Slashdot Mirror
Comcast-TWC Merger Review On Hold
An anonymous reader writes: When the U.S. Federal Communications Commission began reviewing the merger between Comcast and Time Warner Cable, it imposed a 180-day deadline on the review process. The agency has now pushed that deadline back a few weeks after learning that TWC withheld over 7,000 documents they shouldn't have. TWC originally claimed the documents fall under attorney-client privilege, but that appears not to be the case.
Perhaps more disturbing, the article says another 31,000 documents "went missing" because of a vendor error. (Perhaps even more disturbing is that this is a drop in the bucket compared to the sum total of information TWC dumped on the FCC — apparently over 5 million pages. How they can be expected to properly review that much material is beyond me.)
The FCC is also ready to close the public comment period for the merger, during which over 600,000 comments were filed. Critics are making their final arguments and Comcast is tallying up all the nice things people (and paid public relations agencies) had to say.
Perhaps more disturbing, the article says another 31,000 documents "went missing" because of a vendor error. (Perhaps even more disturbing is that this is a drop in the bucket compared to the sum total of information TWC dumped on the FCC — apparently over 5 million pages. How they can be expected to properly review that much material is beyond me.)
The FCC is also ready to close the public comment period for the merger, during which over 600,000 comments were filed. Critics are making their final arguments and Comcast is tallying up all the nice things people (and paid public relations agencies) had to say.
Somebody please provide ONE case of a merger making a bad company better.
Table-ized A.I.
put a review on hold until new congress and others are in place early next year -- officials who have been properly greased by comcast to let the deal go forward with no further delays, and more importantly, no substantial concessions.
The politicians who are TWC customers found out that Comcast was giving away VIP support bypass cards but TWC wasn't, so they're retaliating. Temporarily, of course, until TWC promises to give them cards after the merger.
"Perhaps more disturbing" you say? Uh huh. Sounds more like a rounding error. Given the stated total number of documents it's entirely plausible that many could be accidentally lost, withheld, eaten by the intern's dogs, mis-counted, or actually end up being duplicates of already-submitted ones.
Bottom line: "Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity." (and in this case, barely even that, given over 5 million documents, if someone were to claim NO mistakes were made _that_ would be truly disturbing...
Tempest in a teapot much?
Personally, I would like see one of two things happening:
1. Break up Comcast and make the new pieces share infrastructure (so they would have to compete with each other).
2. Allow the merger, but with the stipulation that laws would be put in place to spur competition. Such as allowing municipalities to bulid their own network (like Chatanooga).
While few people actually have a choice, I'm still left wishing I didn't have to choose between AT&T & Comcast.
.
OK, Slashdot want's a longer comment than just the subject so, many would also argue that being acquired by HP was actually a good thing for Compaq, though perhaps a bad thing for HP, Compaq is still a potential example of "a" company. There are countless others, though, granted, they tend to be more the exception than the rule. Certainly more than one though.
One of the things that they teach at MBA school is that long badgering documents can make up for things like facts and logical arguments. If you look at the documentation in MBA paradises such as military procurement it easily runs into millions of pages for even the simplest of military kit. Often these pages are generated from much more compact groupings of facts which then helps to obscure the reality that these projects are usually total BS. For a simple comparison someone who needs to get to the point where they have completed a doctorate in physics might have used portions of textbooks that totalled in the 100,000 page range. So short of records that simply were an endless list of telephone calls or some such that level of documentation is almost certain to be designed to overwhelm not illuminate.
When a company feels that they must stoop to such measures so as to bamboozle people like this they have made it clear that what they are doing is very very bad, legally, morally, ethically, and not acting in the public interest. This last bit is critical in that we allow them to use public goods such as the airways which are a limited good. I am sure that other companies could be found that would serve the public interest in a cleaner way. Simply put these companies should lose access to these public goods.
The Slashdot and Dice merger seemed to work out well for every one. And it gave us Beta.
seems like a no-brainer. punish weasels.
if this is supposed to be a new economy, how come they still want my old fashioned money?
