The FCC Must Work to Ensure the Public Interest in the Wake of the AT&T/DirecTV Merger

[Commentary] The Federal Communications Commission has recently released the full text of its Order approving the merger of AT&T and DirecTV, with conditions. While we’re pleased that the FCC has addressed many of the most important competitive issues we have raised with this merger, we remain concerned that FCC has not done everything we believe would have been helpful to prevent competitive harms.

Public Knowledge has had two areas of concerns with this merger. First, by buying DirecTV, AT&T would gain an increased incentive to discriminate against competing video services. We have argued that the FCC could not approve this merger without taking steps to counter those harms. Second, especially in light of the consolidating communications marketplace, we have argued that the FCC needs to take seriously its legal responsibility to block mergers unless it can be assured of a concrete public interest benefit. Under the Communications Act, it’s not enough for the companies to show how they would benefit from a merger. The FCC needs to identify concrete ways that a merger would benefit the public.