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Bloomberg Report Suggests Comcast & Time Warner Merger Dead
andyring writes: According to Bloomberg News, the Time Warner/Comcast merger of raw evil is dead. Comcast plans as early as tomorrow to withdraw the merger proposal, "after regulators decided that the deal wouldn't help consumers, making approval unlikely" according to the story. If so, that means regulators won't have the chance to kill it themselves.
They just need to regroup, figure out who to buy off, and do it again.
I'm sure someone is up for re-election, or wants a cushy job in the private sector, who can be "convinced of the merits of the case" with a suitcase full of cash.
Corporations don't stop doing crap like this just because the outcome would be bad for consumers.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
Kill it with Fire.
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
The issue with the price, is your are paying for the Service and the Infrastructure.
I much rather have two bills.
One for the infrastructure, and one for the Service.
Much like in the old dialup days. We paid for the Phone Line, then we paid for the ISP.
We may have had limited options for the infrastructure, but you could choose ISP.
The problem is that We have both bundled together.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
Thank goodness. But a long way to go for real competition.
The next time we have FTC and FCC leadership appointed by a Republican they'll just try the merger again, and they could easily succeed. I just don't think allowing the merger would seriously hurt the Republican president who did it. Republican strategists have their voters so anxious and paranoid over emotional topics like terrorism, gay marriage, marijuana, and immigration that who exactly would change their votes over internet service? Who would help the socialists take over and the floodgates open and another 9/11 happen just for ethical billing and some decent customer service?
No one who believes their lies would ever vote D or I for such a trifling issue.
If the US is an oligarchy controlled by the rich and powerful, and the Obama administration is full of corporate shills- then why didn't this merger get approved?
Oh yea, cause I *totally* miss paying long distance fees to send an email to the east coast.
As much as I feel disappointed and disgusted by things that Obama and other Democrats have done over the last several years, I still don't buy the whole line that some people here on Slashdot trot out all the time: that Democrats and Republicans are the same thing.
You know that this deal would have sailed through and there's no way the FCC would have pushed for Title 2 regulation, if a Republican were in the White House right now.
So remember, as dumb and crappy as some parties' actions have been lately, who you vote for still matters, even if only in limited ways. Yes, some large scale issues are pretty much a wash between the two, but there are still some issues that you can have an influence in with your vote. Pick the party and candidates who you feel are more likely to be on the same side of the issues you care about, regardless of what the naysayers say.
Also, a shout out to Al Franken for being one of, if not the only top politicians to have questioned and criticized this merger from the beginning.
Also, a shout out to Al Franken for being one of, if not the only top politicians to have questioned and criticized this merger from the beginning.
You just invalidated your entire argument there. If Ds were truly different than Rs in this regard, then more Ds would have been on Franken's side from the beginning.
I don't want to achieve immortality through my work. I want to achieve it by not dying. - Woody Allen
Not all the rich and powerful got there the same way, and they don't all have the same goals. Some extremely large and influential companies lobbied *against* this merger, including (but hardly limited to) Netflix and Google, because their owners thought the merger could lose them money.
The oligarchs in America work together on plenty of issues, this just isn't one of them.
I'd rather have two Satans than Satan^2.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
Hail Dorothy!
It used to be that way with DSL too, it was wonderful. Actual choice!
"I didn't know what to make of the Comcast - Time Warner merger, but then I dug deeper. "
"How so?"
"You know my crippled mother? She really wanted to watch Game of Thrones, and Comcast remains committed to showing Game of Thrones."
"I did not know that."
"Yeah, and you know cute little Sally?"
"The stripper down at the club?"
"Yeah. Comcast has committed to showing soft core porn between the hours of 2 and 4 am."
"I remember that's something she's really been aspiring to do."
"And if the Comcast merger goes through, she might well get her chance."
"Hmm. I guess I have a lot to think about."
I'm just amused by the notion that anybody anywhere ever thought this would be "good for the consumers".
The market is speaking to you Comcast and TWC! Perhaps it would behoove both of you to listen to what it is saying.
Time is what keeps everything from happening all at once.
I can't speak for why your area has only one DSL choice, but in my small town we have eight DSL providers, only one of which is the telco. "Used to be" is "is" for a very large number of people.
Actually, I'm surprised so much is happening on Obama's final term. Usually the second term of a president is coasting because he knows he's not getting re-elected, while everyone else is clamoring for his spot in the next election, so no matter what the president does, it doesn't matter because everyone else is using it to campaign for 4 years. Doesn't matter which party - oppose the president if it gets you votes.
Hence the term lame duck - the president's second term is supposed to be one where they are powerless and really just keeping the White House warm...
I'm kind of surprised that this deal had investor support. The larger business model is under attack on many fronts, content delivery by streaming video, Internet by municipal-backed and private fiber vendors who are seeing opportunity -- CenturyLink, one of the few companies who compete with Comcast for poor service, just strung fiber optic cabling on the poles behind my house which is supposed to support gigabit residential Internet speeds. And even NBCUniversal's strength in content creation is under assault by Netflix and Amazon original productions.
Even if you assume greater profits from increased monopoly abuse by a combined Comcast/TWC, huge mergers face big costs internally and I'd question whether they will have time enough even as a monopoly to recoup those costs and the investment expenses of the merger deal itself.
Plus, the larger the entity, the less it is able to adapt to the huge changes sweeping the video content and Internet markets. Cable is already a dinosaur, being a bigger dinosaur has never proven helpful.
They are probably all selling access to the same set of DSLAMs at the CO.
The de-regulation of DSL was a mixed bag. On one hand, it produced competition and lowered prices. On the other, there was so much competition that companies were folding left and right. When I was doing SMB consulting in the mid-2000s we had one client who had to change providers four times in three years because they always went with the lowest priced provider and those providers kept folding.
That is not dead which can eternal lie,
And with strange dealings even death may die.
and for humanitarian reasons, I think we should leave him that way.
Much like in the old dialup days. We paid for the Phone Line, then we paid for the ISP.
The good old days.
In the outer ring of suburbs where we lived, the only realistic and affordable Internet solution before broadband cable was dialup AOL --- combined with a unlimited regional calling plan.
Not much has changed in all the years since.
It keeps saying, "Braiiiins! Braiiiins!"
Have gnu, will travel.
I would much rather the regulators had their chance to shut this down.
The message needs to be sent that we're not going to take it anymore!
Chances are the only reason that is possible in your area is that the local telco is voluntarily (or due to existing contracts) leasing its lines to other ISPs.
I have not really seen prices go down after deregulation, and I would say it did NOT produce competition in the least, it eliminated it almost completely. Companies folded left and right because they found themselves no longer accessible to their customer base. Overnight all your customers could become Verizon customers by virtue of Verizon making itself the only option to people on its lines.
I think we did not see the real expansion of DLS till we saw bundling of video and data services, so expansion fueled by media companies and their ability to get preferential treatment. Before that, telcos still made good money off leasing their lines, they got paid no matter which ISP the customer went with.