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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.
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.