Ownership

The ripples of the Supreme Court ruling in favor of American Express could be felt on the West Coast, with some arguing it would make it harder for antitrust enforcers to take on big online platforms like Google, Facebook and Amazon. Many of tech’s most profitable firms have created two-sided markets: Google and Facebook serve consumers on one side and marketers on another. Uber links up riders and drivers. Amazon serves customers and also the merchants who use its platform. All these situations make defining a monopoly more difficult.

Gray Television has agreed to buy fellow television-station owner Raycom Media in a $3.65 billion deal that would create a company that reaches nearly a quarter of US TV households. Gray estimates it will be able to save $40 million in the first year after the deal closes by reducing station and corporate expenses.

The attorneys general of Illinois, Iowa (stations from both states are involved in the deal) and Rhode Island have petitioned the Federal Communications Commission to deny the Sinclair-Tribune merger, which would give Sinclair over 200 TV stations.

AT&T's advertising chief said the company’s acquisition of AppNexus is part of a strategy to build a first-of-its-kind marketplace for television and digital video advertising and give it more firepower against industry juggernauts Google and Facebook. AppNexus offers technology that helps advertisers buy ads, using automated software, across a range of websites and apps. The company also supplies technology to publishers so they can manage and sell ad space on their websites.

Windstream and USTelecom have reached a compromise agreement involving telecommunication unbundling that would offer an alternative to a filing made by USTelecom back in May. The agreement requires Federal Communications Commission approval, but generally the FCC looks favorably upon agreements that opposing telecom stakeholders have been able to negotiate without FCC involvement. Windstream is both a buyer and seller of unbundled network elements (UNEs).

In a test of antitrust law, the Supreme Court ruled 5 to 4 that American Express could use contracts to stop merchants from steering consumers to other cards. The decision has implications not only for what one brief called “an astronomical number of retail transactions” but also for other kinds of markets, notably ones on the internet, in which services link consumers and businesses. Such “two-sided platforms,” the Court said, require special and seemingly more forgiving antitrust scrutiny.

AT&T CEO Randall Stephenson said that the company’s work to upgrade its network with FirstNet’s 700 MHz spectrum will position it to move to 5G network technology via a software upgrade. “To build out this FirstNet capability, this first responder network, we have to go climb every cell tower. Literally, we have to go touch every cell tower over the next couple of years,” explained Stephenson. "As we're touching those cell towers, every single one of them, we have a lot of spectrum in inventory.

Necto, a startup which was recently accepted into Silicon Valley incubator Y Combinator, wants to make it easy for users to set up their own Internet service provider. While the type of network Necto is using isn't anything new, the company has a different business model it hopes will set it apart. Rather than charge customers for the service directly, the startup is searching for so-called operators to run private-label ISPs.

The secrets are hidden behind fortified walls in cities across the United States, inside towering windowless skyscrapers and fortress-like concrete structures that were built to withstand earthquakes and even nuclear attack. Thousands of people pass by the buildings each day and rarely give them a second glance, because their function is not publicly known. They are an integral part of one of the world’s largest telecommunications networks – and they are also linked to a controversial National Security Agency surveillance program.