By Mark Everett Hall
At Management World Americas this week in Orlando, Fla., Paul Feldman, an attorney-member with Fletcher Heald & Hildreth PLC, a full-service communications law firm based in the Washington, DC area, discussed some of the contentious issues surrounding the proposed acquisition by Comcast of NBC from General Electric.
According to Feldman, Comcast competitors and some net neutrality advocates say that there are potential problems with the company’s planned $37 billion purchase of the so-called peacock network from GE. For one thing, he said, opponents of the transaction worry that Comcast may not offer the same “quality of service as NBC content” to other networks.
He also said that others fear Comcast may put NBC, which is currently broadcast for free, “behind a paid gate.”
Feldman added that Comcast’s history is haunting the deal among net neutrality proponents. He recalled when the cable giant discriminated against a P2P streaming site, throttling its bandwidth to cut usage. He said the Federal Communications Commission slapped Comcast’s hand for degrading the service without legal cause. Some people, he said, remember the incident and fear the company may pull similar stunts in the future against competitors.
Ironically, Feldman noted, if Comcast gets NBC, the Obama administration, which he said is already sympathetic to pro-net neutrality arguments, may implement rules to make it the law of the land.
“Other ISPs may pay the price for the deal,” he said.
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