The United States Justice Department and Tom Wheeler, the chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, have given their approval to the pending merger of AT&T and DirecTV.
AT&T filed documents with the FCC in June of last year to try to convince regulators to approve the company's planned acquisition of satellite TV provider DirecTV.
The proposed deal, which carries a value of $48.5 billion, was strongly opposed by consumer groups, claiming that the merger will not be beneficial for customers in the long term.
However, it seems that the AT&T's acquisition of DirecTV is on its way to completion with the approval.
In a statement, Assistant Attorney General Bill Baer of the U.S. Justice Department's Antitrust Division said that after extensive investigations, the agency found that there is no significant risk to the competition with the proposed business combination of AT&T and DirecTV.
Wheeler also released an order that endorsed the approval of the merger to FCC's commissioners, but with net neutrality conditions.
In Wheeler's conditions for the approval of the merger, the new AT&T will have to adhere to the net neutrality rules that are currently in place. The company will not be allowed to throttle or block services, and there will be no prioritization of content depending on payments. AT&T will also have to treat content providers fairly, without showing any favors to content that the company is affiliated with.
The merger with AT&T will give DirecTV the option to offer subscriptions to Internet services, which the satellite TV provider previously did not have. The merger of the two companies also opens up the option for a quadruple-play bundle to consumers, offering them mobile phone services, fixed-line services, high-speed Internet services and pay TV services through just one company.
"If the conditions are approved by my colleagues, 12.5 million customer locations will have access to a competitive high-speed fiber connection," Wheeler said, which would increase the country's residential fiber infrastructure by over 40 percent.
The news comes just three months after regulators decided to block a proposed merger between Comcast and Time Warner Cable, two giant cable companies. The reason for the disapproval is that the merger will focus too much of the market power over high-speed Internet in a single company.
The AT&T and DirecTV merger does not have the same problem because the two companies do not share territories with the traditional cable companies.
Photo: Mike Mozart | Flickr
