Groups Want better Look at Verizon-SpectrumCo Marketing Agreements

In the Federal Communications Commission’s review of Verizon’s acquisition of spectrum currently owned by cable television companies, Verizon Wireless and the cable companies files copies of commercial agreements that provide the parties to those agreements with the ability to act as agents selling one another’s services. The companies claim that the agreements are neither anticompetitive nor relevant to this proceeding, claims that cannot be evaluated without reviewing the agreements themselves. The agreements are subject to the stringent confidentiality provisions of the protective orders issued by the FCC in this proceeding. But the companies filed them with redactions concerning pricing and compensation.

Now groups participating in the FCC review are asking that:

• The FCC should direct the parties to produce complete and unredacted versions of the Commercial Agreements for the record of this proceeding, subject to the Protective Orders.
• Given the centrality of the information withheld to the public interest analysis, the FCC should also suspend both the pleading cycle in this proceeding and the informal 180-day “transaction clock,” and reset them to zero once the parties have provided full disclosure of their arrangements.