Of course while they like to point out that their service areas don't overlap so "competition" won't be impacted, they fail to note that because their service areas don't overlap, there has never been any real "competition" to keep prices down.
I do not fail; I succeed at finding out what does not work.
Yes, but I think the threshold of proof here is not just one bad company, but two bad companies coming together and creating a better company. I'm pretty sure the anecdotal evidence for that is scant.
Hey, does anyone know how to publicly comment? I briefly tried to figure this out and came up with filing a comment in a very legal manner, which I don't want to do. Do they have just online comments that they're going to ignore anyway and I can state my case and get all riled up for no good reason because it won't matter but it'll still satisfy my need to rail against the inevitable stupidity and greed and such that will be this planet's downfall? :)
Company slogan: "Quit whining and deal with it, America"
This particular cable merger would be bad. With that out of the way:
Tons of mom-and-pop shops with a good product but terrible process get bought by companies like Proctor & Gamble who have far better and more efficient processes. They then produce the same great product with more reliable quality at a much lower cost.
My own company may well become an example- we make terrible products, and have bad process, leading to very slow customer service, etc. That's because I'm very good at designing innovative new software systems, and very bad at running a business. I can think of a dozen well-run software shops that would make us better by taking us over. Their process, their customer service, billing department, etc and our products would be a huge improvement.
Aside from small companies who just never developed good processes, there have been many famous brands that have been bankrupt or on the way to bankruptcy before being aquired by a better company with a clearer vision or better execution. Given that these companies were going bankrupt, or already bankrupt, for them to survive at all (as a division of a larger company) is better.
One big, big name is Youtube, who was burning through other people's money faster than a drunk Kennedy and getting rightfully sued every 5 minutes for copyright infringement. They had a cool idea, and a completely non-sustainable business model that was guaranteed to put them belly-up within 36 months until Google bought them. Google brought to bear their expertise in funding a free service in a way that keeps customers happy (aka the best targeted advertising available) , allowing YouTube to survive and thrive rather than burning away investors' money until investors got sick of it and'the whole thing imploded.
As I understand it, not all CMCSA owners are all that crazy about the merger.
Merging with TWC was not all that helpful for AOL.
CMCSA is doing great. My CMCSA stock is way up.
Or, are you just posting about the crappy way that Comcast treats it's customers?
sirius and xm radio? :)
Absolutely nothing! It is strictly a formality. A useless ceremonial process to pacify the public into thinking the government responds to them and not the lobbyists who put the money in their pockets.
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
The cable companies know that people are paying attention to this right now. Soon there will be something more interesting provided by the news networks and the public will have forgotten about this. Then it will quietly pass through as though there was never any opposition to it at all.
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
They didn't offer quite enough backsheesh yet. Don't worry, a few more hundred million, and the merger is as good as done.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
There's a shade of meaning there. Compaq wasn't a bad company (good companies can get into financial trouble too).
They are not "pushing it back." They are pushing it forward.
TERRIFIC! We make terrific products, not terrible products. My last post is what happens when typos meet auto correct.
The products are great, the bookkeeping, support, etc is, shall we say "not world class". A vendor we've used for a long time provides great customer service , with a service that compliments what we do. Our customers would be better served if that vendor bought our company and offered our great products, with their customer service.
I live next door to a Comcast executive and he says the deal is done. Their respective engineering departments are well down the road of full integration.
They are not "pushing it forward." They are pushing it back.
It's a spatial analogy. When you push something [back], it moves further away from you. When you bring it forward, it moves towards you. So when you push back a deadline, it moves further away from you, into the future.
systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
Generally, the deal was lacked due to not receiving documents from TWC.. the two cable companies hold great name in market, this could have adverse effect on market.
Also Android wasn't a "bad" company before being bought out and whether Google is "bad" is strictly dependent on how you feel about the whole" you are the product" bit.
