FC: More on AOL purchase of Time Warner

[Declan McCullagh <declan () well com>]

************

http://www.wired.com/news/business/0,1367,33550,00.html

                     Talkin' 'Bout that Mega Merger 
                     by Declan McCullagh (declan () wired com)

                     3:00 a.m. 11.Jan.2000 PST 
                     WASHINGTON -- Washington types didn't
                     have much to add to Monday's news of
                     the proposed America Online-Time Warner
                     amalgam. But, pundits being pundits,
                     some found something to say. 

                     There's the niggling issue of broadband,
                     for starters. It sounds boring. And, as a
                     techno-political issue, it'll never be up
                     there with, say, Johnny downloading porn
                     on library computers or building pipe
                     bombs courtesy of
                     alt.hobbies.school-explosions. 

                     But there's a ton of money at stake,
                     which more than adequately explains why
                     AOL has spent the last year or so
                     engaging in calculated political
                     arm-twisting for access to the cable
                     networks of competitors like AT&T. 

                     Screw-the-competition lobbying is
                     arguably hypocritical for a company that
                     also claims it's against government
                     involvement in the Internet. And so far
                     AOL has had little success pestering
                     federal and local officials to "open up"
                     cable lines. The market is still too small to
                     raise antitrust concerns. 

                     But now AOL has access to
                     Time-Warner's 13 million cable customers,
                     and execs on Monday indicated they'd
                     keep AOL-TW cable systems open to all.
                     But that wasn't enough to keep
                     Washingtonians from having their say ... 

                     [...]



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