Tom Wheeler, the head of the Federal Communications Commission, has recommended approving AT&T’s $48.5 billion purchase of DirecTV.

Dallas-based AT&T agreed to buy Direct TV in May of last year for about 67 (b) billion dollars, saying the deal would give it a larger base of video subscribers and improve its competitiveness against Comcast and Time Warner Cable.

It is unclear when the commissioners will formally vote, but Wheeler’s recommendation makes government approval of the deal all but certain.

And as DirecTV has exclusivity with NFL Sunday Ticket, will the satellite provider open up its out-of-market package to all AT&T wireless customers so they can watch football games on their cell phones?

The chairman said these measures will protect consumers, expand high-speed broadband availability and increase competition.

“The merger conditions announced thus far won’t do enough to offset this deal’s many harms”, Wood, of Free Press, said.

The Justice Department said in a separate statement it would not challenge the merger.

AT&T Inc. (NYSE:T) appears on the verge of receiving federal regulatory approval for its proposed acquisition of DirecTV (NASDAQ:DTV).

With the AT&T-DirecTV merger approval, some conditions will be imposed that are intended to prevent discrimination against online video competition. And the company has been barred from applying data caps on customers unless it also applies the cap to the over-the-top video capability it is acquiring with DirecTV.

Chairman Wheeler also proposed the appointment of an independent officer to keep tabs on whether the carrier is fulfilling these conditions.

AT&T’s entry into additional metropolitan markets, Wheeler said, would help to increase “the entire nation’s residential fiber build by more than 40 percent”.

Baer, the Justice Department official, added: “The commitments that the proposed FCC order includes, if adopted, will provide significant benefits to millions of subscribers”.

AT&T’s TV business pipes in cable to 6 million households, while DirecTV supplies more than 20 million households in the U.S. and 19.5 million customers in Latin America.

“We also asked for AT&T to offer stand-alone Internet service, rather than it being part of a bundle, but I haven’t seen any indication that we are going to get that”, Bergmayer said.

The merger was designed to position AT&T, a company that traces its origins to the invention of the telephone more than 130 years ago by Alexander Graham Bell, as a leader in the digital age with strong connections to consumers.