FCC Could Use Merger Concessions to Advance Policy Goals

A spate of telecom and media mergers is complicating the Federal Communications Commission's already controversial agenda. But it might also offer a solution.

FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler is entangled in a difficult debate over net neutrality. The FCC is hemmed in by a pair of court decisions that have shot down its previous attempts to require equal treatment on the Internet, but its efforts to split the difference with new rules that would allow carriers to charge Internet companies for priority service set off a firestorm of criticism. Merger review could in theory give the FCC a way around a divisive and risky policy debate. In negotiating approval of deals, the commission gets the opportunity to extract concessions that could advance its policy goals -- like net neutrality. AT&T's $49 billion offer to acquire DirecTV, Comcast's $45 billion acquisition of Time Warner Cable and a potential Sprint acquisition of T-Mobile give Chairman Wheeler an opening to impose terms that will govern a sizable chunk of the broadband Internet market.

"You got two-thirds of the industry in front of you potentially by the end of the summer, which is enormously tempting to try to create an industry structure around that," said Harold Feld of Public Knowledge, an open Internet advocacy group. "But it's not as easy as it looks. You'll have a bunch of different companies, many of whom may not be willing to go that far."