Coming in a close 3-2 vote, the $3.3 billion purchase of XM from rival Sirius has been given the official seal of approval from the FCC.
This news will now leave US customers with just one satellite radio service, which initially sounds like not the best of news, however at least some from the FCC think this was a good move.
According to a recent statement from FCC Chairman Kevin Martin, “this merger is in the public interest and will ultimately benefit consumers.” As a consumer and a current Sirius subscriber I can only hope that turns out to be an accurate statement.
While the approval has been granted, this decision does not come without some guidelines, which are being set in place to offer protection to consumers.
To begin with there will be a three-year cap on prices. They will also have to offer a minimum of “8 percent of their channel capacity for minority and non-commercial programming” and also pay a fine of $19.7 million for FCC rule violations that have occurred in the past.
It sounds good so far.
Chairman Martin also went on to mention that this merger would allow customers to choose from smaller, low-cost packages of programming in the future.
Lets just hope that he means a more a-la-carte based system where you can pay just a few bucks a month for a few channels. I am not sure about your listening habits, but while its nice that Sirius currently has lots of available channels, I spend 95% of my time listening to just 4 or 5 of my favorites.
Read [Reuters]
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Tags: sat-nav, Ogg, computers, audio
