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August 17, 1999
Joel I. Klein
Assistant Attorney General for Antitrust Division
Department of Justice
Tenth Street and Constitution Avenue, N.W.
Suite 3109
Washington, DC 20530
Dear Mr. Klein:
On behalf of Consumers Union, Consumer Federation of America and Media Access Project, we respectfully request that you aggressively intervene to block AT&T Corp.'s acquisition of MediaOne under our nation's antitrust laws. The attached economic analysis, entitled "Breaking the Rules," carefully documents how this proposed merger would violate your agency's merger guidelines in the cable distribution, cable programming, cable-based broadband distribution, and broadband services markets. We believe the AT&T/MediaOne deal involves such massive concentration of ownership in these markets that failure to assert antitrust principles to stop this merger will result in inflated cable and broadband Internet service prices for consumers and thwart the development of vibrant competition in these markets.
In addition, we believe that the anti-competitive effects of this horizontal concentration problem are exacerbated by the extreme vertical integration into cable and broadband Internet services that would result from this merger. The AT&T/MediaOne merger and related deals involving Microsoft and Cox illustrate how AT&T is attempting to build a digital conglomerate with control over a broadband cartel that could dramatically impede the development of competition in a broad array of communications markets.
We therefore ask that you use all your power under the antitrust laws to block the AT&T/MediaOne merger.
Sincerely,
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Gene Kimmelman |
Mark Cooper |
Andrew Jay Schwartzman |
