Comcast Forgets To Delete Revealing Note From Blog Post

An anonymous reader notes that Comcast inadvertently posted a bit too much in a blog post today. Earlier today, Comcast published a blog post to criticize the newly announced coalition opposing its merger with Time Warner Cable and to cheer about the FCC's decision to restart the "shot clock" on that deal. But someone at Kabletown is probably getting a stern talking-to right now, after an accidental nugget of honesty made its way into that post. Comcast posted to their corporate blog today about the merger review process, reminding everyone why they think it will be so awesome and pointing to the pro-merger comments that have come in to the FCC. But they also left something else in. Near the end, the blog post reads, "Comcast and Time Warner Cable do not currently compete for customers anywhere in America. That means that if the proposed transaction goes through, consumers will not lose a choice of cable companies. Consumers will not lose a choice of broadband providers. And not a single market will see a reduction in competition. Those are simply the facts." The first version of the blog post, which was also sent out in an e-mail blast, then continues: "We are still working with a vendor to analyze the FCC spreadsheet but in case it shows that there are any consumers in census blocks that may lose a broadband choice, want to make sure these sentences are more nuanced." After that strange little note, the blog post carries on in praise of competition, saying, "There is a reason we want to provide our customers with better service, faster speeds, and a diverse choice of programming: we don't want to lose them."

Comments

Huh? What does this reveal?

[david672orford]

This is a goof, but it doesn't reveal anything interesting. The note says that they have to make sure that the number of places where they compete with Time Warner for the same customers really is zero and not just very low.

What is more revealing is the statement which stayed in: that the market is not competitive.

Re:Huh? What does this reveal?

[Anonymous Coward]

No, the note says they are prepared to adjust the language IFF the FCC datasheet shows that the original text is not correct due to a few exceptions.

If there was any region of the USA where Comcast and Time Warner were actively competing, one of the market-drones would've had that information for them in a minute. That notice is just admitting that while they had no internal records of competition with Time Warner, there might be a region where both companies have a presence.

I type this as someone who lost a good ISP when it was bought out by Time Warner, and I've seen too many Comcast issues from people I game with to look forward to a merger.

Re:Huh? What does this reveal?

[Jane Q. Public]

I type this as someone who lost a good ISP when it was bought out by Time Warner, and I've seen too many Comcast issues from people I game with to look forward to a merger.

The funny thing, though, is it is that passage that OP seems to be mostly about, when it is the earlier part that should most alarm everybody: they aren't competing.

And they aren't competing (this is just simple truth), because they have most of the country "divided up" between them: "You have this territory, and we have this territory."

But that's ILLEGAL. Dividing up the country between companies into non-competing regions is in violation of a Federal antitrust law that was passed clear back in 1926. It's just as bad in its own way as the "no compete for employees" agreement that Apple and other tech companies had. But they've practically bragged about it to the FCC!

And yet the FCC is looking entirely the other way. This is Obama's crony-capital government for you. I mean sure, Bush did it too, to a lesser extent. But this merger would never have been even CONSIDERED during the Bush years.

Re:Huh? What does this reveal?

[pete6677]

When Comcast-owned MSNBC is pretty much a fulltime Democratic campaign channel, it's easy to get the government to look the other way when Comcast breaks laws.

Please . . .

[UnknowingFool]

Right now the only thing that has pushed the cable companies to innovate are the likes of Google Fiber and Netflix and Amazon. The don't really compete with each other. Fiber threatens them directly on internet while Netflix and Amazon competes with them on content. This merger would all grant enormous market power for one company. Before they might have competed for the same geographic region. Now, not so much.

so what?

[Anonymous Coward]

I hate Comcast as much as the next guy, but I don't see how this is that bad. They don't think there will be reduction in competition, but they're double-checking to make sure that's true, and if it isn't, they'll have to be less bold with their language. Isn't that the right thing to do?

Re:so what?

[SuricouRaven]

It's the reason that's upsetting people. It's long been known by all that there's no competition in the cable internet market in the US because the major players have an informal agreement never to enter a market region where a rival is already established. The comment is an open admission of this fact. It addresses the FCCs concerns that the new company would have an anticompetative monopoly by just pointing out that there's already an anticompetative duopoly, so it really makes no difference wether people get screwed over by one company or two in collusion.

Real Competition

[sycodon]

When any company can come in and lay down lines and provide service without having to pay off the City Council/County Supervisors/State Legislatures, THEN there will be real competition.

Render all cable franchise agreements null and void. Let the providers beat a path to my TV/Internet.

Re:Real Competition

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't want random companies digging up the streets and sidewalks any old time they want, some going bankrupt before they finish.

Re:Real Competition

[ShanghaiBill]

I don't want random companies digging up the streets and sidewalks any old time they want, some going bankrupt before they finish.

I also don't want every delivery service constructing another road through my neighborhood. What we should do is provide a single, publicly owned road to each neighborhood, and then all the delivery services, including USPS, UPS, FedEx, etc. can all share it. All they need to provide is the trucks.

Likewise, there should be a single, publicly owned cable conduit. A six inch conduit can hold hundreds of cables. Then let any bonded company pull cable through the public conduit.

Re: only an idiot would buy services from comcast

[Ahnahmoley]

The cheapest offer of "broadband" to my father who is outside of a 40k population town by 6 miles is 180 per month satellite with a 2GB per month limit at 3mbps speeds. You're very wrong.

Re:They would lose me

[praxis]

In my area, my options are Comcast and DSL. I opted DSL because I didn't want to directly fund Comcast's vision for our future. DSL is not as fast as Comcast, but it's fast enough to stream video, play games and download large files overnight. We get by.

Re:only an idiot would buy services from comcast /

[Xylantiel]

False equivalency. The latency over satellite internet makes it entirely not equivalent to wired internet.

Re: only an idiot would buy services from comcast

[crunchygranola]

i'm very wrong because your father has a very affordable and very usable service available to him?

...

AC industry shill. Color me surprised.

$180/month for a 3mbs link is a monthly charge of $60 per mbps. The EU average for this service unit is $3.50. Also a 2 GB monthly cap is "very usable"?! The average home use consumes about 25 GB of bandwidth monthly, the average mobile phone user is hitting 2 GB/month right now.

So the AC Shill, paying 17 times a competitive world service rate for only 8% of what a typical American consumes in bandwidth is "very affordable and very usable". But to anyone not taking industry astro-turf cash it is a rip-off.