Consolidation Critics Lay Into AT&T/DirecTV

The news that AT&T was trying to buy DirecTV drew jeers from some familiar anti-consolidation voices.

"You can’t justify AT&T buying DirecTV by pointing at Comcast’s grab for Time Warner, because neither one is a good deal for consumers," said Delara Derakhshani, policy counsel for Consumers Union. “On the heels of Comcast’s bid for Time Warner Cable, AT&T is going to try to pull off a mega-merger of its own," said Derakhshani. "These could be the start of a wave of mergers that should put federal regulators on high alert. AT&T’s takeover of DirecTV is just the latest attempt at consolidation in a marketplace where consumers are already saddled with lousy service and price hikes. The rush is on for some of the biggest industry players to get even bigger, with consumers left on the losing end."

“The captains of our communications industry have clearly run out of ideas," said Craig Aaron, president of Free Press. "Instead of innovating and investing in their networks, companies like AT&T and Comcast are simply buying up the competition. These takeovers are expensive, and consumers end up footing the bill for merger mania."

“AT&T is willing to pay $48.5 billion and take on an additional $19 billion in debt to buy DirecTV. That's a fortune to spend on a satellite-only company at a time when the pay-TV industry is stagnating and broadband is growing. For the amount of money and debt AT&T and Comcast are collectively shelling out for their respective mega-deals, they could deploy super-fast gigabit-fiber broadband service to every single home in America," said Aaron. He added that the Federal Communications Commission should use its regulatory power to block the “wasteful and anti-competitive” merger in favor of more investment in broadband infrastructure.

“The industry needs more competition, not more mergers,” said John Bergmayer, Senior Staff Attorney at Public Knowledge. “The burden is on AT&T and DirecTV to show otherwise. We'll have to analyze this carefully for potential harms both to the video programming and the wireless markets. The most obvious concern is that customers in U-Verse territories would lose a video competitor, though the transaction would have nationwide effects.”