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Comcast Lowered Cable Investment Despite Net Neutrality Repeal (arstechnica.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Comcast's cable division spent 3 percent less on capital expenditures last year, despite promises that the repeal of net neutrality rules would boost broadband network investment. Comcast's cable division spent $7.95 billion on capital expenditures during calendar year 2017, but that fell to $7.72 billion in the 12 months ending on December 31, 2018. Comcast's overall capital expenditures went up 2.3 percent, from $9.6 billion in 2017 to $9.8 billion in 2018. But that company-wide capital expenditure number includes the Comcast-owned NBCUniversal, which spent $1.7 billion in 2018, a 15.2 percent increase, "primarily reflecting investment at Theme Parks," Comcast said.
The cable capital expenditure statistic thus provides a more accurate picture of whether Comcast increased or decreased investment in its broadband network. Cable capital expenditures as a percentage of Comcast's cable revenue dropped from 15 percent in 2017 to 14 percent in 2018. Comcast's network spending should have risen in 2018 if predictions from Federal Communications Commission Chairman Ajit Pai and Comcast had been correct. Pai's net neutrality repeal took effect in June 2018. But the vote to repeal net neutrality rules was in December 2017, and Pai claimed in February 2018 that the repeal was already causing increased broadband investment. While Comcast's cable capital expenditures did rise year over year in the fourth quarter, from $2.15 billion to $2.32 billion, it wasn't enough to offset the full-year decline. Ars Technology also notes: "The corporate tax cut implemented as 2018 began also didn't stop job cuts at Comcast and AT&T, despite promises that the tax cut would create new jobs."
The cable capital expenditure statistic thus provides a more accurate picture of whether Comcast increased or decreased investment in its broadband network. Cable capital expenditures as a percentage of Comcast's cable revenue dropped from 15 percent in 2017 to 14 percent in 2018. Comcast's network spending should have risen in 2018 if predictions from Federal Communications Commission Chairman Ajit Pai and Comcast had been correct. Pai's net neutrality repeal took effect in June 2018. But the vote to repeal net neutrality rules was in December 2017, and Pai claimed in February 2018 that the repeal was already causing increased broadband investment. While Comcast's cable capital expenditures did rise year over year in the fourth quarter, from $2.15 billion to $2.32 billion, it wasn't enough to offset the full-year decline. Ars Technology also notes: "The corporate tax cut implemented as 2018 began also didn't stop job cuts at Comcast and AT&T, despite promises that the tax cut would create new jobs."
Far more difficult, accurate, convenient, and nuanced than hyperbole
"The corporate tax cut implemented as 2018 began also didn't stop job cuts at Comcast and AT&T, despite promises that the tax cut would create new jobs."
Are there still idiots around that believe corporations hire people because they have more cash on hand?
The only reason that cable companies have given for Net Neutrality is that they will increase investment in infrastructure if they have a financial incentive.
when big companies say good things will happen when laws and regulations get changed for their benefit, they're lying.
Except everything I've seen reported so far showed that cable investment went up when net neutrality came in, then went down again after it was repealed. There's correlation.
> An ISP that stops investing, is an ISP that stagnate and risk losing their place in the market when another ISP shows up and has better stuff to offer.
Which literally cannot happen in many parts of the country because ISPs have an effective monopoly. They don't invest because they don't have to... the next option is probably DSL or Satellite and both of those options are garbage even compared to modest Cable/Fiber. Result? Extortion prices for Cable/Fiber that's still sub-par compared to elsewhere.
Now you've lost NN which means they can now legally combat competition for digital services, which otherwise aren't burdened with the high cost of infrastructure roll-out. They can charge you extortion prices for shit service AND their would-be digital service competitors extortion prices for access to you as a customer. It's lose-lose!
=Smidge=
If X is promised in return for Y, then if You is delivered and X isn't, correlation under other circumstances is irrelevant. The fact is, Comcast lied.
Like we all knew they would.
They will suffer no penalties, only customers do that, and it'll get justified by their fanboys.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
DSL is only crap because phone companies don;t want to keep up their copper networks.
Cell service is far more profitable, they get to charge exorbitant rates for data and sell everyone in the house a phone plan.
Where I am outside of Vancouver BC, DSL is fine. I have 75 down/10 up internet service and I usually exceed those rates by 10% or so.
Thank God I don't have to deal with them anymore. Their cable circuit was at most a backup. It was still broken most of the time.
Corporatism != Free Market
Companies invest when they are optimistic about the future health and potential revenue growth of their organization. Take Amazon, Netflix for example. The majority of Comcast's corporate portfolio are in shrinking industries.
Subtitled "I've just shat myself in surprise!"
"Oh my God. This is terrible. This is the end of my Presidency. I'm fucked."; ~ Donald J. Trump
Agreed. Problem is all the anti-net neutrality people kept saying we had to get rid of it because it stifles investment, and as soon as its gone we'll enter a golden age where everyone has the most super internet access ever.
As with most promises that everything will be fantastic if we just let giant corporations do whatever they like, none of the promised benefits ever appear.
