Previous leaks had suggested that while the FCC was happily ready to approve Verizon’s massive co-marketing deal with the cable industry, the DOJ was more concerned about the competitive impacts of the deal. As such the DOJ was preparing several significant conditions, including restrictions on where and for how long cable operators and Verizon can cross promote their products. According to the Wall Street Journal the deal is weeks away, and the two sides have [...]

Early last month, anonymous insider sources started telling news outlets that while the FCC would likely approve Verizon’s huge co-marketing deal with the cable industry, the DOJ appeared poised to put up a bit of a fight. A new Reuters report certainly supports that idea, a source telling the news outlet that the DOJ is likely to impose significant conditions on the deal — if it gets approved at all. The spectrum part of the [...]

AT&T has been declared the official carrier for the Democratic National convention this September in Charlotte. That’s somewhat amusing, since the Democrat-controlled FCC and DOJ blocked AT&T’s attempted takeover of T-Mobile, resulting in AT&T’s CEO ramping up his personal political contributions to the GOP. The company tells Business Week they’re more than a little nervous about making sure their network performs as promised. “Our reputation is at stake,” says an AT&T executive. “This is about [...]

Netflix, who once thought bandwidth caps were no big deal, not too long ago finally realized that they can indeed be used anti-competitively to put services that compete with an ISPs content at a competitive disadvantage. Since that time they’ve been heavily criticizing “cap and overage” ISP pricing models, arguing that they’re in no way based on economic or network congestion realities, but are instead primarily used to drive already-expensive broadband prices up, and to [...]

Over the last ten years there’s been no bigger champion for low caps and high per byte overages than Sanford Berstein telecom analyst Craig Moffett, whose clients obviously like the idea of subscribers paying more money for the same product — while the cost to deliver that product continues to drop. Moffett urged AT&T to eliminate unlimited data (they did), and championed Time Warner Cable’s effort to impose ridiculously low overage fees. Like any good [...]

Anonymous sources tell the Wall Street Journal that the Department of Justice is investigating whether cable companies (and telcoTV companies) have been engaging in anti-competitive behavior when it comes to the Internet video content traveling over their networks. The investigation appears to be motivated by a recent debate over whether Comcast should be allowed to exempt their own content on the Xbox 360 from their usage caps. Investigators have spoken to both Netflix and Hulu, [...]

MegaUpload, one of the world’s largest file-swapping sites (actually one of the world’s largest websites, period) was shut down yesterday by the US Justice Department and ICE. According to a federal indictment, seven individuals and two companies involved in the website are have been engaging in “a racketeering conspiracy, conspiring to commit copyright infringement, conspiring to commit money laundering and two substantive counts of criminal copyright infringement.” The result? A massive sting operation resulting in [...]

After announcing that they were withdrawing their FCC application to acquire T-Mobile on Thanksgiving in the hopes many wouldn’t notice, AT&T is cooking up a last-ditch offer to placate the DOJ. According to Bloomberg, AT&T is working on a proposal that would have them divesting a significantly larger amount of T-Mobile assets. Granted, AT&T doesn’t actually care about getting rid of a larger chunk of T-Mobile assets, since a majority of T-Mobile assets simply duplicate [...]

Last Wednesday, Sprint and Cellular South both asked the DOJ for confidential data regarding AT&T and its proposed merge with T-Mobile. Sprint and Cellular South both have lawsuits against the merge, and claim they need the data in order to strengthen their case. But AT&T has filed a motion to prevent Sprint from acquiring the confidential information. Though Sprint has claimed that it has legal rights to the information due to its own case against [...]

Google shocked everyone in August when they announced their plans to buy Motorola Mobility for $2.5 billion. But since then, both companies have had a difficult time on sealing the deal. Shortly after the announcement, Google and Motorola’s board of directors were sued by a shareholder. Now the deal is being scrutinized by the Department of Justice, again. The extended review was disclosed on Wednesday, and doesn’t come as a surprise, considering Google’s gaining power. [...]