Level 3 Communications’ reported appeal to the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to add conditions on Comcast’s proposed merger with NBC Universal could stall regulatory approval of the deal, according to The Wall Street Journal.
The company's FCC letter follows a lingering fee dispute between the two companies. The narrow issue remains the same as it was late last month: although it recently signed a deal to provide content delivery services for Netflix, Level 3 argues it is primarily one of the Internet’s “backbone networks.” Hence it should not have to pay Comcast the fees that the cable giant charges content delivery networks for sending a certain level of video traffic onto Comcast’s network of subscribers. Comcast responds that it will have to shoulder the burden of Level 3’s new Netflix traffic.
Level 3 wants to conextualize the dispute in broader terms of net neutrality and open competition principles. GigaOm delivers an opinion on how the dispute does indeed relate to the FCC’s relevancy and ability to regulate competition for digital access services.
↧