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Time Warner, Comcast in Deal to Buy Adelphia
BlakeCaldwell writes "CNet reports that Time Warner and cable TV operator Comcast are set to pay $18 billion for bankrupt cable operator Adelphia Communications. The tentative deal, in cash and stock warrants, appears to beat off a potential rival bid by cable firm Cablevision Systems, which a separate source has said was preparing a $16.5 billion cash bid for Adelphia."
The way we're headed in this country, there soon be only one company running all telecommunications.
Then it will merge with the one company that runs everything else.
Whatever happened to the Sherman anti-trust act?
The local Adelphia franchise has sucked ever since they were Century Cable, and before that, Teleprompter. Typically a year or more wait for new channels to be added.
When I asked the senior citizen bill-taking drones at the front desk if their digital cable would work with TiVo, they both asked "What's TiVo?". When I asked for a manager, he *also* asked "What's TiVo?". This was in *2004*.
I told then-Century to piss off in 1998 and switched to DirecTV and haven't looked back.
Whatever happened to the Sherman anti-trust act?
It was bought by the Telecommunications Act of 1996 to become Media0wns1
Get your Unix fortune now!
When you are valued at 16 - 18 billion, or was this just an executive 'lets force a sale so we get nice big payoffs' deal?
Do not try to read the dupe, thats impossible. Instead, only try to realize the truth
What truth?
There is no dupe
We have Adelphia here in Mass and I must say it has been pretty much rock solid since they announced their bankrupt. In fact, things actually improved after that. The cable internet has been nothing but great and the TV has been fine (though I am not too picky about TV as I dont watch it too often).
I have to say that Im not looking forward to this buyout....
... I see this as a good thing. I have never had comcast, but they always seem to get their new technology out the fastest when compared to the other cable companies, which I see as a good thing. What exactly don't people like about comcast?
until there are only 2 companies in the world ? then what do we do ?
The thing that worrys me about all this is what's going to happen to the local economy. I live about 20 miles from Adelphia's original home, Coudersport, PA. The buyout of Adelphia is probably going to result in the closing of all the local offices.
Until recently, Adelphia has been the big dog around here as employers go so the effect on the local job market is probably going to be pretty severe. 'course, we've been expecting it but now we get to see just how bad it's going to get.
Time's fun when you're having flies. - Kermit the Frog
... but it sure seems to have helped Adelphia's market value!
For those that don't know, they stopped showing soft porn a while back for "moral" reasons. Recently they started peddling pay-per-view hardcore, and it seems to be a winning strategy.
I'd like to add that, in the 9 years since I've graduated high school, the first one of my classmates to become a self-made millionaire did it by making it easier for people to find porn online. Any comments?
The Christian in me says it's wrong, but the corrections officer in me says, 'I love to make a grown man piss himself.'
So what is gonna happen to the Adelphia Colloseum where the TN Titans play. The TimeWarnerWonderStadium ?
Now we can be overcharged and underserviced by fewer corporations.
For those of outside the US is this the best thing or worst thing that can happen to them?
rus
Cheap UK and US VPS
I wish a potential rival would beat me off.
Comcast is a pure monopoly in all the areas i've ever seen it so far. You want cable. They are it. They are also kind of scammy too. Signup during one of their offers where you get a "free" modem. And they end up billing you for it anyways for example.
But. I've also really liked dealing with them myself. They've improved a ton in the last 10 years around here. Service/support and getting things done and done right.
And for the net its great. I get effective speeds of 40KB/sec up and 500-700KB/sec down. And thats their lowest speed package.
Compared to the dsl offerings around here. And the phone company.. Comcast is #1.
All in all they rate a 6 out of 10. Where any other provider for anything MIGHT rate 4 out of 10.
I subscribe to Adelphia's cable-Internet service;
...Does this mean I'm gonna become an AOLer?!?
It looks like Time-Warner will buy Adelphia;
NOOOOOOO!!!!
Paleotechnologist and connoisseur of pretty shiny things.
In other related news. Cablevision, who own Voom, said yesterday that Voom would be shutdown at the end of this month. Good timing.
They are horrible where I live. Oversold broadband to the point where I actually uncapped my modem. The upload changed to whatever I wanted but the download speed never changed! 100 ms ping to the first second hop. Run ethereal and watch the garbage packets fly about! 5%-12% packetloss for over a year. They actually made Verizon look good. The cable tv is just crap too. the lower channels have so much attentuation the are in the constant state of static. My sisters digital cable goes out constantly. They told me at the local office the wait for HDTV programming was 3 years away! I have to d/l programming from Usenet to get an HDTV quality tv show that I can already watch in substandard definition . So sad. They suck. But don't take my world for it , go browse DSL Reports for 6 years of horror stories.
No matter where you go , there you are.
