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AT&T Promised Lower Prices After Time Warner Merger -- It's Raising Them Instead (arstechnica.com)
Less than a month after AT&T completed its $85 billion acquisition of Time Warner, the company is raising the base price of its DirecTV Now streaming service by $5 per month. This comes after promising in court that its acquisition would lover TV prices. Ars Technica reports: AT&T confirmed the price increase to Ars and said it began informing customers of the increase this past weekend. "The $5 increase will go into effect July 26 for new customers and varies for existing customers based on their billing date," an AT&T spokesperson said. The $5 increase will affect all DirecTV Now tiers except for a Spanish-language TV package, AT&T told Ars. That means the DirecTV Now packages that currently cost $35, $50, $60, and $70 a month will go up to $40, $55, $65, and $75. "To continue delivering the best possible streaming experience for both new and existing customers, we're bringing the cost of this service in line with the market -- which starts at a $40 price point," AT&T said.
In a court filing, trying to convince the Justice Department that its acquisition would be good for consumers, AT&T had this to say: "The evidence overwhelmingly showed that this merger is likely to enhance competition substantially, because it will enable the merged company to reduce prices, offer innovative video products, and compete more effectively against the increasingly powerful, vertically integrated 'FAANG' [Facebook, Apple, Amazon, Netflix, and Google] companies," AT&T told U.S. District Judge Richard Leon in the brief.
In a court filing, trying to convince the Justice Department that its acquisition would be good for consumers, AT&T had this to say: "The evidence overwhelmingly showed that this merger is likely to enhance competition substantially, because it will enable the merged company to reduce prices, offer innovative video products, and compete more effectively against the increasingly powerful, vertically integrated 'FAANG' [Facebook, Apple, Amazon, Netflix, and Google] companies," AT&T told U.S. District Judge Richard Leon in the brief.
I know it's difficult for left-wingers like yourself who have never even tried to run a sustainable, nevermind a profitable, business to understand this, but the lack of competition within the telecom industry is solely due to the extensive regulation that effectively makes it impossible for new entrants to participate in the market. Before you start with the 'natural monopoly' nonsense regarding infrastructure, you should realize that the only monopoly involved and causing problems is that of the government and its oppressive regulation. Technological difficulties can be overcome, even by relatively small players. Regulatory difficulties, on the other hand, are far worse to deal with, and in the telecom sector are nearly impossible to overcome except by the very largest players, and even they often experience extreme hardship. We see the problems we have today because left-wing regulatory schemes have paralyzed the market, resulting in the formation of an oligopolistic environment where the consumer ultimately suffers.
"Wrong. Free markets evolve towards consolidation and the only thing that prevents that is government regulation."
This is not actually true. You are blaming free-market for something that greed through "capitalism" is guilty of. If you are going to blame something blame the right thing instead of the wrong thing.
Additionally, the FCC is defacto on record as stating that they are going to regulate telco's as natural monopolies. This has the opposite effect of regulation preventing the monopoly and instead it is now blessing these monopolies. And now that the government approves of the monopoly the government is not going to challenge them anymore. This leaves the monopolies with loads of money and power to subvert the regulatory agencies just as it did the FCC and Ajit Pai.
The take away here is that, through regulation you jumped right to approving of monopoly while saying you need regulation in place to "prevent" them. See right through you, we do!
"The takeaway here is that the concept of an unrestricted free market fundamentally stabilizes on a highly undesirable state of affairs from a societal point of view."
Two things, you are falsely equivocating with the fact that a free-market and what he said. He did not mention free market anywhere in the post, he just said your methods strengthened "an oligopolistic environment where the consumer ultimately suffers." which is true.
The FCC for decades has never challenged the Monopolies, in fact none of the democrats challenge the monopolies from time to time any more than the republicans. Rarely to either ever attempt to dismantle the monopolies they just try to control them in different ways.
/. headline sez: "AT&T Promised Lower Prices After Time Warner Merger -- It's Raising Them Instead"
Yet I am unable to find the word "promise" in the quote from AT&T's filing. Someone tell me, which word in the passage below is a synonym for promise?
"The evidence overwhelmingly showed that this merger is likely to enhance competition substantially, because it will enable the merged company to reduce prices, offer innovative video products,"