AT&T CFO Lays Out Key Questions In Comcast And Time Warner Merger

Reuters' Diane Bartz

reported that the U.S. Justice Department, along with Florida and several other states, will investigate whether or not

move to merge with

is illegal under United States antitrust law.

CFO John Stephens discussed the matter on last Thursday morning's

on CNBC. “Comcast and Time Warner don't overlap in their distribution markets, so it seems like there might be apathy for that to be accepted," said Stephens. "The real questions is ‘How much of the distribution market they have?'…When you combine that with their content holdings and now you have a very significant content holdings on one side and distribution on the other…does that provide a bottleneck that could impair the consumer? Those are the questions that are going to have to be dealt with."

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He mentioned that AT&T does compete with cable in broadband profits and video products. “It is a very competitive environment and it comes from new and different situations than it did historically,” said Stephens. Stephens said that they don't mind competition, but those who have made investments in the communication infrastructure, like they have, should be adequately compensated for the investment at a fair rate if they're to carry other providers' content and traffic.