Where I am in east TN, it used to be just Comcast offering cable and cable internet services. As a result, their internet service was like $70/mo, and their cable TV was way overpriced.
Since several more cable providers have moved into the area, they all have roughly the same price, which is around $30-40 for internet service.
Now what could POSSIBLY warrant a $30/month drop in price for Comcast? Competition, maybe?
What do you think would happen if gas had a competitor? What if electric cars rivaled gas-powered cars for efficiency/ease-of-use? You're damn right gas prices wouldn't be so high. As of now, gas companies can make any excuse they want to jack prices. "Well, this week I have to pay for my new yacht, so I'm going to jack the prices $.04 a gallon. And everyone else will too, because they'll feel that they aren't getting as good a profit. There'll be the ones that only jack theirs $.03 a gallon, but we have enough loyal customers to ensure that I can buy 3 more yachts by tommorow."
Job? I don't have time to get a job! Who will sit around and bitch about being broke and unemployed then?
When it was ATT/TCI, I saw an outage maybe once a year. Now, It happens monthly (sometimes worse). These outages can last for anywhere from 10 minutes (these are fine), to several days. If you consider a crippled system as being out, then I have seen it last 5 days.
Their customer service sux. Rude. They do not know anything beyond their scripts ("Sir, you have to get your network neighbhorhood to work before we can help you"; Mam, As I said, I am running Linux. May I please talk to Tier 3). With that said, I will say that I have come across 2 people in their centers (out of some 20+) that had a clue, but they were probably old TCI people.
The Tv has outages as well, but we will not discuss that area.
You will learn to miss the adelphia that you have now.
I had Adelphia once. I have Comcast currently, and have had experiences with it in the past. I can honestly say that, if given the opportunity, I would conjure up dark forces, sell whatever remains of my soul at this point (as I've made some transactions in the past for things like Pearl Jam tickets), and bargain for Adelphia back. The quality difference between the two companies is hardly minimal. With Adelphia, I felt like more than just my 90 dollar a month payment. With Comcast, I pay more, get less, and feel as if I'm getting bent over and shafted in the process. For those are currently living in an area serviced by Adelphia, please let this merger fail.
I live here in Winter Park, FL and we have Adelphia, Bright House (part of Time Warner, I believe) and Sprint. A freind of mine just down the block has Adelphia, and I have bright house. He pays $10 more a month for 1mbps cable service. Me? I have 5mbps and I pay less. I know other people in the same area that use Sprint DSL and get faster speeds than he does on cable.
The market is naturally inefficient and stacked against the consumer. For example, Joe Freeloader in Connecticut is frustrated that he can't seem to access Kazaa via Cablevision broadband, but to his knowledge that's the only ISP in the area that offers broadband, because that's the only ISP that's running local ads for broadband access.
My question is, in a town that has only one company that supplies cable TV and they happen to offer bundled packages for broadband as well, is it legally sketchy for them to refuse to sell advertising to competing ISPs and only run ads for themselves?
Adelphia's service has been great here, but they're expensive. I pay $100 a month for basic digital cable and cable modem, that's too much for me.
Hope Comcast doesn't screw with the service and/or raise the rates more.
All I know is that I'm not too excited about this. I work in upper level tech support for the High speed internet division here in Buffalo NY. Let me tell you, this last year since the bankruptcy was announced haven't been pretty. With all the uncertainty surrounding the bankruptcy we have been hemorraging people like crazy. Most of our best talent has bailed for other companies and/or other states. It's only within the last 3 months that things have really begun to improve as many long needed network upgrades have taken place, and we FINALLY got some more people here at level 2 support to help with the call load.
If this deal is indeed final (no offical word from the courts yet), I suspect that the talent bleed will begin anew since we will probably only have about 6 more months of employment at that point. The worst part about it is that the economy is so poor in the Buffalo area (despite having more IT infrastructure in place than many IT 'capitols' like Austin Texas) That for many of us, getting work in IT will be next to impossible locally. This means that we will have to try and sell our houses in a sinking housing market and make a jump to another area of the country. Alternately, we could make a bid for Self-Employment in one of the most business unfriendly states in the union, or up and quit the IT field altogether and start a new carreer in a new field. Frankly, I'm not excited about any of those prospects. Working for myself is by far the most enticing, but trying to create a sucessful small business in this state is alot like trying to "chop down the greatest tree in the forest with a herring." In other words, darn near impossible. At any rate, it's gonna be ugly. Darn ugly. I suspect that I will probably ride it out to the end, as we will probably be receiving good severance packages. But I would imagine that many others will be leaving as soon as they are able to get other work. Wish us all luck. we're gonna need it.
BTW, I will probably be commenting more about this in my blog http://www.wearyman.blogspot.com/ feel free to stop by. Just don't expect any real insider info. I won't be putting my severance package at risk just for a blog post!
