Washington – The Federal Communications Commission is putting off for a day its consideration of AT&T Inc.’s proposed takeover of BellSouth Corp., a mega-deal that some government officials want to examine more closely.
An FCC vote is the final major regulatory hurdle facing the nearly $80 billion deal that would extend the reach of the nation’s biggest provider of telephone, wireless and broadband Internet services.
The agency had scheduled a vote on the deal for its Thursday meeting but decided late Wednesday to postpone the discussion. Today the FCC is to take up the AT&T proposal as well as a controversial issue known as “network neutrality,” which deals with whether Internet service providers must provide equal treatment to all traffic on their networks.
The FCC did not say why it was delaying a vote.