Compare this to Comcast whose rep is sooo bad they changed the name to Xfinity just to lose some of the negative feelings about the brand. Never had TWC but just the fact that this will make the resulting corp a monopoly for all intents and purposes (as the DSL in most areas is subpar and if the rumor going around is true DSL is being abandoned by AT&T in all but the largest markets so they can push their insanely priced wireless broadband) should frankly give EVERYONE reason to not want this to go through. When you look at how much we pay for honestly what is subpar Internet compared with a lot of the planet (even Romania last I checked had faster speeds and even megacities like NYC and LA have speeds that are a joke compared to most of Asia and parts of Europe) what we need is MORE competition, MORE lines being run, and MORE infrastructure upgraded. As we have seen time and time again monopolies give you less because they are the only game in town, the last thing we need when we've already been robbed out of nationwide broadband once already. Do we REALLY think another supermegacorp is gonna make things BETTER than what we have now?
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
this will make the resulting corp a monopoly for all intents and purposes
They are already monopolies in their respective markets, so it won't make anything.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
If by that you mean it won't make anything except more money for the new Comwarner Cable for doing absolutely NOTHING, and removing a potentional compertitor from EVER becoming a threat, then yes it makes absolutely nothing.......
Also, there will be something REDUCED as a result of this merger. Comwarner CEO: "Hmm, we really don't need TWO marketing departments right? Or HR departments, or janatorial departments or........"
If by that you mean it won't make anything except more money for the new Comwarner Cable for doing absolutely NOTHING, and removing a potentional compertitor from EVER becoming a threat, then yes it makes absolutely nothing.......
They're not potential competitors because in most markets they have monopolies on the right-of-way.
Also, there will be something REDUCED as a result of this merger. Comwarner CEO: "Hmm, we really don't need TWO marketing departments right? Or HR departments, or janatorial departments or........"
They will need just as much janitorial staff, but you're right, they won't need as many marketers, or HR employees. So that's a major win in my book. Are you sure you know what you're arguing?
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Can someone explain to me what "7,000 documents" is? Or 31,000 even? are they 1kb sized documents? 1mb? Spreadsheets? Scanned pages?
I'm baffled by this use of measurement that has absolutely no meaning to the modern world.
True but do you really think they will lower rates or merely raise them?
The with 50% control of the nations ISP for end users do you really think thing will get better or will they try to turn themselves into AOL where you have to pay to access all forms of content and content providers have to pay even more to access the customers?
Something like 80% of US citizens don't have a choice in the matter of which ISP they use. they get one choice. Why is it that google fiber has rolled out into two cities and only those two cities have more than 2 competing high speed ISP's?
i thought once I was found, but it was only a dream.
Somebody please provide ONE case of a merger making a bad company better.
Define "bad company" first. Bad according to what measurable criteria?
There is plenty of evidence that most mergers tend to destroy value for shareholders but that doesn't mean the companies were necessarily "bad" or "good" beforehand. There is also plenty of evidence that many mergers are not good for consumers. But again, that doesn't mean the companies were bad or good.
I can provide you examples of mergers improving the financial and/or competitive position of the companies involved. They aren't hard to find. I can find you more examples of mergers hurting the finances and competitive position. But unless you can clarify what you mean by "bad company" then your question is more or less rhetorical.
True but do you really think they will lower rates or merely raise them?
I don't think they'll do either, actually. If they raise rates, more people will choose to suffer with crappy access from AT&T.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
You withheld documents!
You gave us too many documents!
"you're right, they won't need as many marketers, or HR employees."
Which means fewer offices are necessary.
"They will need just as much janitorial staff"
See above. Are they going to keep, maintain and clean empty buildings?
They're not potential competitors because in most markets they have monopolies on the right-of-way.
