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The AT&T-Time Warner Merger Must Be Stopped (backchannel.com)
New submitter mirandakatz writes: AT&T's proposed merger with Time Warner is evidence that AT&T doesn't ever plan to invest in fiber to the home, writes Susan Crawford at Backchannel -- and that's just one of many reasons the merger is a catastrophic idea. Crawford writes: "It's hard to think of a single positive thing this merger will accomplish, other than shining a bright light on just how awful the picture is for data transmission in this nation. This deal should be dead on arrival. In fact, AT&T should spare us by dropping the idea now. This merger must not happen."From the report: Think about it. AT&T sells wires to about 51 million homes, far more than any other telephone or cable company in the country. Because of its large presence in many markets, it overlaps with cable companies in many places -- AT&T overlaps with Comcast in 45 percent of Comcast's footprint and with Charter in 52 percent of its footprint. But, after a flurry of debunked press releases, it's totally clear that AT&T has no real interest in upgrading its copper networks to fiber to the home. Its capital expenditures keep going down, not up. (Would you trust the future to a company that doesn't see the need to increase investments in its core business, and instead is content to harvest profit from its subscribers?)
Will a corporate behemoth succumb to the needs of the people? NEVER!
Even Google isn't interested in fiber to the home at this point. It is very expensive. And they have billions of excess dollars lying around.
Nobody is doing fiber to the home, even Google has now bailed. It's way, way too expensive. Leverage the copper you already have in place that was built back when it didn't cost so much to do it.
A friend in France has often mentioned the high-speed internet connections in his city of Rennes.
It seems that the U.S. government has become weak. Citizens don't get protection from abusive activities of organizations. The rich are allowed to do anything they want.
Should the conversation be about breaking up AT&T and Time-Warner in order to create MORE competition in the marketplace not discussing a merger that would basically make the United States serviced by a single broadband provider (I assume that an AT&T/Comcast merger would quickly follow).
Sure, it overlaps with cable. But they will only sell you slow DSL. My cable runs at 150 Mbps. I could get AT&T at something between a claimed 6 and 15 Mbps. But I stream Netflix 4K (on a new Vizio display with 4K Google Cast built in) - which says it needs 25 Mbps. So AT&T isn't even in the competition. They overlap, but are non-starters.
AT&T has always been about "Fiber to the Press Release" coupled with "give us money".
I currently have Time Warner cable/internet/phone. I got tired of them always dropping my internet connection so I went to AT&T to see what they could do. I asked if I could get fiber to my house. They said no, they were not going to put in any more cable plant to existing homes. They only run fiber to newly built homes and even that was limited. So I called Time Warner and they have no plans on upgrading their cable plant and I called Verizon, same answer. Seems none of the major carriers are planning on retrofitting cable with fiber. AT&T is working on wireless technologies for data transmission. Not sure what the other companies have in mind. Seems to be a vacuum opening in the market for fiber to homes. If wireless is the way of the future then I want fiber speeds and capacity. How long do I have to wait for that? The thing that is the kicker in all of this, every cable and media company got federal money to upgrade all their infrastructure and yet none of them have done that. Your tax dollars at work.
You can't afford to buy Hilary. AT&T can. This merger is inevitable.
Time Warner is the entertainment wing. Think Warner Bros and the former Turner networks.
Time Warner Cable is the former cable wing that was spun off years ago and is now owned by Charter Cable. The only common ground was their name since it never changed it when they spun it off. That's why their changing their name to Spectrum now that Charter bought them.
This would have no effect on broadband. If anything it will make DirecTV cheaper (since they won't have to pay for the Turner channels anymore since they own them) and possibly other cable companies more expensive by raising the retransmission rates to Turner channels.
Still not good for consumers but its not going to kill broadband as we know it.
In Soviet Russia, Trojan exploits YOU!
Water, Electricity, Gas, Data - it's all at the same level of national importance.
The network should not be in the hands of a profit driven company.
Would you trust the future to a company that doesn't see the need to increase investments in its core business, and instead is content to harvest profit from its subscribers?
What exactly is your problem here? Just because you don't like AT&T is no reason to single them out for engaging in the standard acceptec business practices of all other major Corporations in America
Maybe you haven't paid attention, but for the last 20 years, the standard business practice is to commit fraud against the plebeian population of "wage slaves" in order to generate billions in profit against which they pay millions in "business costs" via "settlements" once their fraud is "exposed" and the DOJ gets involved
So why shouldn't this deal go through? AT&T needs to expand it's customer base in order to maximize potential profits on their existing and upcoming consumer frauds. Not allowing this deal to go through would put AT&T at a disadvantage by not allowing them to aquite a larger subscriber bases to milk profits from and instead deliberately hand those profits to their competitors
Me thinks Ms. Crawford is confused. The proposed merger is with TW, not TWC. TW is the content arm, owning such interesting properties as HBO, CNN, and of course the Warner Bros. Studios library.
The proposed merger is not with TWC, which is the infrastructure arm.
That said, the ATT / TW proposed merger is still a very, very bad idea. It's all about making money from giving their own content a free ride (or at least a less expensive ride) on ATT's infrastructure. That is, it's about killing off net neutrality.
