It's a breakup fee as explained here:
* Not that I know, I'm pulling this out of my ass, but it sounds good. Possibly even correct.
Frankly, I think that's the path AT&T was hoping to follow: pass out a few lobbyist jobs, sail through.
That's because neither are cell phone carriers. As long as people feel like they can jump to another service to watch their precious American Reality Dancing Survivor Fear Idol (say by ditching the wires and going satellite or vice versa), then they don't too much care about cable and entertainment companies.
Now, if NBC suddenly stopped making its programming available to anyone except Comcast cable subscribers, you'd start seeing public backlash. Until it happens, people can't fathom or choose not to acknowledge something like that happening.
Comcast is already playing games with NBC-competing networks in direct violation of the terms they agreed to, when the merger was rubber-stamped. (e.g. The Bloomberg TV/CNBC channel kerfuffle)
Also, most Americans have more freedom to choose a competing cell service provider than a competing cable provider. If a choice between two-to-three viable options is sufficient for them to not care about cable, why would they care about cell service being reduced to two-to-three viable options?
Heck, AT&T itself has already reconstituted half of the companies created after it was broken up in the 80s (SBC, Bellsouth, Ameritech, etc). And look at what Verizon's been able to get away with.
That means a lot to agencies that are severely underfunded. They would rather not even start something that will last half a decade or more, like the msft case
It's a common example in game theory of how agreeing to ridiculous terms benefits the agent