Charter Strikes $56B Deal For Time Warner Cable

mpicpp writes with word that Charter Communications has struck a $56 billion deal to buy Time Warner Cable; if the deal goes through (which the article says is likely, according to Macquarie Research analyst Amy Yong -- at least more likely than the recently scotched Comcast-Time Warner deal), it would mean that the second- and third-largest U.S. cable companies would share a letterhead, and more than 20 percent of the country's ISP market. From the linked Reuters article: The Federal Communications Commission immediately served notice that it would closely scrutinize the deal, focusing not only on absence of harm but benefits to the public. Charter, in which Malone-chaired Liberty Broadband Corp owns about 26 percent, is offering about $195.71 in cash-and-stock for each Time Warner Cable share, based on Charter's closing price on May 20. Including debt, the deal values Time Warner Cable at $78.7 billion. A key area of regulatory concern would be competition in broadband Internet.

Comments

Re:Better than the Worst?

[MachineShedFred]

As a Time Warner subscriber, this is definitely a good thing.

Their equipment is trash - I no longer use their DVR or their cable modem because they are both fucking garbage. I built a media PC with an HD tuner / cable card set up that has already paid for itself by not having to "rent" their shit DVR box that I would have to reboot 2 or 3 times a week, at a 10-minute boot up time. I dumped their garbage "rented" cable modem because I'd have to power cycle it once a week or so, and replaced it with a $60 unit from Amazon that also actually increased throughput speed. That change will pay for itself in about 7 months.

They abuse DRM flagging on everything that isn't available with an over-the-air tuner. If you have to go to one of their offices to trade in equipment, or get replacement, schedule two hours because they only ever have one or two people at the counter, and there's a line of people waiting to trade in broken shit for stuff that isn't broken yet, but will be. They charge more for the same services from other cable providers, because they can - when you don't have any competition for high speed internet, you don't have to worry about other lines of business being threatened (satellite TV).

Fuck Time Warner. I hope this merger goes through and Charter fires the TWC management and starts cleaning up the huge mess they've left behind.