The union of Comcast and NBC Universal has been given the green light by the Federal Communications Commission and the Department of Justice, but it comes with a host of detailed concessions from Comcast. Among them: cheap broadband for the poor, nondiscrimination rules that protect Internet video companies, and several limits on Comcast's newfound Hulu leverage.

Here are three of the merger conditions most likely to have an impact on the 'Net.

2.5 million x $10

The deal requires Comcast to provide "approximately" 2.5 million low income households with high speed Internet for less than $10 a month. To this population the ISP must also sell PCs, netbooks, or similar computer equipment at prices below $150, and offer a host of "digital literacy educational opportunities."

In addition, Comcast must grow its broadband networks to about 400,000 new homes, get fast Internet service to six additional rural areas, and offer free video and ISP offerings to 600 new "anchor institutions" in low income regions ("anchor" here means schools, libraries, and such).

This can't be too painful a condition for the company. A little over a year ago the National Cable and Telecommunications Association announced a similar initiative to offer half price 'Net connections to poor kids. The "Adoption Plus Program" would provide students who qualify for the National School Lunch Program access to two years of 50 percent discounted broadband, a subsidized computer, and free computer classes and technical support.

The aforementioned good stuff wouldn't all be provided by the cable industry—the federal government would fund the classes and tech support. But the NCTA estimated big cable's end of the deal at $572 million. This Comcast/NBCU condition bears some resemblance to that idea.

Hulu

The merger agreement stipulates that the new Comcast can't "exercise corporate control over or unreasonably withhold programming from Hulu."

NBC, soon to be part of Comcast, owns 32 percent of the online TV show and movie site. The precise details of this condition will have to await the release of the FCC's full Order on the merger, but the requirement comes in the context of considerable anxiety over Hulu's fate, and the prospects for any service like it.

The Boxee Incident in February 2009 stoked these fears. Hulu told the Boxee video service aggregation application to remove access to Hulu content from its media center software, insisting that the request came from its content providers, the dominant one of these being NBC.

Even Hulu management was piqued at having to make the move."The maddening part of writing this blog entry is that we realize that there is no immediate win here for users," Hulu's CEO Jason Kilar lamented in a blog post. But snafus like this, coming right in the middle of merger negotiations, raised a bigger concern. Would Hulu's prospective new 32 percent shareholder (Comcast) gradually degrade the service so that it can't effectively compete with Comcast cable fare?

Over the last few years, Comcast and NBC have deployed different strategies for reaching video customers, the economist Mark Cooper noted at a Congressional hearing. Through Hulu, NBC has tried to reach everyone online. In contrast, Comcast has encouraged its subscribers to watch its fare exclusively on Comcast cable or on its relatively new TV Everywhere websites.

Thus, NBC has every incentive "to make its programming available in as many points of sale as possible," Cooper warned, but "merger with Comcast will put an end that pro-competitive practice. 'TV Everywhere' is a blatant market division scheme intended to extend the cable 'non-compete' regime from physical space to cyberspace."

Responding to this concern, the merger deal comes with Hulu-related strings attached, and more. The FCC requires that Comcast:

Offers standalone broadband Internet access services at reasonable prices and of sufficient bandwidth so that customers can access online video services without the need to purchase a cable television subscription from Comcast

Does not enter into agreements to unreasonably restrict online distribution of its own video programming or programming of other providers

Does not disadvantage rival online video distribution through its broadband Internet access services and/or set-top boxes.

The Justice Department's summary of the deal reiterates the concern about Hulu. Comcast must relinquish its management rights in Hulu, the DoJ insists:

"Without such a remedy, Comcast could, through its seats on Hulu's board of directors, interfere with the management of Hulu, and, in particular, the development of products that compete with Comcast's video service. Comcast also must continue to make NBCU content available to Hulu that is comparable to the programming Hulu obtains from Disney and News Corp."

Open Internet

This merger agreement didn't impose an explicitly outlined net neutrality condition on Comcast-NBCU, as groups like Public Knowledge wanted. Perhaps the FCC thought that request was rendered less urgent by the agency's open Internet Order from December, which imposes a "reasonable discrimination" requirement on landline ISPs (Commissioner Michael Copps, who voted against this deal, obviously did not share that perspective).

But the Justice Department asked for and got some net neutrality-like conditions from Comcast. Among them, Comcast is prohibited from unreasonably discriminating in the transmission of an independent online video distributor's legal network stream to a Comcast broadband subscriber. And Comcast must keep its 12 megabits per second service available to customers in markets where it is upgrading its networks, presumably to keep the environment for competing video providers viable.

In addition, the cable giant must give the content of other firms equal treatment if it imposes caps, tiers, or metered usage pricing on subscribers. Finally: "Comcast may not, with certain narrow exceptions, require programmers or video distributors to agree to licensing terms that seek to limit online distributors' access to content."

One oft-requested condition that the FCC and DoJ did not impose was line sharing—a requirement that Comcast open its networks to smaller, competing ISPs at wholesale rates. Earthlink asked for that. So did Public Knowledge's Harold Feld, who was generally sympathetic to the decision in his press statement, save for the absence of line-sharing rules.

"As longtime supporters of wholesale access, we believe such a condition would go a long way to help consumers by increasing broadband competition," Feld's statement concluded.