OWNERSHIP
Cable Companies Sign On for Excite( at )Home Service (NYT)
Three Giants Square Off in the Bidding for AT&T Broadband (NYT)
EchoStar Takes to Capitol Hill To Defend DirecTV Purchase (WSJ)
MEDIA & KIDS
Give children own domain? (USA)
OWNERSHIP
CABLE COMPANIES SIGN ON FOR EXCITE( at )HOME SERVICE
Issue: Cable
Excite( at )Home signed an agreement yesterday afternoon with a group of cable
companies, including the Comcast Corporation and Cox Communications, to
maintain high-speed Internet access for their customers. The deal, which the
companies have been working on since Friday, will provide approximately $355
million to tide Excite over for the next three months, while the two major
companies create replacement networks. Excite has filed for bankruptcy
protection, and a federal judge in San Francisco gave it permission on
Friday to cancel its contracts with a number of cable companies, through
which it provided high-speed service to 3.7 million people in North America.
[SOURCE: New York Times, AUTHOR: Saul Hansell]
(http://www.nytimes.com/2001/12/04/technology/04NET.html)
(requires registration)
THREE GIANTS SQUARE OFF IN THE BIDDING FOR AT&T BROADBAND
Issue: Broadband
Three of the nation's biggest cable companies lined up yesterday in hopes of
taking over the largest one, AT&T Broadband, submitting complex bids that
AT&T will begin reviewing in the coming days. And Microsoft, which is
already a minority stakeholder in AT&T, has indicated that it will
financially support competing bids for AT&T Broadband from both the Comcast
Corporation and Cox Communications in an effort to keep it out of the hands
of AOL Time Warner. Executives close to AOL Time Warner said the company's
main motive might not be to acquire AT&T Broadband, but to open the door to
negotiating a deal to buy AT&T's 25% stake in Time Warner Entertainment. The
sheer size of a cable company combining AOL Time Warner's properties with
AT&T Broadband might raise regulatory questions. But such a combination is
not unthinkable.
[SOURCE: New York Times, AUTHOR: Andrew Ross Sorkin]
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/12/04/business/04PLAC.html
(requires registration)
ECHOSTAR TAKES TO CAPITOL HILL TO DEFEND DIRECTV PURCHASE
Issue: Meger
Facing mounting skepticism that their $26 billion deal will be approved by
regulators, EchoStar Communications and DirecTV Tuesday will begin a flurry
of congressional hearings and filings that could help make or break the
merger. The companies must convince lawmakers and regulators to bless a deal
that would create a satellite-television company whose size would rival that
of the biggest cable companies. Critics, including many antitrust experts,
have attacked the deal as essentially eliminating any competition in the
satellite-television market in the U.S. and leaving many rural customers,
who aren't wired for cable, with only one choice for multichannel
television. Several powerful lawmakers, including Sen. Ernest Hollings (D.,
S.C.), the head of the Senate Commerce Committee, already have said they
oppose the deal. In a white paper circulated on Capitol Hill and in a filing
to the FCC last night, the companies argue that the deal would allow the
merged entity to carry more channels and quickly deploy high-speed Internet
services to underserved rural areas while providing more effective
competition to cable. "The proposed merger may provide the only opportunity
for rural consumers to have an affordable high-speed Internet access option
in the foreseeable future," they say in their letter to lawmakers.
[SOURCE: Wall Street Journal, AUTHOR: Yochi J. Dreazen]
(http://interactive.wsj.com/articles/SB1007420038717560320.htm)
(requires subscription)
MEDIA & KIDS
GIVE CHILDREN OWN DOMAIN?
Issue: Media & Kids
One idea for keeping kids away from Net porn is creating an official
kids-only ''neighborhood'' on the Web. The original proposal was for ICANN,
the international group that approves Net names, to create a kid-friendly
alternative to .com called .kids, similar to other top-level domains such as
.org, .edu, .net. That way, parents could set their computers so children
could access only sites in the kids area. The proposal has launched a debate
about whose values would determine guidelines for such a domain. ICANN
refused to approve the .kids proposal because of concerns, especially among
Europeans, about whose standards should determine what is ''appropriate''
for kids. ). So the House of Representatives has created a bill last that
call for a domain ending in .kids.us, the top-level domain code for the USA.
The bill would create an independent board to monitor sites registering with
a ''.kids.us'' suffix; participation would be voluntary.
[SOURCE: USAToday, AUTHOR: Karen Thomas]
(http://www.usatoday.com/usatonline/20011204/3670349s.htm)
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