111–120 of 332 posts
If this merger goes thru, (and the AnitTrust people would have to be really asleep at the wheel for that) two things are certain: 1) Americans can expect some of the worst Cable price gouging they have ever seen 2) NetFlix, Amazon Prime et al will become really popular as a result of all the customers saying "FU ComcastWarner"
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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 importa…
Cable companies spend $17 billion a year on CapEx, and telecom services, excluding wireless, spend another $46 billion more. http://pages.stern.nyu.edu/~adamodar/New_Home_Page/datafile/... . That's a lot of money for companies that are just resting on the publicly subsidized networks they built in the 1980s... Snark aside, most of the modern hybrid fiber-coax network that cable companies actually use today were built…
I am 100% sure that someone like Google will shark behind these people and drive them out of business.
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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
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Cable companies spend $17 billion a year on CapEx, and telecom services, excluding wireless, spend another $46 billion more. http://pages.stern.nyu.edu/~adamodar/New_Home_Page/datafile/... . That's a lot of money for companies that are just resting on the publicly subsidized networks they built in the 1980s... Snark aside, most of the modern hybrid fiber-coax network that cable companies actually use today were built…
Utility (general), which I believe ~ electric co's, spends $31 billion. Absolute numbers don't tell you anything; maintaining even a completely static infrastructure costs something.
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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 importa…
Cable companies spend $17 billion a year on CapEx, and telecom services, excluding wireless, spend another $46 billion more. http://pages.stern.nyu.edu/~adamodar/New_Home_Page/datafile/... . That's a lot of money for companies that are just resting on the publicly subsidized networks they built in the 1980s... Snark aside, most of the modern hybrid fiber-coax network that cable companies actually use today were built…
I was going to ask what revenue they were bringing in with that CapEx. Am I right in thinking this means they're bringin in $34,000 million from sales and spending only $17 million on infrastructure. That doesn't look like "a lot of money" in relative terms - I must be misreading those figures?
I would welcome this merger. Give them 3 months, and let them demonstrate why the telecom monopoly is bad for business, consumers, and America.
You think Standard Oil is going to be repeated?
Not a chance. The Republican Party/side of the country would probably be more likely to rebel at the idea of such “government interference in the private sector”, especially on such a grand scale.
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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.
I 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".
The courts having upheld a decision on what the current law says doesn't really preclude the passing of a new law - the only time court decisions trump legislation is when the Constitution comes into play.
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Cable companies spend $17 billion a year on CapEx, and telecom services, excluding wireless, spend another $46 billion more. http://pages.stern.nyu.edu/~adamodar/New_Home_Page/datafile/... . That's a lot of money for companies that are just resting on the publicly subsidized networks they built in the 1980s... Snark aside, most of the modern hybrid fiber-coax network that cable companies actually use today were built…
Net Cap Ex / Sales = 0.05% ? I was going to ask what revenue they were bringing in with that CapEx. Am I right in thinking this means they're bringin in $34,000 million from sales and spending only $17 million on infrastructure. That doesn't look like "a lot of money" in relative terms - I must be misreading those figures?