Less competition, higher prices and worse service for those who will be unlucky enough to be in the area where there is no choice but to use these cable ISPs...
Comcast Acquiring Time Warner Cable In All Stock Deal Worth $45.2 Billion
71–80 of 332 posts
Re: Comcast Acquiring Time Warner Cable In All Stock Deal Worth $45.2 Billion
#72Dear HN: I'm not too familiar with the situation over there, and have what might be a dumb question.
Are there any companies that will benefit from this because they're already on their way to roll out their own lines? I'm thinking about things like Google Fiber, companies that are providing their own network to deliver internet over.
Re: Comcast Acquiring Time Warner Cable In All Stock Deal Worth $45.2 Billion
#73Earlier quoted context omitted.
Building the expensive infrastructure that Silicon Valley depends on to get its cat videos and advertisements to users is a low value add, rent seeking concern that doesn't benefit from economies of scale? Its exactly the opposite.
Does economy of scale start to level out above, say, 11 million customers?
There's no practical reason why there needs to be say more than one team of cable network architects in the whole country. If an architecture works okay in Philadelphia, it should port pretty easily to Chicago. The stuff that needs boots on the ground, laying cable, doing installations, and servicing them, is already outsourced to local companies.
Re: Comcast Acquiring Time Warner Cable In All Stock Deal Worth $45.2 Billion
#74I can't wait until we finally get around to relegating broadband providers as common carriers. At the very least, we need a broadband version of Glass-Steagall, which forces ISPs, cable companies, and content providers to be separate entities. The current situation is laughably awful for consumers. I can't imagine a single informed customer actually supporting the status quo.
Not going to happen:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Cable_%26_Telecommunic...
Just wait till Aereo gets screwed in their Supreme Court case. Then we really will be.
In fact no matter which way they rule in Aereo's case we are screwed. If they rule in favor of Aereo the content companies (Comcast owns NBC) will just start taking content "cable only".
Re: Comcast Acquiring Time Warner Cable In All Stock Deal Worth $45.2 Billion
#75Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 2) NetFlix, Amazon Prime et al will become really popular as a result of all the customers saying "FU ComcastWarner" I agree with your first point, but your second point doesn't follow. If anything, Comcast will price gouge Netflix out of business, and we'll be back to being stuck watching their awful "On Demand" instead. They can do this, because Comcast owns the content (NBC), the delivery mechanism for said cont…
To play devil's advocate, what it means is that Comcast has the better business model. After all, that's why Apple and Samsung dominate the cellular industry. iApps running on iOS running on an iPhone using an Apple A7 offers the ability to optimize the user experience and integrate the layers that vendors doing things piecemeal can't match. If Netflix et al want to survive, they have to evolve from being mere middle…
Except people often have no choice about which ISP they can use, whereas people have at least some choices in the mobile phone space.
Re: Comcast Acquiring Time Warner Cable In All Stock Deal Worth $45.2 Billion
#76Earlier quoted context omitted.
Another problem is that Comcast is an internet provider for a lot of people. It's actually my only option right now, so if I want to access that Netflix subscription, I still need to pay Comcast, so point 1) will make that all the worse since it's already clear they throttle heavily on Netflix, this will only make the degraded experience even more expensive.
Looks like a VPN service for a few dollars more could let people circumvent the throttling.
Sort of. I stream from Apple TV so this doesn't work for me and it shouldn't be required :P
Re: Comcast Acquiring Time Warner Cable In All Stock Deal Worth $45.2 Billion
#77It would be insane to let this go through. They're both effectively monopolists in most markets they serve; allowing them to combine just allows them to exert more political influence to make sure they keep their monopoly and high profit margins. Their core business is very much a low-value-added, rent-seeking concern, which doesn't benefit from economies of scale except for in as much as they can increase their mark…
Building the expensive infrastructure that Silicon Valley depends on to get its cat videos and advertisements to users is a low value add, rent seeking concern that doesn't benefit from economies of scale? Its exactly the opposite.
The most valuable infrastructure that Comcast and Time Warner run is ye olde copper coax lines in the "last mile", often built a long time ago and at a large public subsidy (either explicit or implicit via a grant of monopoly). What little infrastructure investment they do make (eg, laying fiber) is a result of actual competition, which would be lessened by the merger.
By way of analogy, having clean water is important, but water infrastructure is not high-value-added ("buy Water Premium Max Plus! only 79.99/month!"); it's a basic utility. The alternative to Comcast isn't "no internet", it's a public utility wire-owner. Which would provide roughly the same level of service that Comcast actually provides, in the vast majority of areas.
And exploiting a monopoly on infrastructure is almost the Platonic ideal of rent-seeking.
Re: Comcast Acquiring Time Warner Cable In All Stock Deal Worth $45.2 Billion
#78Earlier quoted context omitted.
To play devil's advocate, what it means is that Comcast has the better business model. After all, that's why Apple and Samsung dominate the cellular industry. iApps running on iOS running on an iPhone using an Apple A7 offers the ability to optimize the user experience and integrate the layers that vendors doing things piecemeal can't match. If Netflix et al want to survive, they have to evolve from being mere middle…
Google has threatened to go nuclear over net neutrality and open up their dark fiber network should things get ugly. Google has more fiber than most any one single company in the us and could be a legitimate threat should comwarner try to call their bluff. I have a feeling google would win that fight
I would love to see Google enter that fight instead of trying to regulate their competition away. Not because I'm that anti regulation, but because I don't appreciate the irony of Silicon Valley always bitching about regulation, but then demanding that the government create an artificial reality where owning the pipes doesn't give you a natural competitive advantage.
Re: Comcast Acquiring Time Warner Cable In All Stock Deal Worth $45.2 Billion
#79This is bad
Re: Comcast Acquiring Time Warner Cable In All Stock Deal Worth $45.2 Billion
#80Earlier quoted context omitted.
To play devil's advocate, what it means is that Comcast has the better business model. After all, that's why Apple and Samsung dominate the cellular industry. iApps running on iOS running on an iPhone using an Apple A7 offers the ability to optimize the user experience and integrate the layers that vendors doing things piecemeal can't match. If Netflix et al want to survive, they have to evolve from being mere middle…
Google has threatened to go nuclear over net neutrality and open up their dark fiber network should things get ugly. Google has more fiber than most any one single company in the us and could be a legitimate threat should comwarner try to call their bluff. I have a feeling google would win that fight
This would be fun to watch unfold.