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Comcast Corp., the nation’s largest cable and broadband provider, has struck a wide-ranging deal with Time Warner Inc. that will give the company access to content that it can distribute across numerous platforms.
The multiyear deal means that Comcast subscribers will be able to access Time Warner-owned programming from networks that include TBS and TNT online.
Federal regulators are abandoning efforts to negotiate a compromise on so-called “network neutrality” rules intended to ensure that phone and cable companies cannot discriminate against Internet traffic traveling over broadband networks.
The announcement by the Federal Communications Commission ends weeks of FCC-brokered talks to reach an agreement on the thorny issue among a handful of big phone, cable TV and Internet companies. And it comes as two big companies that have been taking part in those talks — Verizon Communications Inc. and Google Inc. — try to hammer out their own proposal on how broadband providers should treat Internet traffic.
According to people briefed on the negotiations, Verizon and Google hope their proposal could help shape legislation in Congress.
Google Inc. on Thursday strongly denied a report that said the search giant was close to an agreement with Verizon Communications Inc. that would allow the carrier to speed the delivery of online content to Internet users if content creators paid for the privilege.
The purported agreement, reported by the New York Times, would severely undercut the Internet tenet known as net neutrality, in which no form of content is favored over another. The Times suggested an agreement between Google and Verizon could lead to a new tiered system in which consumers pay more for premium levels of service. Get the full story »
By Mary Ellen Podmolik
| If it seems like you’ve been inundated with online ads this year, you were.
U.S. Internet users received a record 1.1 trillion display ads during the year’s first quarter, a 15 percent increase versus a year ago, according to comScore’s Ad Metrix.