That makes a difference today and today only, one new technology, a change in demographics, financial trip in the stock market, political shift, or any other form of change could easily revoke that monopoly status. IF / WHEN that happens, would you prefer that Comcast / Time Warner would need to fight to keep it's market share with better services, or are you happy with what you have? Do you want better service in the future, or would you prefer to keep what you have forever because the company has no reason to spend money to give you better serivce, regardless as to how much more you promise to pay them. (If it hits their quarterly statements this quarter as a negative, they won't do it. Gotta love the economy we have now.....)
They will need just as much janitorial staff, but you're right, they won't need as many marketers, or HR employees. So that's a major win in my book. Are you sure you know what you're arguing?
My point was that the merger will cost jobs in addition to the removal of a potential competitor, which considering the US job market needs all the jobs it can get, that is not a good thing. In addition to the closed office buildings that won't need cleaning anymore another poster already brought up, I think I do know what I'm arguing about. Yeah less HR and less marketing means less annoyances for your eyes and ears, but to someone else those annoyances are their bread and butter. That was what I was arguing about.
The apple next acqusition didn't matter much until apple mattered again with the iphone.
Apple "mattered again" long before the iPhone hit the market. The products that made Apple relevant again was first the iMac followed a few years later by the iPod. Apple absolutely dominated the mobile MP3 market and still does even today. Apple's financial and mindshare picture was strong again long before the iPhone was ever released.
4,999,998 were complaints from customers. The other two were from some Nigerian Prince.
One of the things that they teach at MBA school is that long badgering documents can make up for things like facts and logical arguments.
Really? At what business school and in what class do they allegedly teach this? Unlike you I actually have a business degree and strangely I can't recall that ever being a part of the curriculum.
You are making up a bunch of bullshit with no factual basis whatsoever.
If you look at the documentation in MBA paradises such as military procurement it easily runs into millions of pages for even the simplest of military kit.
The reason that military procurement has a lot of bureaucracy attached is because there is a long and proud tradition of people trying (and often succeeding) at ripping the government off. But you just keep going on trying to create your mythical MBA boogeyman.
Oh, and I've been involved in government procurement. I've sold kit to the military and worked at places like Boeing. Your assertion that there are "millions of pages for even the simplest of military kit" is a complete fabrication not supported by reality. If you are selling something like an M1 tank or an F22 then sure there is a lot of paperwork just like there would be for any complicated product. But for simple products there is a fairly modest amount of bureaucracy - quite manageable if you know what you are doing and not really worse than a demanding private sector customer.
Something like 80% of US citizens don't have a choice in the matter of which ISP they use. they get one choice
I can't believe that is true. It may be that 80% of US citizens have a clear choice of superior ISP to use, but I would think the vast majority of people would have, at a minimum, a choice of DSL and cable. Many now have a choice between DSL/cable/fiber (sometimes same companies are involved in fiber). That also ignores choices like 4g ISPs and satellite.
"TWC dumped on the FCC — apparently over 5 million pages. How they can be expected to properly review that much material is beyond me."
That's a pretty old lawyer trick. Flood the opposition with paperwork so they can't process it all and get frustrated. Oldest lawyer trick in the book.
Read the rest of my post drinkypoo, the rumor is that AT&T is gonna bail and rip up the copper to push their insanely overpriced cellular broadband where they don't have any regulation or oversight so you'll have cable or nothing, not even dialup.
I know I personally believe the rumor as I've been told flat footed by a city worker that the only fiber being run is for cellular towers and the city had to pay a good chunk of money to get fiber run to their buildings in the center of town because AT&T simply isn't fixing or upgrading anything that isn't cellular. I was told a similar tale by a lineman, that they are being told to fix only, do NOT upgrade and he said they are catching hell if they do more than the most basic of repair. According to him the entire POTS is falling into disrepair and its been made clear that this is by design, they want out of POTS and DSL and will be pushing the DSL customers towards their expensive as hell cellular broadband.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
Technically, those are company purchases, not mergers.
Table-ized A.I.
Partly right, partly wrong.
AT&T has publicly announced that it would like to abandon the old copper POTS network by 2020. And, yes, that means not upgrading something that they are trying to get rid of. The company's stated goal is to have fiber in the vast majority of areas by then to replace the copper, although I think at least in most cases the copper will still be the actual physical connection at your home or building's NID.
