AT&T Completes Purchase Of DirecTV

The FCC gave AT&T and DirecTV the green light to complete there $48.5 billion dollar merger. The deal had been under review since May of last year and now makes AT&T the largest pay TV company in the US by taking on DirecTV, AT&T is now ahead of Comcast with more than 26 million customers. 

Source: AT&T

FTC Fines TracFone $40M Over False Advertising

TracFone has agreed to pay customers $40 million to reimburse them for what the FTC labeled as deceptive advertising. From 2009 to 2013, TracFone advertised "unlimited data" plans for $45 per month. Despite the promise of unlimited monthly data, TracFone throttled customers who surpassed 3GB of data and cut off entirely some customers who surpassed 5GB of data. "The issue here is simple: when you promise consumers 'unlimited,' that means unlimited," said Jessica Rich, director of the FTC's Bureau of Consumer Protection. 

TracFone began to disclose the data limits and throttling policies in 2013, but the FTC said, "In many cases, the disclosures were in very small print or on the back of packages or cards where consumers were likely to miss them." Millions of customers were throttled, according to the FTC. TracFone will refund an unknown number of customers $40 million and more clearly spell out its network management policies.

Dish Is Ready To Bid On T-Mobile

Dish Network Chairman Charles Ergen wants Dish to become a wireless carrier. Ergen was shot down twice when Dish was outbid by SoftBank for Sprint, and outbid by Sprint for Clearwire. Ergen also put in a bid for bankrupt third party network provider LightSquared only to see another party interfere yet again.

Earlier this year Dish finally won an auction for H-Block spectrum for $1.56 billion. Which made Dish the fifth largest holder of spectrum. Ergen has said he would let Sprint bid on T-Mobile. If Sprint's attempt to buy T-Mobile fails Dish will step in to buy the fourth largest U.S. carrier. Ergen says that Dish doesn't have cash flow to outbid Sprint for T-Mobile, Ergen would rather sit on the sidelines to see how a Sprint T-Mobile deal pans out. 

Earlier visits to the FCC and FTC by Sprint chairman Masayoshi Son, and Sprint CEO Dan Hesse, went poorly for the nation's third largest carrier, which doesn't look good for a Sprint T-Mobile deal. However, regulators like the possibility of Dish becoming the fifth largest wireless carrier in the U.S. 

The FCC has already approved Dish's request to use some of its recently purchased H-Block spectrum for satellite transmissions, as a conduit for cellular calls and data.

Source: Bloomberg

Google Confirms Antitrust Review Of Waze Deal

The Federal Trade Commission has contacted Google in regards to its $1.1 billion purchase of social mapping service Waze. Google announced earlier this month that it intended to purchase the Israeli company, but the very next day consumer watchdog groups called for an investigation into the deal.

Google confirmed to The Wall Street Journal on Saturday that it had indeed been contacted by lawyers from the FTC, but declined to comment further on the matter.

Waze has taken the mobile mapping space by storm with its ability to use the GPS in users’ phones to track traffic and suggest less congested routes. Since the beginning of the year there has been a lot of talk about who may purchase the service with both Apple and Facebook being noted as potential suitors.

While Waze’s revenue wasn't high enough to trigger an automatic review of the deal, there was enough interest there to see if the integration of the company into Google Maps would possibly hinder competition. Google stated earlier this year that it would not be a complete integration with some facets of Waze being integrated into Google Maps and vice versa, but that the company would remain a separate entity.

According to the report it seems unlikely that the FTC will completely kill the deal as significant evidence would need to be found that the deal would hinder competition. With Apple and Nokia being notable competitors to Google Maps at this time, this is more than likely just a review to make sure of Google’s intentions.

Source: The Wall Street Journel