David McLaughlin

Justice Department Antitrust Chief Makan Delrahim, who is leading a review of the proposed $26.5 billion merger of T-Mobile US with Sprint, says the elimination of one major competitor in wireless service isn’t necessarily a deal killer. The law and market economics will be the crucial factors, Delrahim said. “I don’t think there’s any magical number that I’m smart enough to glean about any single market,” he said. 

Federal Communications Commission Chairman Ajit Pai’s plan to gut Obama-era net neutrality rules calls for handing off the job of policing broadband service to an agency with different powers and a different mandate. Giving the Federal Trade Commission oversight for the web can make sense from Pai’s perspective: It’s a consumer-protection agency that already has taken action against high-speed internet providers. But, there’s a key difference: The FCC sets rules designed to prevent bad behavior, while the FTC acts after wrongdoing has occurred.

Apparently, AT&T will try to dig into whether the White House influenced the Justice Department’s review of the company’s planned takeover of Time Warner if the government sues to block the deal.  In the event of a trial over the $85.4 billion deal, AT&T intends to seek court permission for access to communications between the White House and the Justice Department about the takeover, apparently. The Justice Department’s antitrust division is poised to file a lawsuit to stop the deal if it can’t reach an agreement with the companies.

Amazon’s treatment of customers means more to US antitrust authorities than how the largest Web retailer pressures publishers and movie studios.

Successfully going after Amazon at this stage “would be breaking new territory under the antitrust laws,” David Balto, a former policy director at the Federal Trade Commission, said.

That hasn’t damped debate about the tactics Chief Executive Officer Jeff Bezos is using against Hachette Book Group, Walt Disney and film studio Warner Bros. The question is whether he’s pushing Amazon toward the same monopolistic territory that tripped up Microsoft, Standard Oil and AT&T.

Apparently, the Justice Department has reached out to Walt Disney, Discovery Communications and CBS as it investigates whether the Comcast-Time Warner Cable merger is anticompetitive.

While none of the companies has publicly opposed the acquisition, some have said they want the US to ensure that Comcast won’t favor its own programming over their content if the merger is approved. Other media companies have also been approached. Among other issues, the antitrust division is asking about most-favored-nation clauses.

The contracts are used by Comcast and other pay-TV providers to ensure competitors can’t get better content-licensing deals with programmers.

Comcast’s proposed acquisition of Time Warner Cable won’t be reviewed by the head of the Justice Department’s antitrust division, Bill Baer, who is recused on the matter, the Department of Justice said.

The investigation of the Time Warner deal will be overseen by two senior officials at the antitrust division, Renata Hesse and David Gelfand. Baer’s recusal is due to work on a previous matter while in private practice, when he previously represented NBC Universal as a lawyer at law firm Arnold & Porter when Comcast merged with the network in 2011.

[March 7]