AT&T/Time Warner: The Case Against Monster Bell

[Commentary] This merger is ginormous. It would put the nation’s largest multichannel video provider (thanks to newly acquired DirecTV), the second-largest wireless company and the third-largest broadband provider under the same corporate umbrella as HBO, CNN, TBS, TNT and the Warner Bros. movie studio. Forget Ma Bell. This is Monster Bell.

AT&T Can’t Be Trusted: For years and through multiple merger proceedings, AT&T has promised to expand high-speed broadband and failed to deliver, only to resurrect the same promises when it’s ready to make another deal. AT&T’s list of lies and chicanery is too long to reprint here.

More Than Just a Merger: It’s important to recognize just how much the political landscape has shifted. There is deep popular distrust of the rigged system that AT&T/Time Warner represents and broad bipartisan frustration with the failure of merger after merger to deliver any public benefits.
Is there really enough popular and political will to stand up to AT&T’s lobbying juggernaut and block this deal? Stranger things have happened.

[Craig Aaron is the president and CEO of Free Press and the Free Press Action Fund]