Washington Has Delivered a Tangled Message on AT&T’s Power<br />On Monday, the Department of Justice sued to block AT&T’s proposed $85.4 billion takeover of Time Warner, a deal<br />that would unite one of the country’s biggest internet providers with the company that owns CNN, HBO and the Warner Bros. film studio.<br />And by challenging the AT&T merger with Time Warner, the Justice Department could be laying the groundwork<br />for a new approach to antitrust enforcement that could be used to go after big technology firms.<br />The move would let companies charge higher fees and block access to some websites,<br />and was effectively a green light for big internet service providers — including AT&T — to freely wield their influence against rivals.<br />“How would you ever be able to get a content addition to Google?”<br />And there is another school of thought suggesting that more vigorous antitrust enforcement<br />might have obviated the need for net neutrality rules in the first place.<br />Instead, the diverging decisions reflect an effort by different agencies trying to come to grips with a radically transformed media<br />and telecommunications landscape, one where Silicon Valley companies are suddenly powerhouses in content creation, and traditional media companies exert vast influence over how information flows across the internet.<br />In each development, there are signs that the Trump administration is trying to reckon with a media and telecommunications industry<br />that has become intensely concentrated in recent years; most Americans now get their internet and phone services from one of a few providers, and most TV shows and movies are produced by a handful of big companies.
