The FCC Gets it Right

摘要

It took too long, but almost a year and a half after the two U.S. satellite radio providers formally sought permission to merge -and four months after antitrust regulators at the U.S. Department of Justice gave their blessing - the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) did the right thing and approved the transaction. Sinus Satellite Radio and XM Satellite Radio officially became one company July 28, just three days after the FCC cleared the deal in a three-to-two vote split along party lines. The newly created Sirius XM Radio can now begin the difficult task of consolidating its operations and infrastructure, a process that by necessity will occur over a period years, not months. In the near term, the focus will be on meeting the conditions the FCC imposed on the deal, which include bringing radios compatible with both legacy services to market within nine months. Ultimately the company likely will have to map out and execute a smooth transition to a single satellite system, a process complicated by the fact that the Sirius and XM space architectures are very different.