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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. '"
/nuffsaid
In terms of competition, verizon buying time-warner is a much bigger deal than the blocked attempt of at&t buying t-mobile. This purchase can't possibly be allowed to proceed.
Warning: Opinions known to be heavily biased.
That two biggies merging. Will they be put under the scrutiny of an antitrust investigation? That will definitely eliminate choice in several areas. What the alternative, dial up or over the air broadcast?
You say things that offend me and I can deal with it. Can you?
We need to cap your internet usage and charge you usage fees as well as bandwidth fees because, oh god, it's so hard to make money in the telecommunication business we just can't seem to stop having enough money to buy each other out. By the way, we're going to increase your monthly flat rate bill a good 10% again this year because hey, those "Friends" reruns sure are getting expensive to er, broadcast.
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
Wow! With their improved economies of scale, my rates should drop, and I should get better service than ever!
Is there already a Whitehouse.gov petition asking Obama to oppose this? Since the cable companies seem to think they will get away with it, we need to act fast to shame Obama into stopping this.
Equals a ISP landscape that will even more consumer unfriendly.
No good deed goes unpunished.
Comcast will just bribe the FCC again
America was fun while it lasts, but if people can keep being bribed to do favors, corruption can inevitably kill a country. We have laws that you can't buy a vote. That seems noble. But the fact is that politicians can accept campaign contributions which is just a fancy word for a bribe. Who needs to buy votes when you can buy a politician?
Again, I love America, but corruption unchecked can destroy any nation no matter how strong. And with campaign contributions running rampant, the game is rigged in favor of the corrupt.
God spoke to me
Comcast have been rolling out IPv6, and I can now get all of Google/YouTube, Facebook, and Wikipedia. Slashdot is still only IPv4, of course.
TWC's installed equipment may delay a roll out right now, but a long term commitment to IPv6 would be good.
I guess it is time to switch to the Netflix DVD option, or join Redbox.
This should not even be on the table. A nearly unrelated virtual monopoly, growing even larger.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
As if Comcast being second most hated company (EA was first) wasn't bad enough, now the giant will have almost a monopoly on cable (if it is approved). Things will NOT get better with this merger, only worse since they will have almost no competition.
Well, they have to pay for the purchase somehow, and you cant expect them to take it out of current profits/bank accounts.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Surely Time Warner understands by now that getting bought in an all stock deal is a stupid friggin' idea.
Because when AOL bought them with over-inflated .com stocks, it was a terrible idea and ended up with a grossly over-valued company with few actual assets owning a company which had both revenues and assets.
I predict that in the long run this will be a terrible idea for both consumers and stockholders.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
One of the main factors that cause cable television bills to increase is Channel Providers raising costs on cable companies. ESPN has been notorious for raising rates over the years. If the cable company gets bigger it has better negotiating power to maintain current rates (what broadcaster is going to loose 3 million subscribers by pissing off the cable company in negotiations). I doubt that the current rates will decrease, but it could stabilize costs some. This is not to mention that Time Warner actually has worse consumer reviews than Comcast. Time Warner customers would likely see an improvement.
Disagreeing with you does not make me a troll.
I wonder if Comcast plans to upgrade infrastructure in TWC service areas. Friends of mine in pre-war NYC apartment buildings seem to have terrible service degradation in the evenings as more people get online.
Keep the faith, share the code
I wonder if the paid for politicians have the brass to break it up. If they can't common carrier status becomes imperative.
Now let's suggest a proper Noun to name the new company, and a verb or noun to describe the service provided. Bonus points: company slogan
example:
ourcast, intranet, thank you for your patience, like you had a choice.
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
If this does go through and I have my doubts, I want the FCC NOT to force them into divestiture but offer higher speed Internet, ala carte pricing, sign off on Net Neutrality, and remove all bandwidth throttling and caps. The time is not to try and create competition, because there is none in cable, but to actually make a company perform like it is in a competitive environment.
Great! Now, instead of having one choice for high-speed (haha) internet, I'll only have one choice for high-speed (haha) internet.
-- sudon't
Air-ride Equipped
I have TWC and have heard nothing positive about Comcast. When TWC bought AOL, it was the worst corporate merger ever in US history. Now they're selling out to the king of all assholes, Comcast? I can't wait for my prices to go up and my netflix to get throttled.
I hope Bright House is unaffected by this (as I understand it, they're a separate company from TWC at this point in my area, I think).
say good by to SD / HD channels on TWC to match Comcast non SDV setup
ESPN Goal Line HD/ Buzzer Beater HD
Some of multiplex hbo, show, max, stars, HD channels.
premier league extra time HD as a real channels
BTN alt HD
EPIX
and others
If this goes through, we will get a glimpse of what tier internet will look like.
I know, I know, we have a good idea what tiered internet looks like, but this will give us some real concrete evidence.
Yeah, then 20-30 years after Time Warner Comcast is broken up, 6 of the 7 pieces are merged back into a single company.
They should have to divest NBC, Telemundo, Universal Pictures, and any other content and local stations. This company is getting a little too much of the distribution network for comfort. I'm a customer as they are the only practical option in my area (the only other being Frontier Communications with some relatively slow DSL) and they've largely behaved themselves but we separated content delivery and content generation for a reason.
