Ownership

Sprint is unable to recover from crippling losses and has told regulators its purchase by T-Mobile would set up a stronger competitor to wireless leaders AT&T and Verizon. Customers are fleeing the smallest of the big four US nationwide providers at an increasing rate, Sprint told the Federal Communications Commission in a Sept. 21 meeting. Revenue is dropping and the company can’t cut much more after eliminating about $10 billion in annual costs.

The government needs to diversify and strengthen its efforts to stop China from co-opting the US innovation economy to support its own global ambitions, industry experts told the House Oversight IT Subcommittee on Sept 26.  And tariffs probably aren’t the best way to do it, they said. “For more than 40 years, the US has encouraged China to develop its own economy and take its place alongside the US as a central and responsible player on the world stage,” said House Oversight IT subcommittee Chairman Will Hurd (R-TX). “China does not want to join us, they want to replace us.

Twenty-First Century Fox agreed to sell its 39 percent stake in the British broadcaster Sky to Comcast in a deal worth $15 billion, ending Rupert Murdoch’s yearslong ambition to take full ownership of the satellite service he helped found three decades ago. Murdoch, the executive co-chairman of 21st Century Fox, sold most of his empire to the Walt Disney Company this summer. The proceeds of the Sky sale will go to Disney, which plans to invest the money in its newest effort to sell its content directly to viewers via streaming services.

The biggest barrier for US leadership in 5G: the Trump Administration’s own misguided trade policies. Indeed, the administration’s trade war with China threatens to increase the costs of wireless infrastructure by hundreds of millions of dollars at a critical moment in the race to 5G.  It’s a classic case of the right hand not knowing what the left is doing.

"Our media is precious. It’s how, outside of our strictly personal spheres, we speak to each other, inform each other, learn from each other, entertain each other, increasingly how we govern ourselves." With these words, Michael Copps opened a public hearing on media ownership rules. The hearing was not in Washington, DC, but Chicago, Illinois. Copps was not a local official, but a commissioner at the U.S. Federal Communications Commission (FCC).

This report, part history, and part strategy playbook, examines the tactics and policy priorities of former-Commissioner Michael J. Copps during his 10 years at the FCC. An analysis of Commissioner Copps’s tenure, his political strategies, and his legacy is a timely endeavor, both for its historical importance and for its contemporary relevance. As a commissioner in the minority during the George W.

Officials from 14 states' top legal offices and the Justice Department have begun a coordinated conversation about ways to keep tabs — and potentially rein in — the fast-growing tech giants. The gathering had been designed to focus on social media platforms and the ways in which they moderate content online, following complaints from President Donald Trump and other top Republican lawmakers that Silicon Valley companies deliberately seek to silence conservative users and views online.

Department of Justice antitrust chief Makan Delrahim says he is not "unilaterally disarming" his division, but that he is taking a number of reforms to speed the merger review process. "Provided that the parties expeditiously cooperate and comply throughout the entire process, we will aim to resolve most investigations within six months of filing," he said. For comparison, in 2017, "significant" merger reviews took on average 10.8 months to resolve, he said. To cut that timeline to six months, Justice is inviting parties to meet early with its antitrust team.

Google, Facebook, and Twitter have no incentive to inject bias in their platforms, because consumers across the political spectrum use social media and discriminating against any of them could drive people away. Consumers would be substantially worse off if social media platforms such as Facebook and Twitter were broken up. Their value to consumers derives in no small part from the fact that they allow people to communicate with their friends and families with a single click.

Google Chief Executive Sundar Pichai plans to appear at a private meeting of top GOP lawmakers on Sept 28 and again at a public hearing later in 2018, responding to new scrutiny of the company’s work with China, its market power and alleged bias against conservatives in its search results.  “Google has a lot of questions to answer about reports of bias in its search results, violations of user privacy, anticompetitive behavior and business dealings with repressive regimes like China,” said House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-CA), who is organizing Sept 28’s meeting.