Maryland senators concerned about Verizon-cable deal

Sens. Barbara Mikulski (D-MD) and Ben Cardin (D-MD) criticized Verizon's $3.6 billion deal with a coalition of cable companies in letters to the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) and the Justice Department.

The letters, sent last week, urged the agencies to carefully consider the evidence that the deal could hurt "competition, consumers and jobs." The deal allows Verizon to buy blocks of radio spectrum from cable companies including Comcast, Time Warner and Cox. The companies also agreed to cross sell each other's services. But Sens Cardin and Mikulski worried that the arrangements will discourage Verizon from expanding its own cable business, FiOS. "People of color and lower-income households in urban and rural parts of Maryland will be disproportionately affected by the decreased incentives to invest in continued 'build-out' of the FiOS network," the senators wrote. They also wrote that discouraging the build-out of FiOS would prevent Verizon from hiring more workers.