Last year AT&T announced that they would be acquiring DirecTV, but obviously a simple announcement like that wasn’t going to cut it. The deal would naturally have to be subjected to regulatory approval while they check for potential antitrust violations that could crop up because of the acquisition.As it turns out, it looks like AT&T did not have anything to worry about because the FCC has recently given the deal the green light. This means that AT&T’s acquisition of DirecTV has been approved which in turn makes AT&T one of the country’s largest content providers around. The deal, last we heard, was said to be valued around a whopping $49 billion.
According to the FCC’s chairman Tom Wheeler, he actually recommended that the deal be given the approval. However he did attach certain conditions to the deal to ensure that when it has been finalized that the newly merged companies would not violate any net neutrality rules that have been put into place.
According to the FCC’s announcement, “As part of the merger, AT&T-DIRECTV will be required to expand its deployment of high-speed, fiber optic broadband Internet access service to 12.5 million customer locations as well as to E-rate eligible schools and libraries. In addition, AT&T-DIRECTV is prohibited from using discriminatory practices to disadvantage online video distribution services and will submit its Internet interconnection agreements for Commission review. Finally, AT&T-DIRECTV will offer broadband services to low-income consumers at discounted rates.”