Gov't Approves Parts of Verizon-Cable Spectrum Sale 76
fistfullast33l writes "The Associated Press is reporting that the Justice Department, FCC, and New York State Attorney General approved portions of a deal between Verizon Wireless and cable companies Comcast, Time Warner Cable, Bright House Networks and Cox to sell parts of the wireless spectrum to Verizon for $3.9 billion. However, the Justice Department rejected the agreement between the two groups to allow Verizon to market cable services in its stores in markets where it also offers FIOS service. The spectrum will be used to increase Verizon's 4G LTE network coverage. Verizon will also sell some spectrum to T-Mobile. Consumer groups were very concerned about the cross-marketing by Verizon: 'When it comes to home broadband, Verizon Communication Inc.'s FiOS provides the only significant competition to cable in many areas. Yet FiOS is costly to build out, and Verizon's commitment to the technology has faltered. Consumer groups and unions that opposed the deal between the cable companies and Verizon said it showed that Verizon was further giving up on FiOS and yielding the home broadband market to cable.'"
Re:opening for Google? (Score:1, Insightful)
Who seriously gets Google Fiber for the TV aspect of it? I dropped my cable subscription years ago, went with my local DSL because my cable company was crap. That trend is growing, plenty of people don't get cable because of the TV aspect but because it is the best way to get broadband for their area.
I know I'm wasting my virtual breath here, as you sound like the sort of hipster wonk who's probably been reminded of this hundreds upon hundreds of times in your life and it still hasn't sunk in yet, but you are not the normal internet user . Maybe you were at one point. Like, in the 80s, before everyone started using it. But nowadays, you aren't . For the vast amount of people who aren't you , they actually want TV service OVER internet service.
Seriously. They. Want. TV. Service. AND, get this, they don't consider face-meltingly fast internet service to be IMPORTANT. If Google expects this to be at all profitable (a prerequisite to it flourishing across the US), they need to cater to the 80+% of the US who wants TV service.
No, nobody cares about all those "reports" you've heard about people cutting the cable. No, your four or five hipster buddies who constantly brag about not owning a TV aren't "most of the people". Cheese wombler foony foony duck weasels are fighting the Zorndian overlords on Pfiolious III! The cold, hard reality of the world is that you aren't most people, period .
Of course, I didn't expect you to read this far. I mean, I've seen that argument from lots of people on the internet, and I know from experience that as soon as someone tries to remind you about how the world outside your fantasy land works, you tend to shut out everything. That's why I added the sentence about duck weasels in that last paragraph, since I knew you wouldn't read down that far, so I can say whatever I want and it'll never hit your thick skull through those gigantic rims on your hipster glasses.