There's No Evidence Comcast's New 'Network Investment' Is Because of Net Neutrality Repeal or Tax Cuts (vice.com)

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Motherboard: Comcast issued a statement last week claiming that the government's new tax plan and the end of net neutrality will directly result in a dramatic spike in Comcast's network investment and job creation plans. If you look at Comcast's capital investments over the past 12 months and calculate continued investment growth at current rates -- you'll find that Comcast was already on pace to spend more than $50 billion on investment over the next five years.

Journalists that could be bothered to take a closer look at Comcast's earnings discovered that the company's promise of $50 billion in investment over five years is something that would have occurred regardless of the net neutrality repeal or Comcast's shiny new tax cut. "In Q3 2017, the most recent quarter, Comcast's capital expenditures were $2.4 billion," noted Ars Technica's Jon Brodkin. "Continuing to spend at that rate, even if Comcast doesn't increase spending to account for inflation, would push Comcast to $9.6 billion a year or $48 billion over the next five years." Indeed; if you look at Comcast's capital investments over the past 12 months and calculate continued investment growth at current rates -- you'll find that Comcast was already on pace to spend more than $50 billion on investment over the next five years.

Comments

Re:Outcome

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm a conservative, and I hate Comcast, support net neutrality. However I also support tax cuts for corps. I don't have any illusion that all their tax saving will help the CEO's more than the employee's or their customers. But the bottom line is that we have the highest corporate tax rate in the world. If you want to compete we need to lower that.

The USA ranks number 1 in prison incarceration, debt, and taxes. This is not a good thing.

I notice you were quick to snipe on Conservatives, but were you able to criticize your buddy Obama when he gave a huge bone to the corporate CEO's of the insurance companies under the pretense that he was helping poor people. The honest to god truth is there is no difference between Republicans and Democrats. they all support their corporate campaign donors. Conservatives and Liberals need to ban together, find common ground and stop supporting the party oligarchs.

My favorite example of this

[rsilvergun]

is AT&T is going around telling everyone the bonuses they're giving out are due to their tax cut. Turns out the Union fought for a pay raise, lost, and took a one time bonus in lieu of a raise. The amount of gall on display there is stunning. It's a lie up there with Orwell's chocolate rations.

Re:These numbers cannot be correct

[LordKronos]

Conventional Slashdot wisdom dictates that Comcast, and all monopoly internet ISPs, have not, do not, and will not invest money in infrastructure upgrades. The monopoly status means they can coast in a non-competitive environment with current network technology while nickel and diming everyone to death. So obviously wherever they got their information that Comcast is spending money on infrastructure is complete BS. It just doesn't fit the narrative.

Keyword being monopoly. Comcast has always done upgrades....in areas where they don't have a monopoly. I've got 3 choices for cable providers, and comcast has always done a good job of providing upgrades to have the fastest speed options available. But the problem is when they DO have a monopoly. I remember one of the stories that was here on slashdot years ago. Some town only had Comcast as an option, but Comcast wouldn't upgrade them beyond 10Mbps (this was a while ago, and I don't recall the exact numbers, so forgive me if it's off). Then the town decided to setup a community ISP with 100Mbps service and.....oh, what's that? Comcast is now busting ass to offer 100Mbps service in that area much sooner than the community ISP can be up and running? Wow, what a surprise!!!!!!

Re:Outcome

[Daemonik]

I'm a conservative, and I hate Comcast, support net neutrality. However I also support tax cuts for corps. I don't have any illusion that all their tax saving will help the CEO's more than the employee's or their customers. But the bottom line is that we have the highest corporate tax rate in the world. If you want to compete we need to lower that.

The USA ranks number 1 in prison incarceration, debt, and taxes. This is not a good thing.

I notice you were quick to snipe on Conservatives, but were you able to criticize your buddy Obama when he gave a huge bone to the corporate CEO's of the insurance companies under the pretense that he was helping poor people. The honest to god truth is there is no difference between Republicans and Democrats. they all support their corporate campaign donors. Conservatives and Liberals need to ban together, find common ground and stop supporting the party oligarchs.

