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.

Comments

It can't be

[narcc]

I'm in total shock. Who could have possibly seen this coming?

Re: It can't be

[irving47]

Hell, I own stock/get AT&T dividends, and not even I'm buying that crap.

Re: It can't be

[alongley]

My recollection is that there used to be hundreds of little ISPs that served the Internet up over dial-up phone lines. Over time of course the state of the art became DSL, coax cable and fiber. The broadband infrastructure is and was always owned by a variety of big companies. But the bottom line is that for one reason or the other all the small ISPs have been bought up by the big players, the Bells have been remerged into AT&T due to deregulation, and there has been considerable consolidation in the cable space, leaving most consumers without a lot of choice. AT&T in the summary essentially parrots this. No one is doubting that there is regulation, but I would need to see something more than your post to draw any conclusions about whether lots of regulation keeps little guys from starting ISP businesses or if it's really just the big companies being anti-competitive. Certainly there used to be lots of little ISPs but perhaps the landscape has shifted to much more regulation in the last 15 years? By all means, back up your post with some substance.

Re: It can't be

[dinfinity]

Wrong. Free markets evolve towards consolidation and the only thing that prevents that is government regulation.

Do you think it is a coincidence that all mature markets are highly consolidated? The oligopolies you speak of are the (crappy) compromises of the free market desire for monopolies and the people's desires for perfect competition.

Another topic herein is the concept of 'cartel forming'. It's a dirty term, even for libertarians, yet it is utterly rational behavior from the perspective of the companies involved. In fact, in other areas of life, we would use words like 'alliance' and 'cooperation' to characterize the behavior. Buying up competing companies or trampling them is equally rational from the perspective of the companies and thus that is exactly what they will do, given the opportunity.

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.

Now, having established that, finding a good way to deal with it is hard. Asking companies to 'take their responsibility', semirandomly blasting them with huge antitrust fines or breaking up companies above a certain size seem like terrible workarounds to me. One of the more creative ideas I've come across is taxing companies progressively based on their dominance in their respective market(s), but that too seems far from flawless.

Re: It can't be

[sjames]

If you think right of way is hard now, try doing it without government, that is, by negotiating individually with each and every property owner in the area you intend to serve.

Re: It can't be

[Required Snark]

Stop masturbating to your picture of Ajit Pai and listen up, you right wing tool. Since Ronald Reagan the Republican Party has been successfully trying to eliminate all Federal regulation on big business and this is the inevitable result. We live in a country run by and for the Telco cartel, the pharmaceutical cartel (currently killing Americans by pushing legal opioids), the agribusiness cartel (just gone international now that Bayer purchased Monsanto), the bank cartel (Wells Fargo is the bank equivalent of a child molester who keeps on hurting kids because his uncle is the judge), Wall Street in general (who almost wrecked the word economy in 2008, was bailed out at the expense of everyone else, including you, and is now making even larger profits, and now has lower taxes and even less regulation.)

The Democrats, feckless as they may be, are the opposition against the slide into plutocracy and oligarchy. To call them out shows that you are a committed fascist.

Why don't you get the hell out of my country and live in Russia under Putin? He embodies the corrupt centralization of power that you endorse. Your would fit right in.

Re: It can't be

[AmiMoJo]

Most countries solve this with "local loop unbundling". Basically the company that owns the phone lines and telephone exchanges has to offer access to other companies for the same price it charges itself. Other companies can install their own hardware at the local exchange (an ADSL DSLAM box) and offer internet service to anyone who wants it.

It's not perfect because the company that owns the lines tends to be really really shit at maintaining them, but at least you have a choice of ISPs.

I'm shocked

[MightyMartian]

I'm shocked, I tell you, shocked!

Words Matter

[Anonymous Coward]

'enable to reduce' does not mean 'will reduce'. Stop reading what you want to see and instead read what's actually there.

Re:Words Matter

[novakyu]

Frankly at this point, anybody who expected a good-faith action from AT&T deserves what they got. AT&T will not keep any of its implied promises unless they are contractually bound to perform it—and even then, it will probably get its lawyers working on a way to find a loophole.

Libz Predicted it & Conservatives will blame L

[corezz]

Every liberal economic pundit predicted this would happen. Simple economics.

Most conservatives eagerly yearned for this merger and a conservative judge allowed it to proceed. Now they are blaming Liberals for letting the merger happen. The only question this time around is, will conservatives blame Mexico or a non-white group of people for the rise in prices. That's always what it comes down to.

I promise to fuck harder!

[Tyr07]

Dear Consumers.

I understand lately you have had multiple choices from different providers, so we couldn't fuck you as hard as we wanted to because you would just switch. We're tired of this game where only one company gets to fuck you a little bit, then you switch and they get to fuck you a little bit.

Well, we're increasing the value of our offer and the quality of it. We're making sure that you don't have to worry about strange partners fucking you, or unknown STDs.

This way you're certain to be fucked by only us, and you'll know what kind of fucking you'll get, no surprises.

Even though those other companies we listed as threats actually have no control of your internet access, just in case, we made sure we fucked you first. We all know you don't forget your first fucking, and we're there all the way.

Sincerely,
AT&T.

P.S We said you would be the only one we would love. We lied, we were fucking other people while fucking you. You consumers always fall for that.

Re:AT&T has this history...

[ilsaloving]

And those who do learn from history are doomed to watch everyone else repeat it.