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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.
Surely Time Warner has learned the lesson of not being bought for funny money stock?
Because when AOL bought them with trumped up stock, somehow AOL was worth more than an entity with cable, programming,network infrastructure, move studios.
Somehow I wonder if Time Warner isn't selling the farm for a couple of magic beans (again).
And you can bet your ass this single entity will not do anything to lower prices or foster competition ... it will be more "we're screwing you because we can".
The only people this will be good for are executives who get huge severance packages. But I'm betting in the long run it hurts consumers, and quite possibly shareholders.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
The merger is a bad idea, Charter is a poorly managed company and has been for a long time. Management treats their technical employees with callous disregard for personal boundaries, does not recognize or reward technical expertise or professionalism and in my case, is in the habit of lying to job reference inquiries to the point of being criminal. This is just scratching the surface of what is wrong with this company. As an internet service provider, they are sub standard in terms of providing working, reliable equipment and they are notoriously slapdash with protecting their customer's privacy and options to protect their own privacy.
My bad experience at the company aside, if an entity cannot handle and demonstrate integrity in small things, it follows that they should not be trusted with larger responsibilities.
My view is they should split up the infrastructure and the content providers.
Perhaps the municipal governments having control of the infrastructure, and we can have a choice of ISPs and other content providers.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
This has been my proposal for a while now. It would solve, or at least provide choice in "Net Neutrality" issues, like that of Comcast v Netflix.
The problem is that nobody really wants to tackle the FIOS rollout that would be needed to make this work. However, I do believe it would work, and a small municipality, one that is geographically isolated, would be a great case study in how it would work.
The thing I believe most about this scenario is that we'll start to see new products and new services that are currently missing like "a la carte" ordering.
Agent K: A *person* is smart. People are dumb, stupid, panicky animals, and you know it.
It's easy to be cynical about this, but Time Warner is so customer surly that a ultra-huge mega-merger might actually be better for existing Time Warner customers.
For example: Time Warner abuses the broadcast flag / CCI DRM schemes to flag everything they legally can as "copy-once", locking out lots of DVR competition because the additional features don't work. Charter does not do this, and only flags content as "copy-once" or "do-not-copy" as contractually required by the content providers.
A Charter merger with Time Warner would make my service better and more enjoyable the instant they flip that bit to comply with Charter's current policy regarding CCI tagging because I would no longer be required to watch content only on the device that recorded it.
Time Warner is the worst cable company out there from a customer perspective. When the best news you get about someone providing you a service is that they are selling out to competition, that tells you how bad the service is.
Slashdot still doesnâ(TM)t support Unicode after it was added to the HTML standard in 1997.
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.
Slashdot still doesnâ(TM)t support Unicode after it was added to the HTML standard in 1997.
Government is NOT the answer in most cases
Most cases of what? Infrastructure? Government is the ONLY practical solution for a wide array of infrastructure projects. Roads, airports, passenger rail, ports, are all done primarily through governments. Telecom companies and utilities are typically private but heavily regulated. Power generation? Regulated. Bridges and dams? Regulated and contracted out. The blanket assertion that government is never the best option is not supported by the actual facts. Governments are often the best solution for when market incentives fail and they often fail in infrastructure which is what the internet has become.
Having government manage a rapidly change highly technical bit of infrastructure does not seem like a good idea to me.
That's why governments rarely do such things themselves. What happens is you pay taxes to the government and the government contracts out the services to a competitive bidding process among private companies. The government doesn't pave your roads (usually), it manages the company that does. The advantage of this is that the government's incentives are (more) aligned with the taxpayer and it provides a means to accomplish things that otherwise either wouldn't get done or would be done insufficiently or badly if profit motives were the only factor in play.
I have plenty of choices where I live. I can choose from Time Warner Cable, Time Warner Cable, Time Warner Cable, or even Time Warner Cable!
My sci-fi novel, Ghost Thief, is now available from Amazon.com.
I wonder what the legal cost of even attempting this merger is above and beyond the cost of acquiring assets/debt. Though I guess it's not nearly as much as a they gain by grabbing the huge monopoly if it goes though.
Doesn't matter. The consumer ends up paying for it in the end.
I honestly wish these mega-mergers in cable would just be stopped. Flat out.
And before someone starts quoting combined numbers of Comcast+TWC vs Charter+TWC, understand this. The final number of subscribers is largely irrelevant due to geographic monopoly.
We have enough of these mega-monopoly ISPs as it is. And all the mergers do is concentrate the money so they can afford bigger and bigger bribes to buy a permissive atmosphere in which the best interests of consumers/constituencies are not looked after.
And the only recourse? Try to vote out these money-grubbing incumbents with their newly marble-lined solid platinum warchests...
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!