Justice Department investigating cable companies' fear of streaming video
AP file photo
The investigation will focus on issues such as setting data limits.
The Wall Street Journal reports the Justice Department is investigating whether cable companies have been unfairly working to regulate Internet consumption to prevent people switching from cable to online video. The investigation apparently centers around, "issues such as setting data caps, limits to the amount of data a subscriber can download each month," according to the Journal.
The Justice Department is taking "a particularly close look" at the data caps some companies that provide Internet and cable set on customers who use too much bandwidth. In a move to promote their own streaming service, Comcast announced in March that any videos streamed with their Xfinity app on an Xbox 360 wouldn't count towards a customers data limits. But that move may have backfired for them, because now the Justice Department is looking at whether the Xbox deal violates commitments Comcast made to not "unreasonably discriminate" the competition in their takeover of NBCUniversal. Comcast says the Xfinity/Xbox loophole doesn't violate the terms of the takeover because Xfinity transmits its data on Comcast's private network, instead of over the "public Internet" like Netflix or Hulu.
Read more at The Atlantic Wire
Read more at The Atlantic Wire