Charter Communications' planned acquisition of Time Warner Cable faces a regulatory review by the same federal officials who were widely blamed for nixing the recent proposed merger of Time Warner with Comcast.
The Federal Communication Commission's 400-page official order on net neutrality, released Thursday, will undoubtedly elicit lawsuits on various fronts once it is officially published in the Federal Register.
Net neutrality is about more than individual consumers' rights to stream video over the Web without paying extra for it. Partitioning the Internet into haves and have-nots will give big companies yet another advantage over smaller, more disruptive firms.
AT&T and Google have talked up plans to extend supercharged broadband speeds to several U.S. cities and offer lesser service for free to underserved areas. But whether they, and other providers, can bridge the nation's digital divide without federal help remains to be seen.
It's difficult to predict how an appeals court will rule after it hears arguments Monday in Verizon Communication's challenge of the U.S. Federal Communications Commission's net neutrality rules.
The most popular Web sites are under increasing pressure to add support for IPv6, a long-anticipated upgrade to IPv4, the Internet's main communications protocol.
