| Brodkin's article takes the relevant "promise" quite out of context: https://www.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.dcd.191339/... (see page 1). The full quotation is: > As to its price-increase theory, the government itself conceded that the merger would cause prices to go down for millions of AT&T customers nationwide. The government’s own “bargaining model” likewise showed a price decrease for all consumers, once the correct data were employed. And the government’s own economic expert effectively repudiated its other two theories of likely harm. The government, in short, gave the Court no basis for finding that this merger is likely to reduce competition at all, much less substantially. Rather, the evidence overwhelmingly showed that this merger is likely to enhance competition substantially, because it will enable the merged company to reduce prices, offer innovative video products, and compete more effectively against the increasingly powerful, vertically integrated “FAANG” companies. The brief was addressing the predictions of the economic model the DOJ offered in opposing the merger. Nowhere did AT&T, as Brodkin misleadingly suggests, "promise" to "lower prices" (or that no specific rate would never go up). Of course, that all makes sense. AT&T had no reason to make such promises. In blocking a merger, the burden of proof is on the DOJ. They have to show consumer harm; the merger company has no burden to show consumer benefits. Why would AT&T go out on a limb and make promises it has no reason to make? Moreover, the brief addresses the government's arguments for blocking AT&T's merger with Time Warner, which has nothing to do with the price of DirecTV: > The government’s central prediction of harm rests on the premise that AT&T would use Time Warner’s Turner content as a “weapon” against rival distributors by threatening to withhold it during bargaining, thereby forcing them to pay higher prices. The subject of the briefing was prices for content distribution. Prices for DirecTV--what Brodkin points to--have nothing to do with that. |