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AT&T, AOL In Talks To Merge Cable Systems
Paintthemoon writes: "The deal of the week: ATT & AOL are in talks to merge their cable systems, with each company owning shares of the other but AOL being in control of the joint venture. Coming on the heels of the AOL-TimeWarner-Amazon announcement, this just shows the further consolidation of broadband & information systems."
...you arrive at a USA port of entry (such as an international airport) and immediately after stamping your passport, the immigration agent gives you an AOL CD...
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@Home has been fairly good to me.
I live in Salem, Oregon, and I have a static IP and I'm pretty sure they don't block ANY in or out ports.
They said they'd probably switch to DHCP at some point, but that was 6 months ago and no sign of it yet.
Of course I'll probably still switch to DSL when I move to an area that supports it (only near downtown in Salem).
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In our area (Northern Virgina) the @home service is pretty much second to none for the local broadbands, but this really isn't saying much. The Roadrunner is quite horrendous and DSL solutions tend to take 6-8 months to get intstalled. Even then they are slow and use PPPoe and don't let you keep a static IP address.
One thing we had a big problem with: we had a fast ethernet card connected to the cablemodem. As many of you know, autodetection is very unreliable when the other end of the cable is wired down to some speed. As it turns out, the cable modem was using 10 base T half duplex (normal slow ethernet) while our cards were autodetecting full duplex. Once we wired down our card to 10bt half the connection improved about 1000x.
Down that path lies madness. On the other hand, the road to hell is paved with melting snowballs.
I read the internet for the articles.
AT&T's "native" ISP is @home - generally considered sucky and clueless by most. The AOL/TW ISP is RoadRunner - who runs a very solid ship by comparison, and is, as far as I can tell, the most homenet/geek friendly cable ISP out there.
If the two companies merge their cable operations, AOL would certainly be the driver (I hope - the article was already slashdotted when I clicked it - a new speed record for sure!). If so, then @home would probably get the boot and RoadRunner would be the default ISP - a much better situation for the average broadband customer.
- -Josh Turiel
-- Josh Turiel
"2. Do not eat iPod Shuffle."
1. Meridith Cable (local to Twin Cities)
2. MediaOne buys local company, cable modem service because MediaOne Express
3. MediaOne buys out RoadRunner, cable modem service becomes MediaOne RoadRunner
4. AT&T buys out MediaOne, cable modem service becomes AT&T BroadBand
And I must say, the service has gotten slightly (gradually) suckier with each buyout. I don't know if the two are related or not, but I'm still basically satisfied despite their lame customer service.
At least after AOL/TW take over AT&T's cable modem service (if they do anyways), there's no one left really to buy them out.
Really no more than already exists. As of now if you want to change cable providers you need to move to a different region. I don't see where it makes much difference to me if the one cable company I can choose from is TW or AT&T or Comcast. They all provide some TV channels, cable modems and poor customer service. The only possible benefit I see coming out of this is that TW's Road Runner has a bit better reputation and somewhat lower prices than AT&T's @home. As long as I don't have to switch to AOL service only from my cable modem I'll be happy.
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I don't want free as in beer. I just want free beer.
The deal with Comcast was an unsolicited offer. As such, it probably didn't do enough to make the big shots at AT&T get a lot of money for doing nothing so they said no thanks. The long and the short of it just seems that the offer was a bit too low and AT&T isn't going to spend a lot of time trying to hammer out a deal since they didn't ask for bids in the first place.
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I don't want free as in beer. I just want free beer.
...which reminds me. You guys need to replace the Bill Gates borg pic with a Steve Case one.
Your forgot Nullsoft, and like someone else mentioned, WCW was purchased by WWF. Good list though, nice to have around for reference.
Go AT&T!!!
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That's just the way it is
Currently, @home "looks the other way" when it comes to running mail servers, nameservers, web servers, etc. on their service (even though their rules expressly prohibit this). I wonder what AOL's stance will be in this regard? Will they attempt to "corner the market" by blocking, say, outgoing port 25 traffic, or incoming port 80 traffic?
saw this at NYT :
AOL Time Warner Set to Buy IPC
it's a 1.64 billion $$$ deal, IPC is a UK magazine publisher.
-Jon
this is my sig.
Slow down cowboy!
The U.S. Government requires you to wait 2 minutes between each monopoly.
