Verizon, cable companies join forces




Verizon Wireless logo in Washington
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NEW YORK, Dec. 3 (UPI) — Verizon Wireless has entered a marketing and access agreement with three major cable providers to take advantage of unused airwaves.

Verizon will pay a total of $3.6 billion to Comcast, Time Warner and Bright House Networks in a move that will transform consumer access to television, cellphone and Internet services, The Washington Post reported Friday.

The deal also includes unprecedented marketing coordination that will see the companies “become agents to sell one another’s products” — raising concerns from regulators and advocacy groups.

The cable companies will for the most part abandon plans to enter the mobile-phone industry, leaving it to Verizon, which would gain access to new customers through Comcast stores.

The deal is “a complete reordering of the competitive universe as we know it today,” Bernstein Research analyst Craig Moffett told the Post. It “amounts to a partnership between formerly mortal enemies, not just outside of Verizon’s [home TV and Internet service] FiOS territories, but even within them.”

Regulators at the Federal Communications Commission and the Department of Justice will review the agreement.

“A flag is raised when two rival networks move to start selling each other’s services,” a source familiar with federal antitrust officials’ concerns told the Post. “They lose their desire, impetus, to compete. That is a big antitrust flag.”

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Article source: http://www.upi.com/Business_News/2011/12/03/Verizon-cable-companies-join-forces/UPI-30481322933883/

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