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Comcast Acquiring Time Warner Cable In All Stock Deal Worth $45.2 Billion

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Re: Comcast Acquiring Time Warner Cable In All Stock Deal Worth $45.2 Billion

#61

Post by jonknee »

fennecfoxen wrote: post #30
mikeryan wrote: post #21

Non WSJ Paywall article http://www.businessinsider.com/comcast-to-buy-time-warner-ca... This is crazy I don't see how this can get past any sort of anti-trust. Particularly with Comcast's stake in NBC. Comcast would own both the content and distribution of too large a chunk of the broadcast industry.

To go with non-WSJ paywall article: non-paywall WSJ article! https://www.google.com/search?q=http://online.wsj.com/news/a...

Or even better, I setup Chrome to use a referer of "google.com" for all requests to online.wsj.com--no paywall or need to search for headlines. I'm sure there are other ways, but the extension Referer Control makes this easy as can be: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/referer-control/hn...

Re: Comcast Acquiring Time Warner Cable In All Stock Deal Worth $45.2 Billion

#62

Post by nine_k »

codezero wrote: post #23
suprgeek wrote: post #11

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"

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.

Re: Comcast Acquiring Time Warner Cable In All Stock Deal Worth $45.2 Billion

#63

Post by wmf »

rayiner wrote: post #58
fiatmoney wrote: post #25

It 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.

Does economy of scale start to level out above, say, 11 million customers?

Re: Comcast Acquiring Time Warner Cable In All Stock Deal Worth $45.2 Billion

#64

Post by adventured »

Classic peak of the market bozo move. Comcast is massively overpaying for a dying business that will be valued at 1/3 this price in three to five years. I'd mark this equivalent to the HP / Compaq deal, and the AOL / Time Warner deal (in which Time Warner allowed a soon-to-implode dial-up player to eat them).

TWC has a mere $1b in cash, and negative $22.8b in net tangible assets. Comcast shareholders just bought a massive black hole.

Re: Comcast Acquiring Time Warner Cable In All Stock Deal Worth $45.2 Billion

#65

Post by wmf »

beambot wrote: post #43
bryanpaluch wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a bit different in this situation. Comcast and Time Warner do not currently compete with each other.

Isn't that simply because they have a "gentlemans agreement" not to have overlapping coverage, so that (to an individual customer) they are essentially a monopoly?

Or cable is just a natural monopoly.

Re: Comcast Acquiring Time Warner Cable In All Stock Deal Worth $45.2 Billion

#66

Post by nine_k »

chimeracoder wrote: post #57

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.

Among other things it would kill Google Fiber.

Re: Comcast Acquiring Time Warner Cable In All Stock Deal Worth $45.2 Billion

#67

Post by gremlinsinc »

With this announcement we as a community REALLY need to get behind Net Neutrality as much as we did w/ SOPA -- Companies like Google, Netflix, et al - should block all access to their sites from D.C. IP addresses as a protest to show them what 'Throttling' feels like.

Re: Comcast Acquiring Time Warner Cable In All Stock Deal Worth $45.2 Billion

#68

Post by AnthonyMouse »

fennecfoxen wrote: post #24
[deleted] wrote: post #18

[deleted]

As others have mentioned, it's not clear that this would increase the market concentration in any way that matters, because it's not clear that Comcast and Time Warner meaningfully compete with each other. How many households can choose between one or the other? Is there another way in which they will materially reduce consumer choice and gain new pricing powers? (Some people have said Net Neutrality and putting the…

> Some people have said Net Neutrality and putting the pressure on Netflix, which is Interesting; it's not clear the extent to which third parties like this are covered by said Act.

Why wouldn't it be? There is a market for residential internet service, but if Comcast wants to charge Netflix et al for bandwidth then there is also a market for that "service" where Netflix et al are the customers, and the merger would have quite a strong effect on competition and market power in that market.

Re: Comcast Acquiring Time Warner Cable In All Stock Deal Worth $45.2 Billion

#69

Post by rayiner »

chimeracoder wrote: post #59
suprgeek wrote: post #11

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"

> 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 middlemen, funneling someone else's content through someone else's pipes.

Re: Comcast Acquiring Time Warner Cable In All Stock Deal Worth $45.2 Billion

#70

Post by SEJeff »

rayiner wrote: post #69
chimeracoder wrote: post #59

Earlier 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…

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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