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FCC Clears Comcast Purchase Of AT&T Broadband
Torgo's Pizza writes "The FCC just granted final approval for Comcast to complete its $30.5 billion purchase of AT&T Broadband. Despite consumer worries of increased rates and clear domination of the market, Chairman Michael Powell stated, "The benefits of this transaction are considerable, the potential harms negligible.""
Hmmm.... Did not the FCC block the merger of DirecTV and Dish Network? Or was that some other government organization?
:)
Of course, I don't watch TV so that's a moot point for me anyway...
RickTheWizKid
A man needs TV like a fish needs a bicycle
@Home was with comcast originally. They went down the drain. I wonder how long it will take them to drive ATT's broadband division into the crapper too.
Mordor...a magical, mythical land where women are more rare than dragons--but where every man would rather find a dragon
Is the working theory (excuse, apology, whatever) that if the service provider is allowed to become big enough it can improve service through economies of scale and having enough capital to handle build-out?
My visions of the results of telecommunication deregulation remain visions. At every step where small providers have made progress, obstacles are created by the legacy monopolies. Progress toward telecom dereg was made under Clinton, and it is being quickly reversed under Bush. I'd like to know how they justify it.
Frankly, I don't care how it gets done. I want cheap, reliable, wide bandwidth. Whether it gets to me via Joe's KickAss Wires Inc. or COMCASTATTMEGOPOLY doesn't mean a lot, except that in the former case there would be a lot fewer bean counters micro managing my usage, for a time. Eventually it'll all end up in the hands of a small number of large companies anyhow; economies of scale for a commodity product.
Maw! Fire up the karma burner!
I'm a Linux user (clean of windows in my apartment for 4 months now), I use a linksys firewall-hub to connect to them. I had to "bless" the cable connection with windows before I took over the connection with the Linksys and have never looked back.
"Only if you aren't a consumer about to get arse raped by this government aproved monopoly. I'm willing to bet that if the next president is a republican that this megacorp will get to be as bad or worse than Ma Bell, the ultimate in "please sir may I have another" customer relations."
Ya know, right up until the point were people wanted to do slightly more that just voice with their phones, old Ma Bell did pretty damn well. Everyone (and that is key) had reliable, affordable voice service.
Eventually it became a hindrance to market forces, so we altered the system slightly in the so-called "break-up", but the monopoly served to establish a strong infrastructure.
Right now, I'd kill for broadband if I thought it would help. Nope. No can do. I don't add up on some vestige of the monopolies spreadsheets.
Frankly, at this point, I'm all done being patient. I want an adult in charge, put the fist down and say, "universal broadband access, no excuses." If welding together enough of these separate bean-counter telecoms creates the opportunity at the national level for this to occur, I'm all for it.
What I don't like is that we were making fair progress through deregulation. It would have taken only a little more access by third parties to the "last mile" infrastructure to get it effectively done. Now, we change administrations and go 180 degrees the other way.
Fuck.
Maw! Fire up the karma burner!
I don't understand. Didn't most of that sort of stuff generally happen under Clinton's guard? Wasn't it his administration that would give out donations to corporations that were having trouble as long as it was "important to the economy"?
Comcast is getting it at a great price, at least compared to what AT&T paid for the individual units.