Official Heretic from the "Church of Global Warming". Proven right thanks to whistle blowers. AGW = Flat Earth Theory
I've been averaging 4.8mbps down, and 2mbps up.
2 months ago it was about 3mbps down and 256kbps up.
Nice upgrade.
I heard this on a radio news station in L.A. a few weeks ago. Here's an online source (3/14/2005) to support that:
"... Indeed, last month, news reports about Adelphia Communications' intention to offer the most graphic form of hardcore porn (XXX, in the adult-entertainment business's calibration of the sex acts depicted) on its cable system in Southern California prompted so much criticism that the company quickly abandoned the plans."
Ant(Dude) @ Quality Foraged Links (AQFL.net) & The Ant Farm (antfarm.ma.cx / antfarm.home.dhs.org).
I've said it before, I'll say it again -- modern corporations are just too damn small!
Do a search: Adelphia Rigas.
Ant(Dude) @ Quality Foraged Links (AQFL.net) & The Ant Farm (antfarm.ma.cx / antfarm.home.dhs.org).
Look for Time Warner to spin-off its cable division after the deal is final. Some are specualting they will adopt the Adelphia name. This also has the potential to lower the cost of delivering services to the costumer as the 2 companies will have increased muscle against the cable networks. However, I expect the result to be an increase in profits rather than a lower cable bill.
The thing that bugs the hell out of me is why their broadband rates keep going up. In this day and age, with a broadband glut and equipment prices following an inverse Moore's law of pricing, why am I paying more for broadband today than I was 5 years ago?
Adelphia's installation scheme is totally hopeless. Let's see: you buy a cablemodem at BestBuy or something; you hook it up; call in a MAC address, and you should be done, right?
No. They'll send a tech over, who will install all sorts of crap on your Windows machine ("we don't support Linux") and fail miserably. I lucked out bigtime by borrowing a laptop from work and telling that cable-jockey that it was the only computer I had. The genius didn't notice (or care about) the Antec Sonata case whirring away 6 feet from the cable drop. He proceeded to install some software (remote trouble-shooting widget, I think) and it wouldn't come up. Finally he was told to call in to some other 800 number, and do the install the "old fashioned way". Obviously, the "old fashioned way" worked. After he was gone, I wiped the laptop clean and my Linux box worked just fine.
And yes, I had to pay for the "installation" even though it said "free installation".
Please, realize, Adelphia sucks.
I don't mean it sucks a little, I mean it sucks a lot. In my area: no digital cable, no high speed internet, $40 for 40 channels.
Yeah, can you say DSL+satellite?
Meanwhile, 30 minutes away, Time Warner customers get tele+tv+internet for $150, including unlimited long distance.
No use in having competition if the competition sucks THIS BAD.
Jay | http://oldos.org
Likewise. I've had very few problems, and with their recent speed upgrade, it'll be a little better. I still don't like that their TOS/AUP specifically states that you cannot host "servers of any kind." All of my problems with my most recent web host would have not happened if I could just run the server myself. I don't get enough traffic to need 100 Mbps connections (although it's nice for that occasional large file).
If this deal does go through, I hope that what's left of Adelphia will lighten up a bit.
Colin Dean Go a year without DRM
I'm always amazed at people declaring "Comcast sucks" or "Time Warner sucks" or "Adelphia Sucks"
What people don't realize that these are very very large decentralized companies. The HQ of these companies have financial and technical expectations for small systems (usually a franchise in a city or county) The way these franchises operate vary greatly from one to another.
The degree of variance is great. Speaking about Comcast, its Arlington/Alexandria system is managed superbly and provides very good service, while its DC system can't find its ass with both hands.
Comcast generally will give a new acquired system 6 months to square itself away, and if it can't it will replace the management. This can lead to about a year until the subscribers see a change.
I think if you look at markets like LA, Dallas, SF, and Denver the take over by Comcast are largely positive things.
Before Comcast bought out AT&T Broadband a couple years back I only ever had one problem with my cable internet. Some kinda filter out on the pole went bad and was screwing up the signal. Other than that it was rock solid. The price was low, about $42 or so for the internet part and I believe the cable portion was right around $30.
As soon as Comcast took over the problems started. They immediately jacked up the price to $60 for the internet portion of the bill, and the tv portion runs about $35 now. I've lost track of what the actual prices are becuase they keep increasing it all the time. Also, I can honestly say I have had Comcast on service calls to my place so many times I've lost count. It is over a dozen service calls at the very least. This one time they had a intermittent problem on their node and it wasn't until the fourth fricking service call that they decided to check on something outside my apartment.
I feel sorry for you Adelphia customers if Comcast ends up taking over. I would seriously think about other broadband options like dsl if I were you.
