Krugman: Say No To Comcast Acquisition of Time Warner

nbauman writes "In his column, 'Barons of Broadband' New York Times columnist Paul Krugman says: 'Comcast perfectly fits the old notion of monopolists as robber barons, so-called by analogy with medieval warlords who perched in their castles overlooking the Rhine, extracting tolls from all who passed. The Time Warner deal would in effect let Comcast strengthen its fortifications, which has to be a bad idea. Comcast's chief executive says not to worry: "It will not reduce competition in any relevant market because our companies do not overlap or compete with each other. In fact, we do not operate in any of the same ZIP codes." This is, however, transparently disingenuous. The big concern about making Comcast even bigger isn't reduced competition for customers in local markets — for one thing, there's hardly any effective competition at that level anyway. It is that Comcast would have even more power than it already does to dictate terms to the providers of content for its digital pipes — and that its ability to drive tough deals upstream would make it even harder for potential downstream rivals to challenge its local monopolies.'"

Comments

Re:Ok

[SQLGuru]

In my area, I can actually opt to have Earthlink as my ISP instead of TWC. Earthlink offers a similar service level using the same lines that TWC laid. If I paid Earthlink for my connection, Earthlink would keep some portion and then pay TWC for use of the lines. That's more or less how deregulated power companies operate.

Re:Ok

[cusco]

Enron's market manipulations were enabled by separating production from transmission. If they had been required to sell for Generation Cost + X% (the old rule) there wouldn't have been the rolling blackouts and grotesque pricing.