It's been 120 seconds since your last merger!
They don't own WCW any more. Why your post of all their brands was modded up, I have no idea.
AOL - Time - Warner - Castle Rock Entertainment - New Line Cinema - Fine Line Features - CompuServe - Netscape - AOL MovieFone - Digital City - MapQuest.com - Spinner.com - The Atlantic Group - Rhino Records - Elektra Entertainment Group - London-Sire Records Inc. - Warner Bros. Records - Warner Music International - Time Life Music - WB Television Network - HBO - Cinemax - Time Warner Sports - CNN - CNN/fn - CNN/SI - CNN Headline News - TBS - TNT - Cartoon Network - Turner Classic Movies - HBO Independent Productions - New Line Television - Turner Original Productions - Warner Brothers Television - Warner Brothers Animation: Looney Tunes, Hanna-Barbera - Time Warner Cable - Time Life Books - Book-of-the-Month Club (managed by Bertelsmann) - Little, Brown & Co. - Bulfinch Press - Back Bay Books - Warner Books - Oxmoor House - Time Magazine - Life Magazine - Fortune Magazine - Sports Illustrated - Money - People - Entertainment Weekly - In Style - Southern Living - Cooking Light - The Parent Group (Parenting, Baby Talk, Baby on the Way) - This Old House - The Health Publishing Group - Real Simple - Golf Magazine - Popular Science - Ski - Yachting Magazine - DC Comics - MAD Magazine - Atlanta Braves - Atlanta Hawks - Atlanta Thrashers - Turner Sports - World Championship Wrestling - Goodwill Games
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mrBlond (I don't email from Malaysia)
CowboyNeal for president!
"Hit any user to continue."
There is no way this would get past regulatory approval. If the FTC wouldn't allow MCI/Sprint, I can't see how in the world they would allow the number one and number two cable companies to merge operations. This is precisely the type of deal that the Sherman Antitrust Act was designed to prevent.
Just remember, this is the same FTC that allowed AOL and TW to merge.
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I pledge allegiance to the flag...
of the Corporate States of America...
Isn't this the setup for a James Bond movie?
D
Mad Scientists with too much time on thier hands
The first, last, and only tech news site on the net
What monopoly?
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Skivvy Niner? Email me!
HEY! Look left just ONE MORE TIME!
Absolutely. Do you have any idea what kind of social upheaval we would face if the Cartoon Network were interrupted?
Well, seriously. I didn't really mean the content, which is 99.9 percent hogwash, but rather the connection; the cable itself. Don't you remember the Emergency Broadcast System? It's essential during civil disasters to contact citizens as quickly as possible so that they can avoid harm. Cable stations (in my area, at least) already do this by broadcasting storm warnings and such.
But even when the roads are "privately owned" the public still demands performance constraints, such as meeting minimum safety standards, and not arbitrarily restricting passage (say, on the basis of race, or whatever). The contracts with these private companies are probably filled with regulations and standards and red tape anyways, as well they should be. You don't just give public property away without some serious guarantees that quality and other public concerns won't be compromised.
I do think co-ops are a pretty good idea. I believe the city of Tacoma, WA forced some co-op like provisions (free access for libraries and schools, no redlining of certain neighborhoods) on AT&T when it acquired TCI.
I think co-ops are a very good idea. Another poster mentioned co-ops earlier. I'm not saying that we should give all this power directly to a (perhaps) corrupt government, just that we should not sit idly by while our government is giving away the farm to huge corporations. They're not much better, in a lot of cases, than big governments.
The FBI may have saved your skin more times than you know. You should really have a look at your file.
the return on investment of Social Security
I don't think Social Security was intended to provide anyone with a return on investment, other than to maintain the value of the fund on an inflation-adjusted basis. What were you expecting? A VA Linux IPO?
the service commitment of the Interior Department
I don't really know much about the service committment of the Department of the Interior, but if it's anything like the service committment of my DSL provider (two full days out of every month have been lost to technical failures) they probably deserve whatever rap they've gotten. Just because you're a private company doesn't mean you're immediately service oriented. Have you ever visited the reception area of a towing compound? They don't exactly greet you with smiles...
the customer-friendly payment policies of the IRS
Hey, don't bite the hand that feeds you. The IRS collects taxes that enable the government to do what you elected them to do, even if they do it badly or not at all. If that's the case, then go out and get involved in politics and make the system better. Nothing's stopping you from doing that.
the fine management practices of the Senate
Once again, I'm not really sure what the in joke is here, but the management practices of the senate cannot be a lot worse than the management practices of Union Carbide at Bhopal. Or those of Royal Dutch Shell, Pfizer, Exxon-Mobil, Adobe, Microsoft, IBM, GE, GM or any other big company you can think of. Good management involves more than just making a profit. That's why we need a force in civil society to balance the immense (albeit sometimes well-earned) power now held by corporations.
