To use a well used phrase, we are in an information society. There are providers of this "information" and there are channels for its distribution. Typically in the US we have at times tried to keep them separate. The Judge Greene MFJ actually mandated that, for the Judge there saw the power of owning both.
For if you owned the distribution channel and you owned one of the arguably many sources of "information" then you could leverage out your competitors and control what the consumer sees. The FCC rule now mandates that.
McLuhan said the Medium was the Message but he meant that if one controlled the medium, namely the channel and content, you controlled what people saw as "truth". You had the ultimate tool for propaganda.
Do the antitrust laws allow for this type of control? I would argue not but the Judge in this case seems not to agree.
Thus the most serious threat to an open democratic society is the ownership of content and distribution. The old decision to break apart movie theaters and movie makers in the 1940s saw that. Apparently the current Judge disagrees.
A key point is also the development of 5G. My fear is that AT&T is reverting to its old ways, really old ways. A brief tale from the past may be worth telling. Fred Kappel was CEO of AT&T in the 60s. Fred was there when Bell Labs/Western Electric developed the Electronic Switching System No 1, No 1 ESS. Now this was kind of electronic but still had many mechanical parts. A large piece of the costs of telephones was maintenance and the old mechanical switches required lots of this, Fred wanted a fully electronic system. Here the battle began. The powers to be were adamant on slow change because the Bell System made its money, profit, based upon a return on investment, and the more costly the plant the more profit. You see profit in the phone company was not revenue less expenses, its was a percent return on capital plant, and the more inefficient you were the more you made.
So how does this relate to AT&T today? Simple, now that they own content they must get a return. How to do that? Simple, slow roll 5G, allow no new content entrants via wireless, and go back to a black rotary dial phone! Thanks Judge.
You see, the objective of the Antitrust laws is to protect competition, namely the consumer's ability to choose, NOT protect the competitors. Protecting competition means simply allowing for a multiplicity of competitors, not vertical and horizontal merging. Any third year law student looking at Antitrust Law should understand that. How was this point missed in this case?
Finally, one could consider the following analogy:
1. ATT owns the dominant trucking company in the US with an exclusive government franchise (the wireless licenses ATT got "free" decades ago, yes free, and they block any competition)
2. The US govt has given ATT trucking the right to not have to carry anyone else's produce (the FCC elimination of net neutrality)
3. ATT buy McDonald's, local stores and their "production" facilities (read Time-Warner)
4. You go out to buy food and all you can now get is McDonald's (read ATT) since no other vendor can get their goods shipped in.
That is the analogy. They own the distribution channel which is a substantial barrier to entry and now can "supply" whatever they want.
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