I've never understood the Conservative stance on the US's place in the world regarding taxes.. We're told socialism is teh evil, because high taxes.. but by your constant harping Democratic Capitalism has led to the highest taxes in the world. Yet most socialist countries seem to have universal health care and a pretty enviable quality of life in exchange for their high taxes compared to the US where we get more prisons, economic serfdom to a new Oligarchy and a forever war. And before anyone tosses out Venezuela or another failed dictatorship that cloaked itself in socialism, there's plenty of failed democracy's to pair that against, so don't even bother.

As for the tax breaks for insurance companies, nobody liked it then either, but it was the only way to get wide spread health care without the Republican nuclear explosion that expanding Medicare universally and having single payer would have done, so we accepted it as an at the time necessary mess. Thank a deity of your choice that Republicans are saving us from that, by doing even more to destroy health care accessibility and likely imploding Medicare at the same time, to pay for their cuts to the wealthy.

Re:These numbers cannot be correct

[Daemonik]

They were also simultaneously suing the community ISP to delay their build out while they were rushing to put in their own wire.

Re:If we don't believe Comcast

[Anonymous Coward]

Large tax breaks to corporations generally equate to those companies spending between 10 and 20% of the initial take on employees wages and bonus's. This is already known. The larger portion goes to dividends for stock holders and the rest is company cash assets. The fact that Comcast is claiming that the investment they have already been making is now due to the end of net neutrality is absurd at any level. I can claim that I'll pay my electric bill for the rest of the year because of net neutrality, so what.

You don't honestly believe that, do you?

[rsilvergun]

you simply can't be that naive. Nobody is. The bonuses were already decided on long before the tax bill (which was surprisingly uncertain, but in the end passed because the Republican's donors made it clear that if it didn't they weren't getting any more money). They'll use the $1.5 trillion in new debt as an excuse for entitlement 'reform', meaning they'll pocket our social security and medicare money. We got sold out. All of us. Unless you've got a silver spoon in your mouth you're in for a rude, rude awakening when you're 65 and dying of a completely preventable disease.

Re:Explanation can't be real because ...

[DaHat]

They also lacked specifics as to how Obama's NN rules made things worse.

Case in point... Comcast's bandwidth cap. 1 terabyte. You go over and you pay quite a bit for overages. Or for $50/month (at least in my area) more, you can have the cap removed. Already paying for the faster 'blast' speed tier? That just means you will hit the cap faster than those who don't.

Worse, this cap actually creates an environment beneficial to them and hostile to non Comcast streaming services... despite the rules.

Remember, the rules only covered internet traffic, on which Netflix, Hulu, HBO Now, YouTube all traverse. The dirty little secret of the latest generation of Comcast boxes, is that they are pretty simple boxes with a cable modem inside which streams all but live shows. Even the latest generation of DVRs don't have a hard drive inside, they just stream from a private cloud. While your binge watching of something on Netflix traverses the public internet and counts against your bandwidth cap... you binge watching something via the X1 platform and your Comcast provided set top box doesn't. Sure, both use DOCSIS to communicate to the head office... one exits to the public internet, the other remains on a private network.

This means that as data usage increases due to higher degrees of consumption, cord cutting, or 4k video from streaming services, your use of Comcast's services is essentially 'free', while you only have a limited capacity for the external providers.

Welcome to the world which NN created.

Re:If we don't believe Comcast

[drinkypoo]

So no actual evidence, just holding your hands over your ears and shouting "I don't believe you!"

It is literally the opposite. There is no actual evidence that these corporations will do what they say they will, and ample [historical] evidence that they will not. In fact, the available evidence says that when they say they will do something, they will do something else. You know, like when we paid them hundreds of millions of dollars to build out the last mile, and they gave the money to their executives as bonuses instead.

Seems pretty desperate, there.

You seem pretty desperate to support their narrative. Shareholder, or employee?

Another NN article? (Not moaning)

[houghi]

What amazes me is how long we are already fighting this. And once it is gone, we will never be able to get it back.

Here an article about it : https://www.dailykos.com/story...
Not so much the content is interesting, but the date. December 26th, 2010. twothousand-fucking-ten. And even if it won't happen now and the next two precidency terms are Dems, the one after that will be Rep again and they will go for it again. They only need to succeed once. We can never fail.

So I am actually a bit happy to see those articles. It means there is still a bit of hope.