News - Welcome to the machine

The FCC struck another blow against the public interest last month with its approval of the largest cable TV merger in United States history. The $47.5-billion buyout of AT&T by Comcast — which links the nation's largest and third-largest cable companies, respectively — will spawn a new industry giant with the ability to exert unprecedented control of both the cable TV and broadband Internet sectors. The result: a virtual monopoly on costs, content and service options for millions of Americans — many of them in Atlanta, where the telecommunications company's cable division serves more than 600,000 customers.

Locally, the merger should have significant practical benefits for countless frustrated AT&T Broadband customers. AT&T's joining with Comcast will ease a financial crisis that — among other things — forced the company to cut hundreds of local jobs, many in customer service. So there may be an end in sight to the numerous installation snafus and typical marathon hold times.

But get past the everyday technical and service issues, and a future under AT&T-Comcast's massive telecommunications umbrella is far more ominous. Consider this: The new media conglomerate will command more than 30 percent of the domestic cable TV marketplace, and maintain a stranglehold on an equally large portion of the broadband Internet — giving it the clout to shape the emerging multi-channel, digital TV and broadband marketplace. Under the FCC-approved deal, there is little recourse for consumers to get their cable or Internet service from competing providers.

For its part, the Bush administration- controlled FCC and the Department of Justice failed to impose any safeguards on the merger, which shows that the big business agenda remains unrivaled in Washington despite the recent media and telecom financial scandals. Under FCC Chairman Michael Powell's "leadership," the guiding principles of the Communications Act — which order the FCC to enforce the "public interest, convenience and necessity" — have become not merely irrelevant, but meaningless.

The AT&T-Comcast deal is the latest case in point. There should have been safeguards to ensure competition and diversity in the cable programming market. That way, Comcast broadband users would have real choices — like choosing the Internet service provider of their preference. There also should've been public policies enabling local communities to share some of the benefits of digital cable. But none of this is in the offing.

Above and beyond the FCC's rubber-stamping of the AT&T-Comcast deal, there are bigger questions about whether the board has any intention of analyzing or recognizing the cultural and political implications of the new media landscape it is sanctioning. During the past year, the Center for Digital Democracy has joined many other public interest and industry groups in urging the FCC to carefully consider the threats the AT&T-Comcast merger would pose to competition in the cable TV and broadband marketplaces. There's also the matter of the merger's implications for our democracy as a whole — as a result of more consolidated editorial content and shrinking public-interest programming.

No dearth of evidence of these potential threats exists. Yet in approving this merger without any public interest safeguards, the FCC has chosen to ignore those facts.

Also on the FCC agenda is a worrisome Internet service provider agreement with AOL Time Warner that has implications for the future character of the Net for exactly the same reason: The public will face fewer choices in selecting media sources.

Behind these complex cases and seemingly obscure FCC rulings is the fact that the country's biggest communications firms are enlarging and consolidating their industry monopoly at the expense of a public they're supposed to serve.

letters.atl@creativeloafing.com

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Jeffrey Chester is executive director of the Center for Digital Democracy in Washington, D.C.??