Comcast's fast-growing Washington presence

The tale of Comcast's remarkable rise in Washington tracks the story of how the cable giant built its business. In the same way that it aggressively grew its empire by acquiring one cable system at a time, the company has methodically added one lobbyist after another and steadily spread more money around the nation's capital as its interests expanded beyond the television screen.

Now the nation's biggest cable and Internet service provider, Comcast's relatively new but highly visible presence in DC comes into focus just as a long regulatory review begins of its proposed $30 billion merger with NBC Universal. If completed, the deal would transform Comcast into a media and Internet giant just as the Web threatens to throw the cable and media businesses into turmoil. In effect, the company's hopes to turn itself into Comcast 2.0 lie in the hands of federal officials. Beyond Comcast's sheer size, some observers and telecom policy insiders say that the company's aggressive and sometimes combative approach has occasionally bothered key constituents in Washington's communications and tech circles. That style has come to define the cable giant: a relentless push for policies and a willingness to wage marathon battles to prove its point. It is already suing one of the federal agencies that is reviewing the NBC merger. It pushes back against consumer groups on multiple issues, and those groups have turned their attention to blasting the NBC deal.