Can we talk?

Time Warner and America Online are negotiating with competing ISPs to use their high-speed broadband networks. Those negotiations, however, are not directly related to last week's decision by the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) to delay approving AOL's $132 billion purchase of Time Warner, a Time Warner Cable spokesman said.

In its 5-0 ruling to delay action on the sale, the FTC noted the need for the merged company to open its broadband networks to competing ISPs. Washington Post reports indicated that the two companies were in discussions with EarthLink and Juno and had approached RMI.NET as a way to appease the FTC.

The discussions are ongoing in parallel to FTC activities, confirmed Time Warner Cable spokesman Mike Luftman.

"We said back in January that we were going to hook up other ISPs, so the fact that we have been in negotiations with a lot of ISPs has been a matter of public record for months," Luftman said.

Time Warner, he said, "had an agreement with Juno back in September. RMI.NET, we have said already we are in the process of preparing to hook them up per their request to the Columbus (Ohio open access) test. That's not news either."

The FTC gave AOL and Time Warner three weeks to satisfy competition concerns or have the merger blocked. An FTC spokesman declined to provide any more details of the body's concerns or exactly when the acquisition decision might be reached.

"Our only comment is what we released last week," said FTC spokesman Eric London. "It's highly unusual for us to issue a statement about a matter that's currently under investigation."