The word Friday from a host of industry sources tracking government vetting of the $48.5 billion merger between AT&T and DirecTV is expected to get the green light from the FCC and the Department of Justice soon, with negotiations over deal conditions wrapping up and a decision coming likely within "days" or at most a couple of weeks.

While it's never over until it's over, multiple sources said the deal would be approved, perhaps as early as next week.

The proposed merger never drew the kind of pushback from anti-consolidation activists that the failed Comcast/TWC merger did.

The FCC stopped its informal shot clock on the deal and is not expected to restart it until it is about ready to decide.

The clock is currently on day 170, though the deal has had months of stoppage time while the FCC collected more documents and waited for a court decision on third-party access to contracts.

The deal was actually struck in May 2014, but after the document and court delays on the deal vetting, the companies moved their break-up trigger from May to August.

The merged AT&T-DirecTV entity will almost certainly have to abide by net neutrality conditions. Likely they will have to adhere to the three bright-line rules against blocking, throttling and paid prioritization, and perhaps agree to fair and reasonable interconnection deals rather than having to swear allegiance to the Title II regime, though one industry attorney thought the optics of getting a major ISP to commit to Title II might be tempting for the commission.

AT&T and other ISPs who have sued the FCC over Title II reclassification have said they are not challenging those bright-line rules, just the way the FCC arrived at them.

The FCC has yet to restart its informal 180-day shot clock on the AT&T-DirecTV merger.

It stopped the clock on March 13 in day 170 of that review, saying it was doing so to give a federal court the chance to rule on the FCC's decision to make programming contract information in the deal available to third parties, a move challenged by programmers though not AT&T or DirecTV.

"At this time, we believe it is prudent to pause the informal 180-day transaction clocks because the Commission would be advantaged by knowing the resolution of the pending Petition for Review before the transaction clocks reach the 180-day mark," the FCC said in announcing the stoppage.

It has been over a week since a three-judge panel of the court unanimously rejected the FCC decision for insufficient justification, but the FCC could theoretically appeal the decision to the full court if it chose.

The FCC may just be trying to collect more input on possible conditions on the deal, many have been offered up in the docket, before restarting the clock so it is closer to being done when the clock strikes 180 days. That is only an informal target, however, and has been honored in the breach as well as the observance (Comcast-TWC was in day 234 when the clock was stopped and the Sinclair/Allbritton station deal took 327 days).

The FCC pointed out in stopping the clock that it "reserves the right to restart the clock as it believes will best serve the public interest and it intends to provide further guidance as it becomes appropriate."

FCC spokespeople were unavailable to provide any guidance at press time.

Dish and Cogent have teamed with Public Knowledge, Free Press and the New America Foundation to ask the FCC for a laundry list of broadband conditions, including network neutrality, on the proposed AT&T-DirecTV merger tied primarily to what they say would be the combined companies incentive and ability to "thwart" over-the-top video.

They point out that the deal has been pitched as allowing the combined company to offer an integrated package of broadband and video (which AT&T and DirecTV point out would make them a stronger competitor to Comcast, Time Warner Cable and other players), and say their asks are the "minimum" the FCC must do to resolve potential competitive harms if it decides to approve the deal.

They want the combined company to agree to adhere to new Title II-based open Internet rules for seven years no matter what happens in court, similar to the condition agreed to by Comcast in the NBCU deal, and which Comcast would likely have agreed to in the Time Warner Cable merger that was withdrawn.

Among the other conditions they say would be necessary on such a deal include 1) offering stand-along broadband, of speeds of at least the FCC's new 25 Mbps benchmark (or more if the FCC raises the stakes) for high speed where possible— at a set price of $29.95 for seven years; 2) agreeing not to exempt any video services from any usage-based pricing; 3) and nondiscriminatory bill and keep (free interchange of traffic) interconnections, with AT&T agreeing to upgrade its ports to avoid congestion or package loss at certain capacity thresholds.

Reports have the FCC and Justice nearing the end of their vetting process, and has always been considered an easier ask than Comcast-TWC. Some strong opponents of the Comcast-TWC deal — Sen. Al Franken (D-Minn.), for example — have declined to weigh in squarely against the AT&T-DirecTV deal, saying only they have concerns, with some offering conditions.

One thing that could please regulators looking for broadband buildouts at higher speeds is AT&T's promise to extend fiber and speeds of up to 1 Gbps to millions more customers.

Netflix has told the FCC not to approve the AT&T-DirecTV merger as it is currently constituted, saying the new company would have the incentive and ability to slow competing over-the-top video offerings and unbundled offerings.

In a letter to the FCC dated Monday (May 4), Netflix counsel Markham Erickson pointed in part to the collapse of the Comcast-Time Warner Cable deal, saying that now made a potential AT&T-DirecTV the "largest multichannel video programming distributor" in the country, and possibly largest broadband provider given "projected" AT&T broadband investments.

"AT&T already has a demonstrated ability to harm OVDs by leveraging its control over interconnection to degrade its own customers' access to Netflix's service," Netflix told the FCC. "Comcast degraded Netflix's service in late 2013 and early 2014.  AT&T presumably could have used this episode to take customers from Comcast. Instead it engaged in a similar long-term degradation of its customers' access to Netflix," said the company. Comcast has disputed that characterization.

"AT&T also has shown an interest in using data caps and usage-based pricing methods, which it can apply discriminatorily to advantage its own services," Netflix said. "If AT&T is able to slow the development of the OVD industry, either by foreclosing access to broadband customers or imposing discriminatory data caps, AT&T would be able to preserve its market advantage by slowing or even reversing the shift toward competitive online video offering and away from bundled video/broadband offerings."

AT&T declined comment, but said in its own filing to the FCC last month:

"[I]t is clear that this transaction creates no economic incentive for the merged firm to harm OVDs. While Netflix mischaracterize[s] their commercial peering disputes as evidence of such an incentive, the record does not support those claims."

"As one network analyst has explained, 'Netflix chose to create, and use paths that [it] knew were congested, simply because they were cheaper than using paths that were less congested. This strategy apparently overwhelmed Netflix's chosen low price providers, causing congestion and impacting service quality for its customers," AT&T said.

Netflix has already told the FCC what conditions the deal would need to make it approvable, notably allowing it to charge for interconnection and excepting any AT&T service from fixed or mobile data caps.