But it's not about fiber vs. copper. Indeed, ATT just offered fiber on my street a few months ago. Because Google is currently stringing fiber on my street. While ATT got here first, I'm waiting (perhaps futilely) on Google.
People have had this opinion before. I have this opinion.
But it isn't news.
I support this merger. Things can't get worse. Well, unless they start charging me per minute fees for my landline.
But seriously, here in Seattle Comcast has the cable monopoly over most of the city and doesn't offer service to much of the city. CenturyLink is the telco monopoly, so they have no incentive to offer DSL to the entire city.
AT&T Is Selling Law Enforcement Access to Its Customers’ Data : MIT Technology Review https://www.technologyreview.c...
The actual article claims that the merger is evidence that AT&T will continue to pay no attention to its current broadband infrastructure, not that it's bringing in a broadband company to neglect. As such, its concerns are essentially that with a greater content-origin presence, AT&T will be in a better position to wring profits from its crappy network rather than fix it.
A bit of editing effort would have saved all of us the trouble of discussing something that wasn't said and isn't happening. At least they don't pay you guys squat.
If they don't eventually invest in fibre, companies like Google that are laying fibre will eventually eat their lunch.
Megatron must be stopped, no matter the cost.
These are businesses that are out to make a profit, not to do the right thing and equip people for the future. Why would anyone be surprised that AT&T would buy Time Warner because it would be a good idea for its customers??
Nobody ever made money merging with Time Warner. Memory of AOL/Time Warner grows dim as the worst corporate merger of all time. I buy AT&T for dividends. However, if the merger goes through, I am more than will to see AT&T customers bent over so I may make a profit.
It's time to put AT&T back in its place. What was done in the early 80s should be done again soon.
Campaign fund? That's so last century. They're going to make a big donation to her "charity" then pay her to give a speech no one wants to hear.
Why is fiber to the home needed? Copper is capable of much more than it's currently being used for.
"A plan fiendishly clever in its intricacies"- Homer Simpson
I've had Gigabit U-verse for almost a year now and am pretty happy with it. I routinely get 800Mb/sec up and down from wired connections and 250+ up and down on my AC wireless devices. I don't see how acquiring an entertainment company will impact fiber rollout. Someone needs to learn that you need to read the company's full name and not just the first 2 words.
AT&T wants to merge with Time Warner the media (content) company which is independent of Time Warner Cable Internet which already got merged into the new Spectrum provider. So they are not acquiring any last-mile bandwidth from this proposed merger.
I fail to see how acquiring content would reduce AT&T's desire to be a data carrier. It looks like diversification or a desire to get more income from entertainment than they can get from the ISP business. Owning content doesn't diminish their interest in having consumers hooked up with good access, nor does it suddenly make them want to have someone else profiting from data delivery instead of them.
fixed that for you. The problem is that the Sherman anti-trust act was set up to prevent anti-competitive monopolies within an industry. Time Warner is content while AT&T is delivery so there's no problem here except probably a few FCC mandates related to the handful of TV stations which most likely will be sold or given away to make the deal go through.
Of course, that doesn't mean it's not a problem or an effective monopoly. This large scale vertical integration is the same as what happened with Comcast / NBC Universal and to a lesser extent Disney/ABC and could and will most likely seriously hinder new entrants to a broad swath of services as well as dictate consumer and b2b pricing for programming on a mega scale.
For AT&T's part, this is their response to their loss of the natural monopoly they had in the 80's, which reformed into the near anti-competitive monopoly they have now but which is seriously threatened by the advent of mesh area networks which could in theory obviate the need for ISP's altogether. They are attempting to get the jump on this by developing it with an eye on controlling it themselves, and they will need very good content for one. I have no idea how they intend to charge for using your own devices but the overall goal is to eliminate all last mile wiring and maintenance and all the personnel that go with it which is a huge expense. This is why you now have a hard time ordering uVerse and are oversold on the cellular products and if you want old school pots service, you'd better take a gun.
I'll add to my previous comment to say that Google Fiber would have been a great threat that;s why it's sad to see them pull back.
^ Here's one of the idiots now, who won't even stop spamming. Google told the idiots to want Google Fiber, and they spammed "Google Fiber!" everywhere.
"Would you trust the future to a company that doesn't see the need to increase investments in its core business..."
Wireline service to the home is not AT&T's core business. It's merely a byproduct of the Baby Bells that are part of the company. AT&T's core business is wireless, whether cellular or satellite, and with net neutrality preventing them from charging Over The Top backbone hogs like Netflix, their only way to grow revenue from their network is to provide OTT content themselves. Time-Warner produces content. This merger is a result of Net Neutrality, and was entirely predictable to anyone who knows about the issue. Sadly, most of the people who fought for Net Neutrality didn't understand the issue at all.
Where I live - a semi-rural area outside of Austin TX (sadly *just* outside of Google Fiber's coverage area), there are only four ways to get Internet:
1) AT&T (their service is basically cellular-to-the-home - they don't own wires).
2) Time Warner Cable (they have cable TV wires to my home)
3) Dish Network (they have satellite for downloads and use AT&T cellular for uploads).
