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DAVID CONNELL
The Federal Trade Commission agreed to extend its review of the America Online Time Warner merger for two weeks while all sides attempt to hammer out an agreement on open access provisions, sources close to the negotiations said. It now appears that the issue is the only sticking point in the negotiations.
The FTC review was scheduled to wrap up Oct. 27 but has now been extended by two weeks.
Meanwhile, Cable MSO Comcast told the FCC it should not impose an open access requirement on AOL Time Warner as part of the commission's eventual merger conditions.
Doing so, Comcast said, would "prejudge" the FCC inquiry on open access.
"The commission should refrain from imposing a forced access provision on AOL as a condition of its merger with Time Warner," Comcast said. "As the commission has previously determined in other merger proceedings, whether or not cable operators should be subject to a forced access requirement is a question best addressed in a general proceeding rather than in the context of a particular business transaction."
Walt Disney has sent another filing to the FCC saying the two companies have no intention of extending their open access pledge to interactive TV platforms. Disney said the company would control the return path of interactive TV functions through their cable lines, potentially blocking the content of rival programmers.
Disney also told the FCC recently that an accidental leak of descriptions of confidential AOL documents was a mistake, but did not damage AOL or reveal any if its business secrets.
"The initial disclosure of the descriptions in the e-mail was inadvertent," Disney said. "The descriptions of the AOL documents that appeared in the Sept. 22 e-mail were so bereft of details as to have no value for any competitive business decision-making purpose and, indeed, were not materially different than the descriptions provided by AOL in its reply."
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