FCC’s compromise approval of AOL takeover of Time Warner (CD Jan ...
FCC’s compromise approval of AOL takeover of Time Warner (CD Jan 16 p1) received generally good early reviews among Hill staffers. While instant messaging (IM) conditions won’t have immediate impact, said one, at least “FCC has put its imprimatur…
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on IM interconnection.” Less pleased was economist Rick Warren-Boulton of Microeconomic Consulting Research & Assoc. (MiCRA), which submitted report to FCC detailing dangers of allowing AOL not to interconnect to IM competitors. Warren-Boulton told us FCC’s conditioning its IM interconnection requirements on AOL-Time Warner’s (TW) offering new broadband IM services wasn’t “the kind of thing that an economist would construct.” He said there were 2 possible outcomes, and FCC’s order wasn’t ideal either way: (1) AOL-TW offers new services quickly, in which case FCC “would be better off saying just do it.” (2) AOL-TW delays new offerings to avoid requirements, creating “problem for technical change in general.”