The European Commission is expected to demand that the new company offers proprietary download technology to competitors due to concerns that the company’s power will exclude others from the on-line music and video distribution market.
Officials are also reported to be considering the imposition of conditions that will force the merged company to make its back-catalogue of content available for exploitation by other operators.
The US Federal Trade Commission has expressed concerns that the high-speed cable systems that Time Warner is installing throughout the US, covering 20% of the population, will only be made available to AOL users with the result that many homes will have to accept AOL-Time Warner television and internet programming on an exclusive basis.
Time Warner and AOL say they want to complete the deal by the end of this year.
Talks are also taking place today between the Commission and representatives of EMI and Warner Music, the music interest of Time Warner. The proposed US $20 billion merger between the companies is also expected to be subjected to conditions to ease competition concerns.