At AT&T Trial, Government Sends a Message About Future Deals

In the court case attempting to block AT&T's purchase of Time Warner, the Department of Justice is trying to prove that when you combine content assets like Time Warner’s programming with distribution assets like AT&T’s DirecTV, the company can force distributors to pay higher rates and favor its own operations over rivals. If the government’s argument succeeds, it will be bad news for a lot of media companies seeking to do deals. Comcast has particular reason to worry. Ketan Jhaveri -- a former antitrust attorney for the Justice’s Telecommunications Task Force and current co-CEO of Bodhala, a legal tech platform -- expects that the DOJ will use upcoming Comcast witnesses to expose the flaws of the company’s consent decree, in which it agreed to certain conditions in its 2011 takeover of NBC. The point is to show that structural separation is the only viable option for AT&T and Time Warner. Next in the government’s crosshairs could be Comcast-NBC.