The Regulatory Mix, TMI’s daily blog of regulatory activities, is a snapshot of PUC, FCC, legislative, and occasionally court, issues that our regulatory monitoring team uncovers each day. Depending on their significance, some items may be the subject of a TMI Regulatory Bulletin.
TELECOM
New York
The Governor announced the New NY Broadband Program which is a $1 billion broadband program that leverages both public and private resources to ensure every New Yorker has access to high-speed internet by 2019. The Governor said that this represents the largest and boldest state investment in universal broadband deployment in the country. “Access to high-speed internet is critical to ensuring that all New Yorkers can reach their full potential in today’s technology-driven world,” Governor Cuomo said. “We’re launching the largest state broadband investment in the nation in order to make that goal a reality.”
Broadband providers seeking to utilize this funding must provide at least a 1:1 financial match and offer internet speeds of at least 100 Mbps. Funding priority given to those delivering the highest speeds at the lowest cost. In certain limited cases, providers may offer 25 Mbps speeds to the most remote unserved and underserved areas of the state scalable to 100 Mbps or more.
FTC
The Federal Trade Commission has revised the thresholds that determine whether companies are required to notify federal antitrust authorities about a transaction under The Hart-Scott-Rodino Antitrust Improvements Act (Section 7A of the Clayton Act) and the thresholds that trigger prohibitions on certain interlocking directorates under Section 8 of the Clayton Act.
Section 7A of the Clayton Act, requires companies proposing a merger or acquisition to notify federal authorities if the size of the parties involved and the value of a transaction exceeds certain filing thresholds, absent an applicable exemption. The FTC revises the thresholds annually, based on the change in gross national product. For 2015, the size-of-transaction threshold for reporting proposed mergers and acquisitions subject to antitrust enforcement will increase from $75.9 million to $76.3 million. The revised thresholds will apply to all transactions that close on or after the effective date of the notice, which is 30 days after its publication in the Federal Register.
Section 8 of the Clayton Act requires the FTC to revise the thresholds that trigger a prohibition preventing companies from having interlocking memberships on their corporate boards of directors. These thresholds are also adjusted annually, based on the change in gross national product. The new 2015 thresholds for the Act’s prohibition on interlocking directorates are $31,084,000 for Section 8(a)(l ) and $3,108,400 for Section 8(a)(2)(A). A full listing of current thresholds can be found on the FTC’s website, which will be updated once the revised thresholds are published in the Federal Register. The revised thresholds will become effective upon publication in the Federal Register.