But the reason is almost certainly not to push cellular broadband on a wide scale. Cellular uses up a finite resource of very expensive wireless spectrum. It's much better to transport fixed phone and data over fiber, and save that spectrum and capacity for mobile users. The main reason to get rid of the all-copper (TDM) infrastructure I believe, is that if you are limited to DS-3 backhaul into an area, at best it only lets you sell phone or DSL service, whereas a fiber-driven infrastructure (all the way to the curb, or at least fiber to the neighborhood and copper for the very last leg of the trip) lets you sell cable TV services, high-speed Internet, etc. That's what FiOS and Uverse are.
From what I understand, the idea is only to push cellular broadband as a replacement for USF obligations where it is cost prohibitive to run fiber (think rural areas). That at least would make much more sense than trying to get everyone to go wireless when you have a perfectly good wireline connection to use.
"95% of all Slashdot
The agency has now pushed that deadline back a few weeks after learning that TWC withheld over 7,000 documents they shouldn't have. TWC originally claimed the documents fall under attorney-client privilege, but that appears not to be the case.
... Perhaps more disturbing, the article says another 31,000 documents "went missing" because of a vendor error.
Sounds like two excellent reasons for refusing to approve the merger. From what I have read there have been plenty of lying from both Time Warner AND Comcast over who exactly is going to benefit from this.
So when you push back a deadline, it moves further away from you, into the future.
Exactly, they are pushing it into the future to give the people time to forget why it's such a bad idea.
True but do you really think they will lower rates or merely raise them?
I don't think they'll do either, actually. If they raise rates, more people will choose to suffer with crappy access from AT&T.
In the (public statement) words of Comcast VP David Cohen regarding post-merger rates: “We’re certainly not promising that customer bills are going to go down or even increase less rapidly,”
So not only did Comcast promise to raise rates after the merger, they explicitly said they're planning to raise rates just as fast as they've been doing so they can keep 100% of the cost benefits from the merger as profits.
I do not want to support a company which is working against American Police and American Business. Comcast has been associated with The Black Panthers and other Hate Groups.
Yeah and if you buy that bullshit? Got a bridge you might be interested in. My dad's business was right in the middle of their new "fiber rollout" and after the replacement? It WENT TO SHIT with his speed DROPPING from a high of 6mbps to 1.4mbps after! What did they offer to remedy this? If you said cellular broadband we have a winnar Johnny!
Don't buy the BS man, the SECOND the old POTS is gone you'll find everybody not in a cherry picked area watching their speed drop and being offer the "chance to upgrade" to assrapey cellular. Don't say "its a fluke" either because I've had to switch 3 customers network setups to cable so far in 2 different towns, same story. AT&T before "fiber" rollout? Decent speed. After? Welcome to shitstain. And guess what all 3 were offered as a "solution"? Yep, A big old assrape with a whole 3GB per month for the same price they were paying for DSL unlimited before. For old Ma Bell its great, no more regs like on landline, fuck 'em by the MB, and their answer to everybody who dares bitch? "You are too far from the hub to benefit from fiber" even if the DSLAM can be hit with a pellet gun from where you are standing!
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
You're right as far as the choice between DSL/Cable goes, even then only sort-of. The rest is nonsense.
4G=Expensive and restrictive (data caps etc). Not practical for every day use unless you literally are only checking emails and reading the paper online (with adblock, of course, because those ads can be heavy).
Satellite=Expensive and horrible latency. Plus not viable for many because HOAs and apartment complexes won't let you put up a dish. Realistically, Satellite is a last resort I'd only suggest in a really rural area with no other choice.
Wireless (Wimax/LR WiFi etc)=Similar deal to satellite and not something I'd recommend unless there was really no other choice.
