CenturyLink and Level 3 Communications have filed their merger (license transfer) applications with the FCC and their pre-merger notification to the Federal Trade Commission and Justice Department.
The merger is valued at $34 billion including debt.
Along with the AT&T-Time Warner merger, it will be one of the first big media mergers to be vetted primarily under the Donald Trump Administration. Trump has talked about reducing regs but also about blocking consolidation among media outlets.
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This merger scares me: I think it may herald a return to the roaring
80's, and highly leveraged deals that can endanger investors.Moreover, Level 3 is "the" backbone for a lot of Internet users, and having it in the hands of Centurylink is concerning, since it removes one of the last remaining obstacles to per-packet billing by an ILEC. Centurylink could section the backbones and change them into tollroads that only major ISPs and other big-data players can afford: thus, the company could charge higher rates for "private" lines that serve only to connect the mega-centers, so as to bypass the FCC's Net Neutrality rules.