How can two companies (Time Warner and Comcast) buy Adelphia? That doesn't make sense to me. Who would own it?
Whatever happened to the Sherman anti-trust act?
Here in the states, we walk a fine line of capitalistic hypocracy. Most service companies try to destroy their competition, but if they succeed, they find themselves facing the anti-trust act.
If they decide not to drive each other out of business, and even agree to divide up the business or fix prices, they risk being branded a cartel (also illegal).
The safest way to do business in the US is to just be mediocre.
For basic digital and internet with comcast in MN I pay 126.35 per month. That includes the 15.00 a month discount i get for having both video and internet.
...appears to beat off a potential rival bid by cable firm Cablevision Systems...
All Comcast had to do to get the deal was to beat off one of their rivals?
After the restructuring during the bankruptcy, Adelphia as a whole suffered from the same corporate culture that most big businesses suffer from -- everything comes down to the almighty dollar. It was not always like this when the former CEO, Mr. Rigas, ran the company. Yes, many of you will think "Hey, wasn't he the guy responsible for the stolen money and the bankruptcy?"
Sadly, he was legally responsible, however most of the locals wish it were otherwise. Mr. Rigas was getting older, and I am told he was really only a figurehead during the last few years. His sons were the ones who really ran the company for him, and were the ones largely responsible for the stolen money. Adelphia was a family-run business that had grown too big to continue to be run that way. In the end, Mr. Rigas was one of those legally held responsible because he was the CEO, although most of the locals know him as a good man and feel that he was no longer mentally sharp enough to know what was being done by his sons.
Originally, Adelphia started as a small cable company in rural Pennsylvania. The company rapidly grew into the 5th largest cable provider, but Mr. Rigas insisted on keeping the company headquarters where it all began in Pennsylvania. This fostered a lot of community support for the company, and extra dedication from the employees at the headquarters. Adelphia was also the largest tech employer (and practically the only one) in the area, so the talent all pooled there. It was almost comical to see big-shot investors come to town. The trip required the normal flight into a major airport, followed by a small plane trip to the closest small airport, finally followed by about a 2 hour drive through rural countryside. Coudersport and the surrounding communities are some of the most natural and scenic areas around. Sadly, they are SO rural that the economy is constantly on the verge of collapse. This is the biggest shame of the whole event. When Adelphia is sold, it will almost certaintly be moved out of the area simply because the current location is so out of the way. The town's economy will finally crumple, and the entire area will see an exodus of the unemployed leaving the rural homes they love simply to find a job... any job. The nearest large cities are Erie, Pa, and Buffalo, NY. Both of which are nearly 3 hours drive away. (Of course, there is a large group of Adelphia employess in Buffalo as well, so there will not be a surplus of jobs in that area). So in short, the employees that worked so hard to make Adelphia into a company that supported the often forgotten rural community are going to be the ones that suffer from the whole bankruptcy event. Being bought out will only be the final blow. I can only hope that the current employees will be able to either keep some of the jobs in the area, or be at least offered relocation rather than just eliminating their positions.
BTW, I know this because I lived in Coudersport, PA for a time, as well as worked at Adelphia.
Is there even a contest... how can you people want comcast to get your business? They suck, period. They jack prices constantly for no apparent reason (other than the fact they have no competition). Their service was always sub-par... went down without notice... generally crap. Then we have cablevision (optimum online anyone?) How could anyone ever prefer never-ending price jacks with substandard service to optimum online? "no, I'd rather pay 100$/mo for 4mbit down instead of 40$/mo for 10mbit down 5mbit up (or whatever optimum is nowadays). This seems like such a no brainer to me... if I were an adelphia customer I'd be out in the streets protesting anything but a cablevision buyout.
Time Warner has been known to not be the biggest supporter and funder of public access TV stations. In my hometown, where we have a very active public access station with 3 channels, a huge volunteer base, and 5 full-time staffers, people are shitting bricks about what will happen once Time Warner comes in.
sucks.
-- There is no sig line, only Zuul.
This could suck for cable modem users. Comcast offers 4Mbit/sec where Time Warner offeres 5Mbit/sec. Comcast premium service is only 5Mbit/sec where Time Warner's is 8Mbit/sec plus you get a wireless router. In Minneapolis/St Paul, the Time Warner cable system is far more advanced then the Comcast system (even though Comcast has a larger service area). Time Warner has the largest pipe in the midwest (even if every single one of their customers was downloading at full speed at the same time they'd be using less then 60% of their pipe). I work for Time Warner but live in Comcast area. I'd have to say all cable services suck but Comcast's service when I've had problems has been much worse then when I lived in a Time Warner area. Lets hope this doesn't affect the service users recieve. There's plenty more info we've gotten on this story which I'm not at liberty to go into but it could be a winding road ahead...