Comcast-NBCU FCC Draft Web Conditions Abound
Among the many conditions that an FCC draft order seeks to impose on Comcast’s planned purchase of control in NBC Universal are several that deal with Internet content and broadband, agency and industry officials said this week. Some of the proposed conditions would require what the companies have recently proposed to the commission, and others appear to go beyond the offers. Included in the draft are requirements that Comcast not treat Web content affiliated with the combined company differently from unaffiliated content, agency officials said. Broadband deployment and selling what’s sometimes called naked, or unbundled, service are dealt with, too.
Sign up for a free preview to unlock the rest of this article
If your job depends on informed compliance, you need International Trade Today. Delivered every business day and available any time online, only International Trade Today helps you stay current on the increasingly complex international trade regulatory environment.
That order is starting to get concentrated eighth-floor attention, even with some of the commissioners at CES in Las Vegas (CD Jan 6 p2), agency and industry officials said. A vote likely won’t happen until later this month. Theoretically, Chairman Julius Genachowski could seek approval at the Jan. 25 FCC meeting, although the matter isn’t on the tentative agenda. That’s because the order circulated Dec. 23, more than three weeks before the meeting, an agency official noted.
The draft would in effect bar Comcast from prioritizing, on its broadband network, programming from its cable channels or from NBC Universal’s channels and TV stations ahead of unaffiliated content, commission officials said. An industry official said some see that as a form of net neutrality. Commission officials noted the condition isn’t framed as a rule like that. A Comcast filing this week in docket 10-56 confirmed that the commission is considering conditions on “the open Internet.” A Media Bureau spokeswoman declined to comment on the draft.
Another condition in the draft bureau order would require Comcast-NBC Universal to license to online video distributors some programming also distributed by other pay-TV companies, FCC officials said. An official said the proposed order defines an online video distributor as one that uses the Internet or IP-based transmission to provide video. The regulator also is considering conditions about online distribution of video programming, Comcast said in a filing that reported on a conversation with executives of the company and NBC Universal with John Flynn, who is leading the agency’s review of the deal. Any conditions on the issue and on net neutrality “should be narrowly tailored in light of the nascent and dynamic nature of the Internet and the online video business,” Comcast said.
Other conditions deal with the provision of broadband service by Comcast and are similar to what the company laid out in a Dec. 23 filing (http://xrl.us/bidyk4), agency officials said. The company would need to extend broadband service to 400,000 additional homes by expanding its network over the next three years, they said. They said the cable operator also would need to provide broadband service to six more rural communities, as it has proposed doing in 2011.
The draft would require Comcast to sell broadband that’s not bundled into packages of video or phone service, agency officials said. They said the cable operator would have to sell the naked service for $9.95 monthly to those who are poor, with eligibility determined by at least one child in the household being eligible for a free school lunch. For would-be subscribers, Comcast would sell unbundled broadband for about $45 monthly, a commission official said.