[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 157 (2011), Part 1]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Page 515]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




   FEDERAL COMMUNICATIONS COMMISSION (FCC) APPROVAL OF MERGER OF NBC 
                         UNIVERSAL AND COMCAST

                                 ______
                                 

                        HON. DENNIS J. KUCINICH

                                of ohio

                    in the house of representatives

                      Wednesday, January 19, 2011

  Mr. KUCINICH. Mr. Speaker, yesterday the FCC approved the takeover of 
NBC, a television network, by Comcast, a cable TV and internet 
provider.
  One condition of the merger's approval is that the combined company 
must not restrict access to any lawful online content. Another 
condition is that the merged company cannot give better treatment 
online to its own content than to the content produced by others. 
Comcast now has 23 million cable TV subscribers, and 16 million 
internet subscribers, making it the largest internet and cable TV 
service provider in the US. With such a pervasive conglomerate, it 
seems unlikely that these restrictions will ensure equal access to the 
internet, whose creation was funded by taxpayers.
  Like any powerful tool, the internet must be protected from falling 
into the control of any one entity or entities which have too much 
authority to decide who can access it and what content they can put 
there. We need real Net Neutrality, not the FCC's recent proposal, 
which I will fight to strengthen.

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