It will keep you up to date on important industry developments, policy issues, and other pertinent communications-related news events. Now that satellite carriers have finally won the right to include local broadcasters in their services, they face several challenges to their dreams of providing direct competition to cable operators. Until two weeks ago, satellite providers were forbidden from transmitting local channels to most customers. In addition to the enormous expense, satellites also fear that they do not have sufficient capacity to offer all the local channels the FCC is expected to require.
Concentrated power is the greatest danger to capitalism.
Safire claims that the conservative zeal to protect competition is missing in Congress and the White House and is not even mentioned on the campaign trail. According to Saturday's Washington Post, an October 21st letter to Federal Communications Commissioners says Tom Krattenmaker, research director of the FCC's policy office, objected to the combination of the Internet backbone networks of Sprint and MCI, as well as to a greater concentration in long-distance services. Earlier this year, Krattenmaker expressed serious reservations about the merger of SBC and Ameritech, which the commission approved with conditions. NTL has its headquarters in the U.S. and is run by U.S. executives, but almost all of its assets are in Britain. NTL is run by Barclay Knapp, an aggressive Nebraskan who, with a partner, acquired some cable assets in the U.S. and used a Nasdaq Stock Market listing to raise billions in financing.