Washington Has Delivered a Tangled Message on AT&T’s Power
On Monday, the Department of Justice sued to block AT&T’s proposed $85.4 billion takeover of Time Warner, a deal
that would unite one of the country’s biggest internet providers with the company that owns CNN, HBO and the Warner Bros. film studio.
And by challenging the AT&T merger with Time Warner, the Justice Department could be laying the groundwork
for a new approach to antitrust enforcement that could be used to go after big technology firms.
The move would let companies charge higher fees and block access to some websites,
and was effectively a green light for big internet service providers — including AT&T — to freely wield their influence against rivals.
“How would you ever be able to get a content addition to Google?”
And there is another school of thought suggesting that more vigorous antitrust enforcement
might have obviated the need for net neutrality rules in the first place.
Instead, the diverging decisions reflect an effort by different agencies trying to come to grips with a radically transformed media
and telecommunications landscape, one where Silicon Valley companies are suddenly powerhouses in content creation, and traditional media companies exert vast influence over how information flows across the internet.
In each development, there are signs that the Trump administration is trying to reckon with a media and telecommunications industry
that has become intensely concentrated in recent years; most Americans now get their internet and phone services from one of a few providers, and most TV shows and movies are produced by a handful of big companies.