Check out the co-operatives that undoubtedly exist in your community. There are lots of ways to skin a cat. People always have different interests, motives, backgrounds, vision, but they can find a way to bridge their differences if they each benefit enough from the relationship to make the effort worthwhile. It doesn't always work, much less work perfectly, but neither do the alternatives.
I'm really unclear on how you would set this up in a way that doesn't amount to a government -- it's going to be too large to be directly representative (remember we're talking about users here, not coders).
So what if it gets set up in a way that amounts to a government? Am I supposed to unflinchingly agree with you that governments are evil in principle? The problem with this kind of ideological tunnelvision is that in order to support your statement, you have to provide evidence taken from history, which your opponent (should they be as ideologically anaemic as you) can discount as being flawed for one reason or another. The tiresome debates over "Capitalism vs. Communism" fall into this category. Capitalist ideologues say "See, the Soviet Union collapsed -- communism doesn't work" to which the Communist ideologue replies "But the Soviet Union wasn't a true example of communism. It was just a flawed attempt to realize the communist ideal."
So where does this leave you? With a big headache. Stop thinking in terms of how you can turn the debate into one for which you already know all the lines. Start thinking about solving people's problems in the most efficient way possible, i.e. the way which incurs the least amount of pain, suffering, and loss.
Never mind the fact that it already takes nearly that long (just kidding, Linus). Your suggestion involves lawsuits. My suggestions (might) involve lawsuits. So that leaves only the "redtape beforehand" as the difference between the two. I suggest that a good city planning document can forestall lawsuits and cut red tape at the same time. Since the standards are widely distributed and published (as long as they aren't prohibitively expensive, like ISO standards) you have no excuse not to follow them. Any red tape you have to deal with is probably your own fault.
As for corporations being 100% accountable, what do you mean? Corporations depend on private property ownership which in turn depends on one of two things: a naturally harmonious populace, or the threat of violence. The government supplies the latter so that companies (and individuals) can maintain their ownership of private property. In return for this protection, Companies (and individuals) must be accountable to the general public as well as to their workers and customers. So not all of what they must be held accountable for is subject to market pressures. And that is what concerns environmental activists and labour activists.
So what if it's the "direct democracy of the free market". That's just a name; just a bunch of words. The result might end up being the same either way. If the particular government in question happens to have bad people leading it, then that doesn't mean that the idea of government is bad. But what I'm saying doesn't even depend on whether you accept what I say about government. If the end product is the same, why would you care what name I use to describe the entity that brought about the desired end? If you say tomayto and I say tomahto, aren't we talking about the same thing? Doesn't it seem trivial to be making a big deal about the difference?
That's becaue the government is stuck delivering all the mail that people depend on even if it's not profitable. The courier services have taken all the profitable delivery services away, leaving the government with stuff that's bound to be less profitable.
Fuck off you socialist eurotrash wannabe.
That really improves your credibility.
Aaaarrrrrgggghhhhhhhhh!!!!!!!
Sirius Cybernetics Corporation whose complaints department now covers all the major landmasses of the first three planets in the Sirius Tau Star system.
The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy defines the marketing division of the Sirius Cybernetics Corporation as "a bunch of mindless jerks who'll be the first against the wall when the revolution comes," with a footnote to the effect that the editors would welcome applications from anyone interested in taking over the post of robotics correspondent. Curiously enough, an edition of the Encyclopedia Galactica that had the good fortune to fall through a time warp from a thousand years in the future defined the marketing division of the Sirius Cybernetics Corporation as "a bunch of mindless jerks who were the first against the wall when the revolution came."
Bless, you, Doug...
"Win treats sysadmins better than users. Mac treats users better than sysadmins. Linux treats everyone like sysadmins."