4) Carrier pigeons.
Since Dish is AT&T - if TWC gets merged into AT&T - then there is literally no other way to get online than to buy from them...or else, maybe, the pigeon thing.
That's intolerable.
The problem is that when AT&T own the area, it would cost an absolute fortune for someone like Google Fiber to come along and dig up all the streets to get some competition going. It's really not going to happen.
In my opinion, what's required is what it done with electricity supply in my area. We can buy electricity from half a dozen suppliers. Some are "green", some have better customer service, some are much cheaper. They all use the same copper wires that lead to my house though - so what's happening is that one company owns the wires and the others handle supply and customer support, etc. We never have to deal with the company that owns the wires. If there is a problem, we go to our "supplier" and they are responsible for fixing it. They take a portion of our electricity bill and pay the guys who own the wires for the capacity their customers consume.
That's what the Internet (and CableTV - which is really "the internet" these days) should be.
There should be companies who own the wires and the routers and such - and companies who handle pricing, bandwidth allocation, customer support and billing. Those guys can compete for my business.
www.sjbaker.org
Try https://tips.fbi.gov/. The FCC seems to have been commandeered by the NAWBOrg (http://www.nawbo.org/).
So now that we have the top 2 of the 2.5*, who's going to be biggest of the 0.5 in the content+distribution market? T-Mobile+Charter+Disney? Murdoch has to be in there someplace, but does he have the buck$ to compete with these others, especially when what's left for distribution is Verizon/Sprint/small cable companies?
* Law of 2.5: in a sufficiently unregulated market or territory, there will eventually be either a monopoly (which triggers regulation but is a comfortable place to be for the company that wins) or 2.5 competitors: 2 big ones that are roughly similar in size and product (and mostly just match each other on product and price, not competing), and others that collectively are about 0.5 of a big one.
For AT&T's part, this is their response to their loss of the natural monopoly they had in the 80's,
It would be silly to claim that they're thinking about something from almost four decades ago when they consider merging with Time Warner. AT&T from four decades ago is a very different company from what they are today.
And it wasn't a natural monopoly, it truly was a government-granted one. Even then, there were other local telcos. General Telephone, for example. They had to jump onto Ma Bell's long distance circuits to provide that service, however.
but which is seriously threatened by the advent of mesh area networks which could in theory obviate the need for ISP's altogether.
It is hard for them to be threatened by something that exists only "in theory" and will probably stay that way for a long time. A working mesh network requires a density of devices that isn't likely to happen outside a dense urban area, and even then the buildings necessary to pack that many people into an area would be a hindrance to the signals the network would need to work.
People are just not going to buy new wireless devices so they can donate their capacity to other people, and this will result in a limited throughput for those who do. The only way a mesh network will come about anytime soon is if an ISP does the installation and sells access.
our ruling class has convinced 35%-40% of the voting public that gov't can't work so that they could get tax cuts and run the gov't themselves unfettered by voters.
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Stop this Globalist/Fascist economic system I want to get off.
Gag me.
Got Geometrodynamics? Awe, too hard to figure out? Too bad.
Come back here and cry when orange hitler loses. Your tears are gonna be fucking epic.
Fiber to the home can be very fast. And if you're building a new network it's the way to go. But existing cable companies can do nearly as much with a fiber to the pole infrastructure, and do it without the expensive operation of running new fibers to every house.
Cable via DOCSIS 3.0 can already deliver 300Mbps to the home, using its maximum of 16 channel bonding. DOCSIS 4.0 will be able to deliver gigabit speeds. That should be fast enough for home use for quite a few years, and by the time it's no longer fast enough there will be a more advanced cable standard that can go even faster.
What would seem to be more limiting is that the total bandwidth of coaxial cable is lower. It won't be possible to deliver the existing bundle of local broadcast and cable channels (especially once they start upgrading to 4K) and gigabit internet at the same time, though changing to HEVC encoding rather than MPEG-2 will help a lot. Eliminating the wasteful practice of sending both SD and HD versions of the same channel will also help; next generation set top boxes will always receive the highest resolution version of the channel and downconvert as needed for the customer's TV. But it's not actually necessary to deliver all those cable channels to your house simultaneously; you only need to receive the ones you are watching or recording. The key will be a smarter in-home box that interacts with the device on the pole; the pole then only sends the active channels to your house. Users will be able to self-install the new smart box, eliminating the expense of sending out technicians.
The problem is that AT&T also isn't making the investment in doing that. They're basically letting the technology of their wired networks stagnate. I'm not in love with Comcast and I think the Comcast-NBC merger should have also been blocked, but at least they are actively upgrading their network and testing next-generation solutions.
This Susan bint seems like a spaz. ATT just installed fiber in my neighborhood 2 months ago, and now I'm running at ludicrously fast speeds.Comcast was all butthurt, trying to offer a competing "faster" service after I dropped them after 5 years of shoddy "fast" net access. When they realized their own 2gigabit service wasn't available in my area, they gave up. ATT didn't even try to waste time using my existing in house connections (which sucked) and just drilled a new hole through the wall and straight into a modem. Couple days later, they came back and buried everything.