Fiber=Fiber running past or near your house does not necessarily mean available to you for use. Last stats I saw were not a very high percentage of homes had fiber available and in some cases, that was in place of DSL (so still only leaving a maximum of 2 viable ISP choices), so while I'd love to see more proliferation, that's not currently the case.
So, repeat after me: 2 ISPs to choose from (incumbent DSL or fiber and incumbent cable) is not competition.... 10 or 20 or 50 ISPs utilizing any one of those technologies (as it happens in some countries) is competition.
Founder & COO, Hayai India (hayai.in) / USA (hayaibroadband.com)
I said ignore so 4g/wireless ISPs, so let's just ignore them :-)
In many places, you do have a choice of ISP even with the same connection. I have a choice of Time Warner Cable or, e.g., Earthlink for cable modem access. I leverage this every year for lower rates. I also have a different connection possibility--Frontier (Bleh) for DSL. AT&T is in the process of rolling out fiber that will be available 1Q 2015 (hopefully Google comes soon after). Look at the fiber maps (AT&T, FIOS, Google)--they're expanding incredibly rapidly.
I was responding to the GP who said "Something like 80% of US citizens don't have a choice in the matter of which ISP they use." I disagree with that statement. If you are trying to read into my reply that I think the Internet situation in the US is flawless, you are stretching!
I said ignore so 4g/wireless ISPs, so let's just ignore them :-)
Ah, so it seems we are, in fact, in partial agreement. Unfortunately the Cable-cos choose not to ignore 4G/Wireless when it comes to choices.
In many places, you do have a choice of ISP even with the same connection. I have a choice of Time Warner Cable or, e.g., Earthlink for cable modem access. I leverage this every year for lower rates. I also have a different connection possibility--Frontier (Bleh) for DSL.
That seems to be a rarity, but that does explain why some of my wholesale pricing comes through as BH/TWC, and proves what I've said in various diatribes elsewhere on the web that even on DOCSIS, infrastructure sharing is possible, despite the cable cos (probably including Time Warner but I haven't checked) saying that sharing is not.
AT&T is in the process of rolling out fiber that will be available 1Q 2015 (hopefully Google comes soon after). Look at the fiber maps (AT&T, FIOS, Google)--they're expanding incredibly rapidly.
Verizon's FIOS growth has, as far as I understand, stalled. Some of it has even been sold off to (bleargh) Frontier.
Google is stalled in some areas, and despite it now being "available" in subsets of 3 cities and all the expansion plans, it's all very nice and well for the populus that lives within reach, but that doesn't include about 99% of the country. I admire what they're doing very much and want them to expand fast, but they'll need a lot of help. I personally would like to see them enter as a retailer on some of the already-existing municipal fiber that's already up and running all over the country. They don't *have* to build or buy all the infrastructure, do they? Just let the municipalities sell them L2 or L3 access and be done. THAT will scare the pants off the incumbents.
AT&T seems to be doing a lot of FTT-PR (and then back-and-forthing with "we will", "we won't", "actually we will").
The latter 2 do at least seem to be growing (excellent), however, while Google's growth rates might look impressive (let's say for the sake of argument 50% year on year or whatever they might be) compared to AT&T's (say 2%), AT&T's *ACTUAL* growth rates would be far more impressive: as we know, 50% of 10k is far less than 2% of 10mm.
I was responding to the GP who said "Something like 80% of US citizens don't have a choice in the matter of which ISP they use." I disagree with that statement. If you are trying to read into my reply that I think the Internet situation in the US is flawless, you are stretching!
Absolutely not, but I do agree with the statement for the most part: choice between DSL or Cable is not really "choice", it is simply the lesser of 2 evils - and it certainly does not resemble anything that could be called "a free market".
HOWEVER, if it were such that you had 2 wires in to your house (one DSL and one Cable, or even 3 wires if you were lucky enough to have fiber as well) and 10 different retailers supplying services on each set of infrastructure, THAT, is what I would call genuine choice, and this is what America needs IMHO.
Founder & COO, Hayai India (hayai.in) / USA (hayaibroadband.com)