News Digest

FCC gives AT&T final clearance to buy DirecTV

AT&T’s $48.5 billion purchase of DirecTV is set to close after the company won approval Friday from the Federal Communications Commission. The Justice Department had already cleared the deal, which will create the largest provider of cable or satellite TV in the U.S., with 26.4 million cable and satellite TV subscribers. That’s more than Comcast as well as a bigger Charter, which is seeking government approval to buy Time Warner Cable. Suppliers of TV are buying one another as video from Internet competitors like Netflix gets more popular and costs rise for channels. Adding TV customers gives AT&T more power to negotiate with big media companies over prices for those channels.

The commission’s decision is based on a careful, thorough review of the record, which includes extensive economic analysis and documentary data from the applicants, as well as comments from interested parties.

The FCC said in a statement

The deal also combines a nationwide satellite TV service, the country’s largest, with the No. 2 nationwide wireless network as time spent on mobile devices increases. DirecTV also has 19.5 million customers in Latin America, where AT&T wants to grow. AT&T’s purchase of DirecTV was approved even as Comcast’s bid for Time Warner Cable, which would have made the country’s biggest cable company even more massive, was blocked. The AT&T deal did not trigger the same fears from consumer advocates, because the company wouldn’t contain an entertainment division like Comcast’s NBCUniversal and wouldn’t gain Internet customers, considered the future of the industry, by buying DirecTV.