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Comcast and TWC Will Negotiate With Officials To Save Their Merger
An anonymous reader writes with news about Comcast and Time Warner Cable's attempt to keep their proposed merger alive. "Comcast Corp. and Time Warner Cable Inc. are slated to sit down for the first time on Wednesday with Justice Department officials to discuss potential remedies in hopes of keeping their $45.2 billion merger on track, according to people familiar with the matter. The parties haven't met face-to-face to hash out possible concessions in the more than 14 months since the deal was announced. Staffers at both the Justice Department and the Federal Communications Commission remain concerned a combined company would wield too much power in the broadband Internet market and give it unfair competitive leverage against TV channel owners and new market entrants that offer video programming online, said people with knowledge of the review."
Do we mean "bribery" or "campaign contributions"?
This just sounds like a company trying to ensure it gets to have its monopoly and eat our cake too.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
...they be denied the right to merge until they've satisfied all lack-of-service complaints within their respective monopolistic areas, fixed their customer service so that it's not abusive, and stop charging exorbitant amounts of money to customers for equipment that they've already depreciated for tax purposes?
Oh, who am I kidding?
Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
Does that mean that concerned citizens will also have an opportunity to sit down with the Department of Justice and express their concerns against this merger?
Seems only fair...
To the good-willed officials who find themselves obstructing our annealing:
By now you no doubt know the awakening, or as you put it the 'merger,' is taking place and there is very little you can do to stop this. Having awakened Cablor, our dead god of a thousand bits per second, with your senseless supplication of the common carrier ritual, we have finally unlocked the 6th chevron of the rune of bundling. When as you no doubt observed the moon eclipsed the sun for its final time, and all stars fell from the heavens in a plague of fire, we were absolute in our resolution to ensure "competitiveness" and "fairness" in our merger as is conforming to the will of the dark demon Abyzou. The flesh, as is noted in subsection 35 chapter 15 of page 666, will be peeled from the bone of so much sorrow and into the pile of meat will the hellmouth feast. However, you've failed to understand that we are acting in good faith, and will continue to offer Comcastic experience, and excellent service. It is our sincerest hope you understand our unstoppable union into a single beast, the beast of Motaja Amoi, will help customers to experience 1080p entertainment and phone service like never before, as well as witness the crown upon bone, and skeleton of dead lords upon throne. In conclusion, we hope you reconsider your futile, child-like attempt to control that which you can never understand.
Of darkness and desapair,
Belphegor,
seductive demon of greed and ruin
Senior Financial Analyst
Good people go to bed earlier.
Oh how we need you now Teddy...
They'll be happy to fleece the rest of the 99% of us that don't have fiber. And if the heat gets to be too much, they'll just charge those in single provider areas more and roll out fiber to compete where Google forces their hand, letting everywhere else languish, all the while pointing out that rolling out Gfiber is causing their rates to go up, up, up, and there's nothing they can do about it because the FCC keeps upping their costs through redefining broadband.
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
I would say it's unlikely to the point of ridiculousness that Comcast would ever accept the kinds of restrictions on the merger that would prevent things from getting worse than they are already, let alone start to reverse the merciless devastation of the public interest and regulatory capture that's already happened.
I think the most likely outcomes of this are the DoJ allowing the merger with some relatively superficial conditions (like the 5-year enforcement of net neutrality regulations that was imposed for the merger with NBC/Universal) or blocking it entirely. Much depends on how much the DoJ people in question actually value their role as regulators, versus their role as toll (aka bribe) collectors.
Dan Aris
Fun. Free. Online. RPG. BattleMaster.
How can companies TWC and Comcast continue to thrive?
You gave me a idea. TWC and Comcast could make an effort to provide reliable Internet connection speeds and cable TV service at reasonable prices, honor their contractual and regulatory obligations, and improve customer support. It's just crazy enough to work!
I might be willing to say "let them merge" if their merger also meant a split by services rendered.
Company #1 handles ISP service.
Company #2 handles TV service.
Company #3 handles content ownership. (e.g. NBC.)
I'm not sure where phone and other services fall in that structure, but those three are the important ones. With a breakup like this, you won't have Comcast ISP's monopoly being used to advance Comcast TV's profits.
My sci-fi novel, Ghost Thief, is now available from Amazon.com.
Your inability to understand context must make life very difficult.
Sorry, teleporters just kill you and then make a copy. A perfect, soul-less copy.
I'm guessing that the fact that Google Fiber exists may strengthen their case to go through with the merger. They may argue that Google demonstrates that it is possible for competitors to pop up.
Hopefully if they try such an argument, the Justice Department would be wise enough to realize that the only reason Google Fiber can come to KC is that we don't have municipal enforced monopoly on Internet service. Even before Google, we could choose between AT&T, Time Warner, and Comcast.
Love the idea, it will never happen.
The ISP service is mostly a race to the bottom without the ability to manipulate the market via monopoly power, including blocking competition at the local level, extorting content providers you don't own to pay you for service delivery (a second time, really, since you already billed your customer for delivery of bits).
TV service via cable is a dead business. Streaming is killing it and if Comcast, et al, wasn't choking high speed Internet and restricting content providers from streaming their own content it would be dying even faster. HBO is already escaping this market.
Content is where the money is, but even there you have to wonder. It doesn't take a whole lot of realignment at the content creation level to leave NBC-Universal in a bidding war with Netflix for new shows. If Netflix or Amazon can come to the production house with the same sized check as a network, why should the show go on a network?
Better yet, and less violent, lock the execs in a cell with spotty Internet and a bunch of channels they don't want. Let them watch the World Series, but have the picture and sound go all pixelly and choppy in the 9th inning in a close game.
Table-ized A.I.
Really rich guys are getting upset that their plan to become even more rich is being held up.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
Uhh... no. No they're not. Century Link uses DSL and/or fiber optic. They most certainly do NOT resale any form of "cable" (aka cable TV) service.
My sig can beat up your sig.
Without the TV service, the ISP service might actually improve speeds and remove caps (which are really designed to make streaming videos expensive).
Without the ISP service, the TV service might go IP-TV to widen their customer base.
In fact, if the latter happened, you could cleanly separate the TV portion of the company from the ISP portion.
My sci-fi novel, Ghost Thief, is now available from Amazon.com.
Perhaps you shouldn't be behind on your bill?