Big cable companies under antitrust investigation.

[Daikun]

Quote:US Department of Justice investigators have questioned Comcast, Time Warner Cable, and others as part of a "wide-ranging antitrust investigation into whether cable companies are acting improperly to quash nascent competition from online video," the Wall Street Journal reported today.

Justice Department officials also spoke to streaming video providers including Netflix and Hulu, as they look into whether cable company policies such as data caps prevent a level playing field between cable companies and online video providers. Since cable companies sell both Internet access and cable television service, they could place limits on data usage that impact video competitors but not their own video services. There is concern such limits could prevent consumers from switching from cable TV to Internet video.

Comcast recently raised its data caps from 250GB to 300GB, but has met controversy because its own on-demand video service for the Xbox 360 does not count against data caps, while similar services from Netflix do. The new DOJ probe is focusing on data caps from the likes of Comcast and AT&T, and in particular "whether Comcast's Xbox policy violated legal commitments made by the company in 2011 to secure antitrust approval for its takeover of NBCUniversal," the Wall Street Journal reported, citing "people familiar with the matter." The DOJ is also investigating contracts programmers sign to be distributed on cable systems, which include "most-favored nation clauses" that may favor cable companies over online video distributors.

Full story at Ars Technica.