Ownership

A group of senators is urging the Justice Department to scrutinize Comcast’s $65 billion bid to buy much of 21st Century Fox. The senators wrote to Makan Delrahim, the head of the Justice Department’s antitrust division, asking him to review whether Comcast would be able to use Fox’s entertainment offerings to suppress its competitors.

Google’s efforts to build delivery drones and internet-beaming balloons are no longer just science projects. Both ventures are becoming their own independent businesses within Alphabet, the technology conglomerate that owns Google and now 13 other units.

Researchers will soon have a chance to study every link shared on Facebook, thanks to a new data set released through a research partnership with Social Science One. Announced earlier in 2018, the partnership brings together independent academics with data from Facebook and funding from independent foundations, hoping to provide new insight into the impact of social media on elections.

China’s internet giants are competing with each other on multiple fronts either by nurturing their in-house products and services, or by investing in external players for access to technology and users in artificial intelligence, e-commerce, and media and content. The China Internet Report, an in-depth look at China’s internet landscape with its 772 million internet users, is the second such report after its introduction in 2017.

Leading off our August agenda will be 5G, the next generation of wireless connectivity. We’ll finalize the rules for the auction of airwaves in the 28 GHz band and the auction of the 24 GHz band, which will follow immediately afterward.  These will be the first auctions of high-band spectrum for 5G services, but they won’t be the last.  Specifically, I’m excited to announce my plan to move forward with a single auction of three more millimeter-wave spectrum bands—the 37 GHz, 39 GHz, and 47 GHz bands—in the second half of 2019.

The head of the Federal Communications Commission’s wireless bureau fired a wide range of questions at Dish Network about the carrier’s wireless network buildout plans. Importantly, the FCC’s Donald Stockdale stated that “I am contacting you to request updates and more detailed information on your buildout plans for the 53 megahertz of low- and mid-band spectrum that is apparently lying fallow in these bands.” The implication of Stockdale’s questions is that the FCC may begin to take action against Dish for collecting spectrum licenses but not using them.

The Antitrust Division of the Justice Department appears to have put its thumb on the scale in the ongoing battle between the Walt Disney Company and Comcast over the assets of 21st Century Fox. On June 27, the division approved the transfer to Disney (with conditions) despite the fact Comcast was still bidding. Disney had previously argued to the Fox board of directors that their merger faced less regulatory risk than Comcast’s. The Disney-Fox combination would produce a larger horizontally-integrated company and one that would typically pose the greater risk.

Rupert Murdoch’s 21st Century Fox has agreed to new terms to acquire Sky, the pan-European TV group, in a deal worth £24.5 billion that is designed to see off a rival offer from US media giant Comcast.

 Facebook was hit with the maximum possible fine in Britain for allowing the political consulting firm Cambridge Analytica to harvest the information of millions of people without their consent, in what amounts to the social network’s first financial penalty since the data leak was revealed. The fine of 500,000 pounds, or about $660,000, represents a tiny sum for Facebook, which brings in billions of dollars in revenue every year.

[Press release] Senate Commerce Committee Chairman John Thune (R-SD), Communications Subcommittee Chairman Roger Wicker (R-MS), and Consumer Protection Subcommittee Chairman Jerry Moran (R-KS), in a letter to Alphabet CEO Larry Page, requested information about the privacy policy and practices of Gmail email services offered through subsidiary company Google.