AT&T appears ready to play ball with the FCC to land DirecTV
by William Pelegrin
At this point, AT&T's $48.5 billion purchase of DirecTV appears to be all but guaranteed. However, if the FCC is going to approve the industry-changing purchase, AT&T will have to abide by new net neutrality regulations.
According to sources at The Washington Post, AT&T is ready to concede major aspects of the new net neutrality rules that the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) put forth earlier this year, the same rules that AT&T has strongly opposed publicly. In order for the deal to go through, AT&T will have to abide by three major mandates:
- Do not slow websites down.
- Do not prevent people from accessing competing websites.
- Do not take any payment from website operators in the hopes that they can speed up their content, thus creating an Internet "fast lane."