Verizon and a consortium of cable companies have struck a deal with regulators to scale back their joint marketing arrangement to gain approval for their $3.9 billion wireless-spectrum deal, according to sources in a Wall Street Journal report.
Verizon and the cable consortium, which includes Comcast, Time Warner Cable and Bright House Communications, have supposedly agreed to terms put forth by the Department of Justice that will limit the joint marketing agreement to five years and will prevent Verizon and cable operators to resell each others' services in markets where their broadband, TV and phone services compete, according to unnamed sources in the WSJ story. Approval for the deal could be announced in a few weeks, the sources said.
Verizon and a group of cable companies called SpectrumCo. announced in December a deal in which Verizon Wireless would buy about 20 megahertz of Advanced Wireless Spectrum that the cable companies had bought in a 2006 Federal Communications Commission auction. The companies also agreed to a co-marketing deal that would have allowed cable companies to resell Verizon's wireless phone, broadband, home phone and TV services. And it would have allowed Verizon to resell cable TV, phone and broadband services in Verizon Wireless stores.
From the start consumer advocates, labor unions and some wireless competitors have opposed the deal. Wireless competitors accused Verizon of hoarding wireless spectrum and said that... [Read more]
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