impose more regulations on Internet lines.

“My worry about net neutrality is: What are you trying to fix? What are you trying to solve?” AT&T CEO Randall Stephenson said in early June at a luncheon held next door to the Federal Communications Commission. “I think we ought to be very cautious about tinkering with this thing.”

Google spent $15.8 million in 2013 lobbying lawmakers, making it the twelfth biggest spender in DC, according to the Center for Responsive Politics. It was the only Internet company to crack the top 20 in spending, spending slightly less than AT&T and slightly more than Boeing.

Federal Communications Commission officials defended a recently announced plan to spend $2 billion for Wi-Fi networks at public schools after teachers unions complained it wasn’t enough money and could hurt poorer schools by shifting funds away to wealthier areas.

The unions and other educational groups don’t think the proposal is the best way to move forward with improving the availability of high-speed Internet in schools and libraries. The money for the E-Rate program comes from a fee that is charged on consumers’ phone bills, called a Universal Service Fund (USF) fee. The FCC’s plan doesn’t go far enough because it doesn’t increase the amount of funding available to schools and will change the formula for how money is allocated, the National Education Association, National Parent Teacher Association and 11 other educational and union organizations complained.

The groups have “strong concerns” about FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler’s plan because it will “only dilute an already over-subscribed (program)” that they say is already “vastly underfunded.” The educational groups are concerned about a possible move to an allocation formula that would work on a per-pupil basis, instead of the current formula, which takes location and the local poverty level more into account.

The Obama Administration provided a small peek into its intelligence surveillance efforts, releasing a new report on how many requests it made for information in 2013.

The report offers some new details about how many court orders it obtained in 2013 under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) -- about 1,900, along with an additional 178 requests for business records -- as well as a few details about the 19,000 or so National Security Letters (which are a form of subpoena) the government sent.

The report may not be particularly meaningful since intelligence officials still use vague definitions to describe data requests and the figures can’t be placed in context because we don’t have data from previous years.