Analysis

[Commentary] If the government goes to court to block the merger of AT&T and Time Warner, as seems increasingly likely, it may well be the antitrust case of the decade, even without the claims of presidential meddling that have already engulfed the deal in partisan controversy. A lawsuit by the Justice Department, along with its earlier, widely reported demands that AT&T sell either DirecTV or Turner Broadcasting to gain approval for the deal, would mark a radical departure from decades of antitrust enforcement policy, both in defining what is an unlawful anticompetitive merger and

[Commentary] Under the guise of promoting network investment and deployment and enhancing consumer choice, Federal Communications Commission Chairman Ajit Pai’s attack on the Lifeline program does the complete opposite. His plan proposes to kick all non-facilities-based service providers out of the Lifeline program, which includes wireless carriers like Tracfone’s Safelink Wireless or Virgin Mobile’s Assurance Wireless, that don’t have their own networks but lease capacity from facilities-based providers (e.g., AT&T, Sprint) and serve approximately 70 percent of Lifeline subscribers.

The current media ownership rules limit any one entity from owning too many of the newspaper, radio, and/or television entities within a local market, in order to ensure viewpoint diversity. These rules are under attack. Broadcasters are spectrum licensees, and without some strong public interest requirements on spectrum licensees, we are at risk of losing local, community-centric information.

AT&T is promising to spend an additional billion dollars in 2018 if Congress slashes its tax bill for the next 10 years or more, and the company isn’t making any promises beyond that. This extra billion in investment would cost the rest of us at least $50 billion over the next decade. That’s a literal steal for AT&T and its shareholders. Put another way: For the $50 billion this corporate tax break would cost us for AT&T alone, the government could pay to have fiber-to-the-home built to every single AT&T-covered household that doesn’t yet have it.

[Commentary] Some supporters of U.S. Senate candidate Roy Moore have come right out and said they do not believe four women who claim the Alabama Republican pursued them when they were teenagers and he was in his 30s.

News broke on November 8 that the Department of Justice is seeking to alter, if not block, AT&T’s proposed purchase of Time Warner. What until recently had seemed like a done deal is now up in the air. And different narratives are emerging. Did the DOJ request AT&T sell off Time Warner's CNN in order to approve the deal? Is the DOJ responding to President Donald Trump’s many complaints about CNN, essentially punishing a news organization for unfavorable coverage?

The $85 billion merger of AT&T and Time Warner suddenly seems to be in jeopardy. So how will this play out? Here are five possible scenarios.

1. Time Warner Unbundles
2. The Justice Department Blinks
3. Mega-Deal Gets Its Day in Court
4. AT&T Just Moves On
5. Time Warner Becomes the Belle of the Bidding Ball – Again
    

Free-speech advocates  -- including the Electronic Frontier Foundation and the Center for Democracy and Technology—are afraid that a bill currently making its way through Congress could significantly weaken existing protections for online speech. In the United States, one of the most critical planks supporting free expression online is a section of the 1996 Communications Decency Act known as Section 230, often referred to as the “safe harbor” clause.

Demanding divestiture of either the must have content or the DIRECTV distribution platform is precisely the remedy you would expect if you believe the deal presents significant harm because of the vertical integration issues. That’s been the position of my employer, Public Knowledge, which has opposed the transaction since AT&T announced the deal. (That predates Trump’s election, for those of you wondering.) If you want a more detailed understanding of the theory of the harms, you can find it in my boss Gene Kimmelman’s testimony to Congress here.

Will AT&T hang up on its quest for Time Warner if it can’t hang on to some of its most valuable assets? Answering that question could become paramount in the company’s effort to secure the $85 billion merger it proposed with Time Warner in October. Turner owns valuable sports rights, sharing with CBS the broadcast of the NCAA’s “March Madness” men’s basketball championship tournament. That event generated a record-setting $1.24 billion in national TV advertising in 2016, according to Kantar, a tracker of ad spending.