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Comcast Gears Up to Persuade Regulators

WASHINGTON — Comcast presented regulators on Tuesday with 650 pages of reasons to approve its takeover of Time Warner Cable, saying a merger of the two largest cable television companies would spur rather than inhibit competition by encouraging rivals to improve their cable and high-speed Internet service.

Comcast is not relying on legal filings alone to try to win what is expected to be a bruising battle with the deal’s opponents.

The company has already been busy briefing lawmakers and their staffs, particularly from the Senate Judiciary Committee, which will hold hearings on Wednesday to examine the proposed merger’s antitrust implications. Comcast also recently added to its small army of lobbyists two former legislative aides who advised the Judiciary Committee on antitrust matters.

Opponents, too, have been gearing up for a fight. A leading critic of the deal, Public Knowledge, a nonprofit group funded in part by donations from Google, DirecTV, Dish Network and other Comcast rivals, has hired SKDKnickerbocker, a prominent public relations firm led by Anita Dunn, a former White House communications director, and Hilary B. Rosen, a Democratic strategist and former lobbyist.

The maneuvers by both sides portend months of wrangling with regulators at the Federal Communications Commission and the Justice Department’s antitrust division — the two entities that have to approve combining the two huge cable TV and Internet service providers.

On a Tuesday call with reporters, the Comcast executive who oversees the company’s government affairs operations, David L. Cohen, made his case in favor of the $45 billion deal.

“There has been a lot of discussion about whether big is bad, and sometimes when companies join together, big can be dangerous,” Mr. Cohen said. “Sometimes big is necessary and good.”

Mr. Cohen’s comments came in addition to Comcast’s 175-page filing, plus nearly 500 additional pages of exhibits. The voluminous document seeks to persuade the Federal Communications Commission that the deal is in the public interest. The company also said on Tuesday that it formally notified the Justice Department’s antitrust division of the merger last week, initiating the process of the department’s review of whether the merger violates antitrust laws.

Opponents of the deal say that joining the two largest providers of cable television and high-speed Internet service would create a company with inordinate market power, both as a buyer of content for its cable business and as a broadband portal that media companies use to reach viewers.

Comcast said that its offerings overlap with those of Time Warner Cable in only a small percentage of markets, affecting only about 2,800 of the combined companies’ 30 million customers. Thus, almost no customers will have fewer choices for a video or broadband provider.

But Mark Cooper, the director of research for the Consumer Federation of America, said in a paper released on Tuesday that “the weakness of head-to-head competition actually intensifies the concerns about buyer and bottleneck market power” because a dominant firm “would be well positioned to lead, signal and coordinate actions that would diminish competition.”

A group of more than 50 consumer advocacy organizations sent a letter on Tuesday to F.C.C. Chairman Tom Wheeler and Attorney General Eric Holder asking them to block the merger because of its “complete lack of any tangible benefits.”

“This merger, taking place in the vacuum of regulatory oversight of our broadband-communications market, would give Comcast unprecedented control over the Internet,” the letter stated.

Public Knowledge, one of the groups that signed the letter, said that its opposition to the merger was unrelated to its backing from Comcast’s rivals. It acknowledged that Comcast was not among its corporate sponsors last year, but said it did receive money from Time Warner Cable. “We fight on behalf of consumers and the public interest regardless of who has funded us,” Bartees Cox Jr., a spokesman for Public Knowledge, said.

Comcast executives are expected to face tough questions Wednesday from some Judiciary Committee members, like Senator Al Franken, Democrat of Minnesota, who has written regulators asking them to take a hard look at the transaction.

“I’m very concerned that consumers are going to get stuck with higher cable and Internet prices, fewer choices and even worse service,” Mr. Franken said in a statement Tuesday, when asked what his questions will focus on during the hearing. “Comcast has an army of lobbyists pushing this deal, but during this hearing we need to make sure that consumers’ voices are being heard, too. I’m looking forward to further exploring the concerns I’ve raised in several letters to the regulators.”

Comcast counters that the benefits of the takeover are plentiful. The company noted that it had increased its broadband speeds 12 times in 12 years. It also said that the combined companies would be able to increase investment in video-on-demand and online programming. It also positioned itself as just one of a number of players in an increasingly competitive marketplace.

“The traditional boundaries between media, communications and technology are obsolete,” Mr. Cohen wrote in a blog post accompanying the filing. A range of companies, like Google, Amazon and Netflix, he added, “are competing with each other and us in unprecedented ways.”

Few major companies have vocally criticized the Comcast deal — or stepped forward to fund opposition to it in a big way — a reality that opponents of the transaction realize is handicapping their effort. The opponents hope that if tough questions are asked at the hearing Wednesday, the “air of inevitability” that surrounds the transaction will be replaced by open skepticism. This could lead to corporate executives who are critical of the transaction — but so far afraid to alienate the superpowerful Comcast — to take a public position against the deal.

A version of this article appears in print on  , Section B, Page 1 of the New York edition with the headline: Comcast Gears Up to Persuade Regulators. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe

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