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AT&T promised lower prices after Time Warner merger, but it’s raising them

arstechnica.com

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Re: AT&T promised lower prices after Time Warner merger, but it’s raising them

#31

Post by tyfon »

drcode wrote: post #27
tyfon wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is also almost always bad for shareholders when companies are merged. Let's say there are two competing companies, I could myself as an investor chose where to put my money, in one or the other or both. When they merge I lose the ability to place my money how I see fit. As my professor/dean in financial economics said: If you get to vote on a merger, always vote no!

This seems to assume that the conjoined entity is exactly equivalent in terms of efficiency and market power to the previous two separate entities- That's a pretty radical assumption and it seems you'd have to give some evidence to explain why this would be the case.

I don't have any evidence other than anecdotal and theories.

I used to work in a bank that merged with another and the amount of inefficiencies, double teams/management and general disgruntlement was staggering. I left and so did most of the ones capable of finding new jobs. The ones that stayed behind were not the highest performers.

Another one is from macro economics. When two companies compete they tend to be very efficient but when they merge they have no more incentives to compete to attract customers. The result is higher prices to customers and lower effectiveness. Imagine what would happen if Intel bough AMD.

But the main issue is that I want to manage my investments myself and not let the companies manage it for me by merging.

Re: AT&T promised lower prices after Time Warner merger, but it’s raising them

#32

Post by dfee »

rayiner wrote: post #20

Brodkin's article takes the relevant "promise" quite out of context: https://www.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.dcd.191339/... (see page 1). The full quotation is: > As to its price-increase theory, the government itself conceded that the merger would cause prices to go down for millions of AT&T customers nationwide. The government’s own “bargaining model” likewise showed a price decrease for all consumers, onc…

This kind of crap is why I dropped ArsTechnica from my RSS feed after 11 years.

Re: AT&T promised lower prices after Time Warner merger, but it’s raising them

#33

Post by tempfs »

AT&T carries directly or peers with basically every other major internet carrier in the country.

This makes them defacto critical national security infrastructure and thus completely immune to the kind of recourse and accountability that all corporations should be subject to.

The technicality of being an independent and non-governmental entity allows them to collect and in turn share back[to the NSA] information about the traffic that crosses their fabric circumventing those pesky laws which purportedly prohibit the NSA from operating within our borders and inspecting local-only traffic.

AT&T is only going to be checked by legislation now as it has always been. The last time they were broken up they magically reassembled themselves because voters allowed it.

Until we as a country decide that communication infrastructure, like roads, can't be owned by quasi public/private abominations like AT&T but instead only held by us, the people and our government we will continue to get the worst from this present unholy union.

Re: AT&T promised lower prices after Time Warner merger, but it’s raising them

#34

Post by glitcher »

I'm more surprised that such a "promise" is given any credibility in court to begin with. I'm not familiar with the law, but from my naive understanding a company can basically decide to change their pricing however/whenever they want. So how does stating to a judge that they might have an opportunity to lower prices at some point in the unknown future translate into any kind of legal obligation to do so? To me it just sounds like an empty promise that got them through the court proceedings, and in no way affected their behavior afterwards because why would it?

Re: AT&T promised lower prices after Time Warner merger, but it’s raising them

#35

Post by tunap »

arthurofbabylon wrote: post #13

This is a great opportunity to educate our less-technically-minded civilians on the pitfalls of large, unaccountable corporations, and the benefits of anti-trust enforcement... It's easy for the mainstream to understand how this particular monopolization negatively impacts all of our bottomline.

What concerns me more than the high-profile ATT & Disney mergers is the ultra-quiet Monsanto-Bayer(0) & Dow-DuPont(1) unions.

(0)

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monsanto

(1)

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/DowDuPont

Re: AT&T promised lower prices after Time Warner merger, but it’s raising them

#36

Post by indigodaddy »

hardtke wrote: post #26

The three largest OTT providers (Sling, YouTube TV and DirectTV Now) all raised their prices by $5 recently. This seems similar to how airlines all manage to raise their fares at the same time without explicit coordination (one airline does it, and the others quickly match). I don't think it has anything to do with the merger.

The way I look at this DTVN price hike, is that my HBO add-on went from $5 to $10/mo. Still a good from my perspective...

Re: AT&T promised lower prices after Time Warner merger, but it’s raising them

#37

Post by smt88 »

kevin_b_er wrote: post #2

Whenever a corporation says a merger will result in lower prices, they're usually lying, because mergers increase prices. https://scholarship.law.berkeley.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?ref...

Even if a merger allowed a company to lower prices through cost reductions, they still wouldn't because they own more of the market and have less incentive to compete.

The only exception I've ever heard of is Amazon's purchase of Whole Foods, but you could argue that Amazon wasn't competing much with Whole Foods before it purchased them.

Re: AT&T promised lower prices after Time Warner merger, but it’s raising them

#38

Post by anoncoward111 »

pascalxus wrote: post #16
extralego wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My parents love talking about how bad monopolies are. They are well aware and it’s useless because they keep voting for the same people.

That's what happens when you only have two choices to vote for.

We need someone like Ross Perot once more, who showed that disrupting the two party system is possible, but extremely expensive.

Honestly, the only an independent candidate would win in a 3 way race like this is if many different crises hit the US all at once, like housing, unemployment, drug, crime, loss of world power status, food oil water shortages, etc

Re: AT&T promised lower prices after Time Warner merger, but it’s raising them

#39

Post by ocdtrekkie »

hardtke wrote: post #26

The three largest OTT providers (Sling, YouTube TV and DirectTV Now) all raised their prices by $5 recently. This seems similar to how airlines all manage to raise their fares at the same time without explicit coordination (one airline does it, and the others quickly match). I don't think it has anything to do with the merger.

Jon Brodkin has an extremely strong anti-ISP agenda. He writes nothing but posts about the evil ISPs, at a rate of close to one a day.

He does not care that the facts suggest that there's an underlying cost increase that affect all streaming services equally. He has an agenda to push, and nobody is going to stop him from pushing it.

Re: AT&T promised lower prices after Time Warner merger, but it’s raising them

#40

Post by ocdtrekkie »

dfee wrote: post #32
rayiner wrote: post #20

Brodkin's article takes the relevant "promise" quite out of context: https://www.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.dcd.191339/... (see page 1). The full quotation is: > As to its price-increase theory, the government itself conceded that the merger would cause prices to go down for millions of AT&T customers nationwide. The government’s own “bargaining model” likewise showed a price decrease for all consumers, onc…

This kind of crap is why I dropped ArsTechnica from my RSS feed after 11 years.

Ars is on whole still quite good, but there are some heavy biases on the part of some of their writers, and I don't think Ars' editorial staff keeps them in check. I did actually subscribe to Ars' $25 a year plan that gives you full text RSS, but I almost didn't because of Jon Brodkin's crud alone.
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