Here is how it works dipstick. Not only will they cut investment, they will purposefully create dark fibre, fibre that does nothing. This to overload traffic, so unfortunately sic traffic shaping must occur, shame about that and with the traffic shaping comes corporate censorship of everyone and inflated prices. Lobbyist blocking open competition, lies about it being too expensive to run cable, reduced overall bandwidth, forcefully increasing competition for access to services and not the other way round, this to inflate prices and bring in lots and lots and lots of traffic shaping ie corporate controlled censorship, corporate boardrooms deciding what you can and can not say on their internet, even in private conversations. This as a factual conspiracy between the US government, the deep state and the shadow government, they are shutting the internet down, with the backing of M$ and Google and of course a cabal of incumbent telecoms, oh yeah. Really sick stuff, dreamt up by psychopaths to retain power, corrupt as fuck and Pai the shite eating cunt, the number one pathetic quisling, what a fucking worthless lamearse. MS newsguard, yeah, guarding you from the news, keeping the truth from you, guard dogs for the establishment and they have the power to single you out on updates and shut you down.
Chaos - everything, everywhere, everywhen
You really have to do some mental gymnastics to correlate the the two subjects.
Not if you work in advertising...
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
Wall cable tv might be dieing, but the infrastructure can be used for other services, like internet. Old nimes die hard do we still xall the companies cabke tv beacause that is what they started wit, i doubt xerox sells many copiers ( as a cut of their rotal saleas any more, but still a lot of people use xeroxing as a psynonym for copiing
Why should they be expected to foot the bill for funding a network that increasingly enables streaming services to compete with them and undermine their profitability?
Comcast isn't primarily an internet company, they're a cable company. Wouldn't expect internet rules to overwhelm the effect of their cable capital spending. I suppose it would be too much work to look at Internet companies overall, rather than choosing a single cable company.
The party of stupid and the party of evil get together and do something both stupid and evil, then call it bipartisan.
What did that have to do with the topic of the article? Nothing. Then why include it? Why, to grind a political ax of course!
Did you expect anything else?
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
No, they don't invest because they don't have to invest. They are protected by a natural monopoly, so they don't have to invest.
Tell that to Comcast and Pai. The former claimed it, and the latter swallowed it hook, line, and sinker.
That is not capitalism.
OK. So?
Seriously, very few companies make products because they have a passion for it. Even if a company was started that way, what business schools teach, loses any of that value derived from making a product out of passion.
Somehow or another, this braindead idea seems to have entered into the schools that teach business: A business is about making money, the actual method of making that money is not terribly important, just the act of making money is important. So a car company is not a car company, it is a company that makes money by building cars.
So here we have a company. Its method of making money revolves around ... who cares what it revolves around? It doesn't matter. The only thing that matters is refining the process to gouge the maximum amount of money out of the service they provide.
So from this vantage point, what do you think Comcast is going to do if they can devise a way to gouge more money out of people? They will do it.
How do you think the Comcast executives sees the infrastructure that provides their method of making money? It is a cost center. Money should come in, never out, so maintenance will always be perpetually underfunded. Money in, no money out.
This is a hyper-refined veiwpoint that has its uses, but to insist that every executive think like this? Absolute madness. Can you imagine how fucked up the world would be if every business acted like this? Oh wait, we don't need to imagine. I don't like this world.
"Someone needs to talk to the tree of liberty about its ghoulish drinking problem." by ohnocitizen
I wouldn't even say they lied. They uttered some words in response to other words but the meanings of any of those words is not relevant. How can you lie if you did not intend to deceive?
We all know that Comcast is a huge money oriented business. Most of Comcast doesn't even exist to deal with communications and other things that people give them money for. Most of Comcast exists to ensure that the flow of money is the largest that it could possibly be. The services that they provide to get that money to begin with are irrelevant. The only thing that matters is getting more money. It doesn't matter how, why, who, or anything. Money MUST come in. That is all that matters.
Such a sick way to run a business... and I don't mean "sick" the way it used to mean, as in like "cool" or something. I mean sick as in diseased and dying.
"Someone needs to talk to the tree of liberty about its ghoulish drinking problem." by ohnocitizen
Problem is all the anti-net neutrality people kept saying we had to get rid of it because it stifles investment, and as soon as its gone we'll enter a golden age where everyone has the most super internet access ever.
No. The anti-net neutrality people wanted network neutrality gone. They said some words about infrastructure or whatever to try and convince you but those words held no meaning for them then and it is obvious that those words have no meaning for them now. They just wanted impediments to vacuuming up money to be removed. Whatever words they had to utter in order to make it so are irrelevant. I have no idea why anyone "believed" these amoral bloodsucking parasites. We all should know that words hold no meaning for them, just money.
"Someone needs to talk to the tree of liberty about its ghoulish drinking problem." by ohnocitizen
I love it when a comment which directly addresses the topic is moderated as "off topic".
The topic is about a small reduction in capital expenditures in one Comcast business area.
I provided the explanation as to why this was expected and reported on nearly a year ago.
BZZZZZZZT! OFF TOPIC!!!
My mistake, clearly Comcast made the business decision to cut 3% from almost 8 billion dollars "despite net neutrality repeal".
What do you mean, "No"? You just said the same thing I said?
No, but I would stop giving them billions of dollars of tax payer money and start regulating them as utilities.
The CEO class is lining their own pockets with tax cut profits. Their personal stock grants have multiplication factors leveraging stock price increases. They have raised their compensation by factors over 100%, perhaps as high as 500%.
Why is Snark Required?
You are lying with statistics: CNN Sept 17 2018
For the first time in a decade, Corporate America is steering more money into stock buybacks than investing in the future.
The CEO class is lining their own pockets with tax cut profits. Their personal stock grants have multiplication factors leveraging stock price increases. They have raised their compensation by factors over 100%, perhaps as high as 500%.
I quoted the Comcast annual report numbers on capital expenditures. The CNN link you sent adds nothing to that.