Department of Justice approves XM and Sirius satellite radio merger
After more than a year, the United States Department of Justice (DoJ) has approved the merger of XM and Sirius satellite radio services. The department believes that the merger may actually benefit consumers.
The deal is worth about $5 billion and underwent a lengthy review within the Anti-Trust division of the Department of Justice. Part of the DoJ’s ruling was based in part on the fact that there is little to no additional competition in the satellite radio service.
It said that the deal probably won’t hurt consumers and may actually help consumers. The deal could see lower prices because the merger provides a broader range of programming and more efficient operations.
Engadget reports the FCC has not approved the merger yet but is expected to fall in line with the good old DoJ and approve the merger as well. A remaining question is, how will this affect existing customers?
I would think that existing customers will notice little difference, this merger, appears to be a good thing; for the time being. XM users will continue receiving XM broadcasts and Sirius users will continue receiving its broadcasts.
It may be that subscribers will need to purchase new hardware in order to receive all the new stations but this remains to be seen.
For now, I think I’ll stick with streaming radio stations, maybe one day, we’ll be able to get those in our cars too.
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