My @home service (resold by comcast ironically) is superior to my Road Runner expierence in every way possible. Granted this cable modem thing is only temporary until Verizon finally cleans up my frickin phone line so I get DSL again. (long story). Road Runner (in Tampa, FL at least) went down at least 4 to 5 times a day. Upload/Download never peaked above 350k . . during the evening it was almost as slower as 128k . . the tech support was awful. @home on the other hand (in a suburb of Philadelphia) . . is running in the 600k range (not DSL . .but better) . . goes down about once a week and I have execellent support and service from the local company.
just my two cents . .
This deal is as much about saving face for AT&T as it is about market power. AT&T was humiliated when in the face of it's aborted spin-off of it's cable business, it suffered first from market pressures then recieved an unsolicited low-ball bid for that unit. This would be a good deal for AOL-Time-Warner not only because it expands their reach, but they can snap up the asets at bargain prices, since AT&T is desperate to find another suitor other than Comcast to get them out of this situation.
--CTH
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--Got Lists? | Top 95 Star Wars Line
AOL once got a large amount of press for refusing to force users on their IRC network on EfNet to use identd (kind of a useless practice, but also one that had very few ramifications for users' security). Their response right before the boys of Eris Free kicked their asses out of the tontine? "We're AOL, we ARE the internet."
This statement, bold as it is, was funny then, but mostly ironic now. AOL owned the number one dial up ISP in the world, bought (along with a shitload of cartoon characters and a vast media empire) the number one cable ISP in america, and now they're venturing their tendrils into the number two cable ISP...which also holds a dial up ISP in the top 5.
The internet, as we're proud to say, is a free entity -- it has no real rules, no real restrictions and no real governing bodies, and anybody who ventures into these usually gets laughed at. But everybody has to connect through the same draconian entity, that freedom lapses. AOL/TW doesn't like you doing anything but web browsing and reading e-mail (they tried a dozen times to shut down the web server I was running, but were tied because I signed a user agreement in 1995 that said they couldn't update their terms and didn't block serving); if it decides to block information across its network, it affectively closes off that information. You already can't swear in an AOL chat room...what if they begin to apply the same filter to web content? You wouldn't be reading this fucking page, that's for sure.
Normally I think ideas like this are just inane paranoia. But AOL has already integrated censorship into its network, and has not had any real opposition. Market factors don't affect it, becuase there's never a large enough share held by the opposition to hurt the giant. When 40 million people give you $21.95 a month, a thousand saying that they won't if you aren't nicer to them just don't matter to you. For this reason, AOL should be blocked in any way possible from absorbing relatively decent ISPs like AT&T's...even if it means a viscious anti-trust suit.
Hey freaks: now you're ju
I think the 1996 act itself said it best,
Really? Don't count on that-- AT&T's cable operation is significantly bigger than AOLTW's. AT&T already owns a chunk of Time Warner Cable, for that matter (and an even bigger chunk of @Home, which gives them a stake in keeping it alive). I don't see AT&T giving up complete control of anything to AOL.
There is no way this would get past regulatory approval. If the FTC wouldn't allow MCI/Sprint, I can't see how in the world they would allow the number one and number two cable companies to merge operations. This is precisely the type of deal that the Sherman Antitrust Act was designed to prevent.
"The guide is definitive, reality is frequently inaccurate."
It depends on the region, and who AT&T bought out. In my area it was MediaOne Roadrunner, so when AT&T bought them out it was re-named AT&T Broadband but (AFAIK) the backbone didn't change.
www.lucernesys.comHorizon: Calendar-based personal finance
This is the first time one of these American mega-mergers has truly frightened me. I am currently a customer of Rogers Cable in Canada. ATT owns a large share of Rogers (whatever the current rules allow a foreign company to own.)
Just the thought of AOL owning any part of Rogers doesn't sit well with me. Now, when the contract with @home expires, we can look forward to Rogers@AOL.
And then, when the CRTC allows for another round of digital TV channels, we can look forward to AOLTV.
Come to think of it, Rogers also owns the Blue Jays, and Sportsnet too. Start selling tickets now for the 2005 AOLJays.
What bothers me the most about the mega megers, is that it doesn't seem like anyone can stop them. I mean Microsoft just seems to have beaten the US government! Can't you just see these two companies finding some way around the law (is there a law?) just to get their own way!?
I guess our only hope is a little penguin named Tux.
:)
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