Cecilia Kang

Comcast says it has loads of competition -- everyone from Facebook to Apple, which Comcast says is contemplating a television set-top box to compete with cable service.

Plus, Netflix and Amazon are already giants in online video, which also keeps the company on its toes, Comcast said in a regulatory filing for its proposed merger with Time Warner Cable.

"The difference between all those competitors and us is they have global and national scale,” said Comcast executive vice president David Cohen. That scale allows companies like Netflix and Apple to sell their products globally and invest in research, development and new technology. Comcast needs the merger with Time Warner to reach that level, he argued. But defining its competition in the broadband Internet industry may be harder for Comcast to do, some public interest groups and technology experts say.

And those definitions may be the crux of federal reviews into the company's $45 billion bid to become a national broadband business.

When Comcast sneezes, will too much of the technology industry catch a cold? That may be the central question facing regulators reviewing the company's $45 billion takeover of Time Warner Cable, a deal that again expands it cable television and, perhaps more importantly, its broadband Internet businesses.

The deal will be scrutinized in a Senate judiciary hearing and by regulators who will study Comcast’s arguments filed to the Federal Communications Commission and to the Justice Department. The merger on its face may not appear anticompetitive because Time Warner Cable and Comcast don’t compete in the same territories, analysts say. And that’s what Comcast stressed in its government filings, adding that it would commit to a string of conditions to assure it won’t squeeze out competition as the first-ever nationwide cable service provider.

But the problem isn’t only about getting bigger, public interest groups and smaller competitors say. It’s about the outsized power Comcast could have over an ecosystem of media, telecommunications and tech companies. After the merger, Comcast would have more than 40 percent of the home broadband market and 30 percent of cable subscribers.

Comcast refutes criticism that the deal is anticompetitive. It points to a thriving entertainment market where Netflix and Amazon compete with Comcast’s bundled cable television services. In the broadband market, Comcast points to competition from satellite firms, telecom companies such as Verizon with its FiOs service, and Google’s plans to expand its ultra-fast fiber service to dozens of cities.

But critics say satellite and wireless aren’t true broadband competitors because they're unable to deliver comparable fast downloads of videos and other large files. FiOs is in limited markets, and Google’s plans are years off in the future, they note.

But Comcast said it will commit to conditions to placate concerns. It will divest subscribers to keep its reach at 30 percent of the cable market, a benchmark that regulators say ensures competition between cable and satellite operators with programmers. It will extend network neutrality conditions that it committed to with the NBC merger. And it will continue to offer a low-income broadband service.

Precious little is known about Aereo, the online video startup that doesn't say how many subscribers it has in its select number of markets.

Yet as it prepares to argue its legality before the Supreme Court in late April, the company has captured the attention and imagination of the media and technology world. That's because the company, funded in part by IAC chairman Barry Diller, could upend the television industry if the high court decides that its capture of broadcast television signals doesn't violate copyright law.

Turns out many want to change the way the television industry works -- where programmers such as Fox, NBC Universal and ABC (Disney) charge cable and satellite firms enormous licensing fees and cable companies push fat and expensive bundles of channels on consumers.

Aereo's supporters came out in force in a string of amicus filings to the Supreme Court ahead of an April 22 hearing. In the filings, Dish satellite, smaller cable firms and even some small broadcasters argued that Aereo isn't violating copyright laws as alleged by every major television broadcasting firm. They, too, would like to get broadcast content without paying for ever-increasing retransmission fees.

For global messaging sensation WhatsApp, the privacy brouhaha that followed its sale to Facebook came as a rude surprise. Soon after the $19 billion deal was announced, consumer privacy groups asked federal regulators to investigate the merger for potential consumer harms and possibly block the deal.

Some users are threatening to leave the service. WhatsApp founders tried to deflate concerns that user data may be used for advertising. But it will be hard for the messaging service to convince users who thought they had signed up to service that would never use data for targeted advertising, privacy advocates say. Any deal with Facebook comes with the baggage of the social networking giant's troubled history on privacy.

"They took Facebook's money, and now one of them has a seat on their board," said Jeff Chester, head of Center for Digital Democracy, a privacy group that along with the Electronic Privacy Information Center recently filed a complaint against the merger to the Federal Trade Commission. Jan Koum, who co-founded WhatsApp with Brian Acton, will join Facebook's board once the deal closes.

Facebook has repeatedly changed privacy policies on users, having the effect of a slow boil that constantly pushes the comforts of users who are at this point too reliant on the network to leave, some consumer groups say. The merger of Facebook and WhatsApp brings together two companies with diametrically opposing business models and philosophies on consumer data. Facebook's success is tied directly to how much data it collects about its users and sells for advertising.

A class-action lawsuit filed against Google accuses the company of deceiving consumers about its in-app purchase system, which critics say makes it too easy for kids to spend money on their Android devices.

The case mirrors a class-action suit and Federal Trade Commission action against Apple for similar practices that had consumers decrying hundreds of dollars in surprise and unwanted in-app charges on games targeted toward children. The new suit also begs the question of why Google, seeing Apple's three-year-long public relations and legal headache over the issue, didn’t follow Apple in strengthening billing protections for families.

In 2012, Apple changed its in-app purchase system so that a password has to be entered every time a user wants to buy virtual currency or goods in an app. Now, parents want Google to close its 30-minute window for unlimited purchases within an app and are seeking at least $5 million in damages. Google, which operates the Android Google Play app store, declined to comment on the suit.

[March 11]