Even if it's fairly obvious in context...thats the first word I've had to look up in a long long time.
It is not like there actually is competition.
The US cable industry reminds me of the old joke about Soviet Russia television; Channel one has the official party line, while channel two has the KGB announcer telling you to turn back to channel one. The cable companies all treat customers like domesticated farm animals, you are either inside of one farmers fence or another's, you can only move from one pasture to another pasture with much paper work and time off from work, yet still you will eat the same grass.
I am the unwilling control for my Origin.
1) I will literally fly you down to dallas texas at my expense to show you just how hard I want to "make you."
2) I actually can offer something superior:
An image of you just after you shoot yourself in the head, hit a neonatal trajectory, have to do it again..3 or 4 times before dying in agony. On live cam, and the rats are clawing your dead lifeless eyeballs and fighting over the 13 grains of gray matter you may possess.
I swear that said non-fatal before I hit submit not neonatal..fucking S3 firmware update
There is no point in discussing relative service levels, customer service, blah blah blah. None of that is the significant issue at stake.
First, Net Neutrality. A 'TimeCast' conglomerate will wield immense power and be able to enforce selective access and performance. If Netflix is your favorite video provider, you will be left at the mercy of a much larger and much more motivated ISP. This is an opportunity for the FCC to join Justice and require neutrality of access and routing as a condition. Let the court fights begin... Here, consumers have little hope that the government will act in their best interest, or even be allowed to.
Channel selection will become more interesting as this is an entity that could challenge content providers such as Disney and ESPN, and we'll see the battle between cable systems too big to ignore and content too valuable to refuse. I doubt consumers will benefit from this in any way.
Pricing will go up, count on it. Municipalities will take advantage of that and hang increased fees on these price changes, and consumers will pay more. Period.
There is nothing good about this. And there need not be, since corporations are not motivated to act in the best interest of their customers, merely to earn profits. that should, in a perfect world, result in serving customers, but it need not, and we are not in a perfect market or world. Oligopolies like this will not operate int eh customer's best interest.
Which is the current state of our government, not serving its citizens well at all. And that is why limited and constrained government is essential, and abdicating power to a central federal government is a bad idea. Corporations need also to be restrained. Same problem.
deleting the extra space after periods so i can stay relevant, yeah.
Government control can very quickly turn into censorship by latter-day Puritans that now wear the buckles on their brains instead of their hats.
The deal would be a coup for Time Warner Cable Chief Executive Rob Marcus, who just ascended to the top job on Jan 1. Filings show that the former mergers and acquisitions attorney is set to pocket $50 million if Time Warner Cable is sold and he is replaced while he is CEO.
I live ze unknown. I love ze unknown. I am ze unknown.
This merger has zero impact on your choices. Their territories don't overlap.
Are agnostics skeptical of unicorns too?
Petition at Whitehouse.gov
"with their freedom lost all virtue lose" - Milton
Ya can't fuck it up. Well ya can't fuck it up more than Time Warner. Unless you stop having service completely, forever. Better than that you're on par with Time Warner.
But the real point here is that Comcast now owns the lagest VoIP network in the nation if not the world. One stop shopping for the NSA while Obama's FCC gets to tax it some more.
So, the breakup spurred innovation which in any industry can only go on for so long before it matures. consolidation happened as cell phones and the internet matured into the modern from of telephony.
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
I suggest reading a book in protest. Voltaire anyone?
Please do not read this sig. Thank you.
I lived in Adelphia's service area at the time. Adelphia had done some serious rollout in the region, they laid a lot of wire in anticipation of offering cable telecom services, then they hit the local market with the first real broadband option. When Comcast bought Adelphia, they soaked up all the new markets that had just been built, and stopped building. We need a cable company that gives a damn about their network.
Of course the FCC will let this happen - There are still lots of six and seven figure salary positions open for ex-FCC honchos at Comcast!
Differences between how you act when some one is watching, and how you act when no one is watching, define who you are
I have Comcrap right now, and while it's not great by any means, I do have to say it's been fairly reliable (though not cheap), and I haven't heard nearly as many horror stories with it as I have with TWC.
I wish I had Cox instead. I had Cox in Arizona and again, while not great, they were a lot better than Comcrap, they were actually bordering on decent. When I had tech problems, their phone support people actually knew how to solve them.
528 Reiger St Dallas, Texas 75223.
Come and get it.
I was not thrilled when I heard that Charter was trying to buy Time Warner Cable but this deal with Comcast means that all the roadrunner clients will get squashed.
Agrisea Tsunami - Epyc Servers... https://agrisea.net/products
A) It's a real address. I'm pretty sure my house isn't fictional. Do you want a picture?
B) I made no threats at all whatsoever. I just said I'd show you just how much I'd love to make you do something. Maybe that means I'd give you a blowjob who knows?
C) The person who calls the police on some random stranger on the internet isn't the "little cowardly crumb"?
Go take your meds nutjob.
Oh and the other comment was me saying you killing yourself (albeit in detail) was superior to HOST files.
Nowhere does it say I am going to cause you harm.
But time warner as a whole is 3 x bigger than Comcast. It is not every day you see a big fish give up some of its territory. Aside from that, this is not good news for consumers.