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Comcast To Buy Time Warner Cable In $44.2 Billion All-Stock Deal
symbolset writes "CNBC and many others report Time Warner Cable has agreed to be acquired by Comcast for $44.2 billion. From the article: 'The agreement comes more than eight months after Charter Communictions and Liberty Media made their first foray to try and negotiate a deal to acquire Time Warner Cable (a story broken by CNBC) and follows months of conversations between Time Warner Cable and Comcast about the prospect of a Comcast acquisition of the company. '"
I don't think there area any areas where both TW and Comcast operate. So it won't change the number of choices for anyone.
Equals a ISP landscape that will even more consumer unfriendly.
No good deed goes unpunished.
Washington Post's article confirms that:
"Comcast and Time Warner Cable don’t have overlapping markets, so antitrust regulators won’t view the merger with the same concerns they did with AT&T’s proposed bid with T-Mobile, experts say. That deal, which regulators rejected, would have eliminated a major national carrier and given consumers across the country fewer options."
Link: http://www.washingtonpost.com/...
Interactive HTML5 Coverage Maps:
Comcast Coverage Map
Time Warner Cable Coverage Map
Buzzfeed has further analysis of the above maps
You are right, but with a caveat. But the reason they don't have overlapping markets is because the local governments give exclusive cable contracts. So it isn't that the companies were forming a cartel, it is that the governments were enforcing a cartel. The companies might have actually wanted to compete, and the government was forbidding it.
It's still great as a pump-n-dump scheme for the financiers who work the deal, and a couple insider majority shareholders.
What's not to like?
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.