AT&T remains focused on completing its buy of Time Warner and will fight to defend the deal in court against DOJ's lawsuit, AT&T CEO Randall Stephenson said Wednesday during a call on Q4 results. He called closing the transaction AT&T’s top priority in 2018, saying it was surprised by the government’s actions. “It is a classic vertical merger between two companies that don’t even compete with one another,” he said, and it’s the type of deal the government “consistently approved with appropriate conditions.” Last year was a good for the telco-service provider with policy overall that will expand U.S. investment, jobs and wages, Stephenson said. “All of this began early in 2017 as regulations across all industries were being rationalized,” he said. “The FCC returned us to a light-touch regulation of the internet. … This was a step in the right direction.” Stability will come only if Congress approves net neutrality law, he said. “We need clarity,” he said. “We need a long-term predictability of the rules on the internet and on customer privacy.” AT&T recently backed an “Internet Bill of Rights” (see 1801240047). Even bigger was tax change, the chief said: “Our public policymakers pulled the greatest lever they had available to them to stimulate" growth. AT&T’s FirstNet contract will be the foundation for the carrier’s 5G network, Stephenson said. “We’re well underway with the build, including new sites in unserved or underserved rural parts.” AT&T’s acquisition of millimeter wave licenses from FiberTower is significant, he said, and “going to give us a quantum leap in both capacity and performance.” The FCC order giving AT&T control of most of the licenses (see 1801290055) gives the carrier an average of nearly 360 MHz of high-frequency spectrum nationwide, he said. “It’s critical for our 5G strategy and we’ll be putting this spectrum to work later this year.” AT&T reported some 2.8 million U.S. wireless net adds, driven by connected devices. AT&T had 329,000 postpaid phone net adds and added nearly 700,000 branded smartphones. It had 161,000 U.S. total video net adds.
Meredith completed the takeover of Time Inc. in a $2.8 billion deal, the buyer announced Wednesday. The FTC had cleared the takeover (see 1801160012 and 1801120053).
Cable ISP Atlantic Broadband said it hopes to close by late July on purchase of FiberLight's south Florida fiber network. Atlantic said the deal would add 350 route miles to its existing south Florida footprint. Financial details weren't disclosed.
The FTC cleared the way for Corning to buy 3M’s Communication Markets Division for $900 million, said an early termination notice Wednesday and released the next day, ending the transaction’s Hart-Scott-Rodino waiting period. Corning’s Optical Communications sector will acquire about $400 million in annual sales of high bandwidth and optical fiber products from 3M, said Corning’s mid-December announcement.
Sinclair met with Chief Michelle Carey and Media Bureau staff Monday on FCC criteria for allowing common ownership of two top-four stations in the same market, said a Wednesday ex parte filing in docket 17-179. “Participants discussed generally the criteria set out in the Reconsideration Order and the types of information that might be presented in making such a showing.” Sinclair may be the first broadcaster to try the agency’s new case-by-case analysis of such combinations (see 1801120049).
TPG Capital's RCN/Grande closed on its buy of Wave Broadband, it said Thursday. The parties said Wave will continue to operate under the Wave brand and keep its Kirkland, Washington, headquarters. RCN/Grande CEO Jim Holanda said the addition helps create a national-scale cable ISP "with significant growth potential." RCN/Grande said the deal gives it a broader footprint in seven of the top 10 designated market areas and nearly 950,000 customers. The $2.37 billion deal was announced last year (see 1705220058).
Sinclair buying Tribune “hits Iowa hard,” Commissioner Jessica Rosenworcel wrote Monday for the Des Moines Register. The combined broadcaster would own two of the top four stations in Des Moines and own or operate “nearly a dozen television stations across the towns and cornfields of Iowa,” Rosenworcel said. “Allowing a broadcaster to become so big has real consequences for news, campaigns and communities across Iowa,” she said. “Washington should not be clearing the way for big companies to overwhelm local media markets.” Sinclair didn't comment.
With AT&T seeking third-party pricing information from DOJ as part of the agency's court fight to block AT&T's buy of Time Warner, U.S. District Judge Richard Leon of Washington on Monday ordered Justice to get consent from nine third parties to produce the pricing data for AT&T. The docket 17-2511 order (in Pacer) said the data was given to DOJ during prior deal investigations. The third parties are Altice, Comcast, Charter Communications, Cox Communications, Disney, Fox, Viacom, Discovery and Scripps; the last two companies also are combining. In a note Tuesday, Barclays analyst Kannan Venkateshwar said investor optimism about regulatory approval and smooth execution of the deal might be oversized, since New Disney's scale in sports could be subject to close scrutiny. The integration "is likely to be quite complicated" because of different company cultures and recent and expected Disney losses of some key management personnel, Venkateshwar said, adding the integration will be happening simultaneously with the launch of high-profile over-the-top products.
U.K. Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) preliminary findings that Fox's proposed buy of Sky may be against the public interest regarding media plurality issues is disappointing, but the provisional findings move the deal to the next regulatory review step, Fox said in a statement Tuesday. Fox expects final regulatory OK by June 30 now that CMA is taking an eight-week extension, moving the deadline for its final decision to May 1. In a note to investors Tuesday, Wells Fargo analyst Marci Ryvicker said the findings don't close the door on the deal since CMA provided potential remedies. She said a spinoff or divestiture of Sky News is possible, as are behavioral remedies to insulate Sky from the Murdoch family trust. She said Disney's buying Fox would remove the roadblocks to the deal since it would weaken the Sky News/Murdoch family trust ties, but that timing becomes a problem since Disney/Fox is expected to happen after June 30. The CMA said Tuesday its inquiry group provisionally concluded that while Fox/Sky may not be in the public interest regarding media plurality, it's not against the public interest regarding broadcasting standards. It said the deal makes it more likely Sky News and News Corp.-owned newspapers "could take a similar approach on specific topics or issues, push certain stories, or downplay others" and that Murdoch family trust control over Sky News alongside those newspapers would give it oversized control over public opinion and political agendas.
T-Mobile US said it completed its acquisition of Layer3 TV, a deal announced in December (see 1712130046). The acquiree's "team has joined T-Mobile and will drive the Un-carrier’s initiative to launch a disruptive new TV service in 2018,” T-Mobile said Tuesday. About 200 Layer3 employees are making the move to T-Mobile, led by CEO Jeff Binder, now a T-Mobile executive vice president.