FCC Puts Comcast and Time Warner Merger On Hold 132
An anonymous reader writes "In a public letter to both Time Warner and Comcast, the FCC said they are putting a hold on the merger deal between the two companies. Citing inadequate responses by both cable companies to earlier FCC requests for additional information, the agency is stopping the clock on its 180-day review period until late October. Comcast and Time Warner together control most of the Internet services in the country. However, the companies said they are in different regions and are not going to suppress the competition.
All Slashdotters in favor of the merger... (Score:3)
...please raise your hands.
Anybody? /didn't think so
GOOD NEWS!!! (Score:3)
Seriously this is good news that I honestly did not expect. I assumed that the FCC was paying us lip service and was going to allow it to go through unimpeded. this doesnt mean that its NOT true (they still could simply be paying lip service now) but its a good start. The logner it takes, the more time we have to bitch and moan
Re:GOOD NEWS!!! (Score:5, Insightful)
Comcast is EXTREMELY ABUSIVE, in my experience. (Score:3)
I've just started Comcast internet service. It took several hours of my time to get connected because of needing to avoid the dishonesty. I've been over-billed perhaps 7 times, spent hours protesting that, and my first bill is not due yet.
Comcast employees abuse Comcast. It
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Why do you _assume_ your interests speak for the 100% ??
Politics is not black and white. There are pro's and con's for every side.
Re:All Slashdotters in favor of the merger... (Score:4, Interesting)
100%? What was I thinking?!? No, just 99% and the merger is almost all cons. Totally disregardable.
Re:All Slashdotters in favor of the merger... (Score:5, Insightful)
Is it a good thing that the merger would raise the barrier to entry of any part of the larger market that Comcast would control?
Please, I'd like to know what you think is a good reason for this merger to go forward.
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Cons for the consumer? Let's start with controlling the gateway. You want to reach our 288 million people (we don't care about the 20 odd million out in podunk that costs too much to reach and they don't shop anyways) you pay us. We also own content, but our content doesn't have to pay to be seen. Yours, however, will. We don't like Netflix, Amazon, etc competing with us - so the interconnects will be sized to 1Mbps unless you guessed it - they pay us.
That's just the first thing I can see happening, as th
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Technically, starting up Internet service is really simple and doesn't cost much. Barriers to entry in land line, cable, and wireless service are almost completely due to government regulations and government monopolies.
But that's not the worst of it. The worst is exactly these discussions. Why would I risk my money on creating a new telecoms company when I know that if I succeed,
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Technically, starting up Internet service is really simple and doesn't cost much. Barriers to entry in land line, cable, and wireless service are almost completely due to government regulations and government monopolies.
There are huge costs, mostly in physical cable. The second part is paying to go through all the regulations and easement payments setup by those pesky incumbents.
How much service and competition do you think you're going to see if you make it unattractive to invest in this sectors through this kind of regulatory b.s.? Do you think corporations just spring into existence out of nowhere to satisfy your needs out of altruism?
Exactly why the cables should be common carrier at a minimum, and municipality owned at best. It's nothing more or less than water, sewer, or telephone service, all utilities we pretty much all need in today's world. To think someone should be maximizing profit off of a necessity is rather predatory. The telecoms have been drooling for an alternati
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The last mile problem could be solved easily with wireless if the FCC opened up more spectrum and allowed more range for standards like WiMax and WiFi.
Precisely: most of the easements are for public roads, and most of the regulations have been lobbied for by incumbents. So why are you proposing more of that as the solution?
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Wireless is not a panacea. There's a system in Minneapolis. It doesn't provide all the stuff people might want, there are problem areas where for some reason it can't be installed, and performance degrades in the rain. The fact that it works reasonably well suggests that there is enough spectrum already, so it's not so much an FCC problem as a deployment problem. It also suggests that municipal ISPs can be well run.
Some form of wiring or fiber is more reliable and versatile, but the wires and cables
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"Need" in what sense? What problem are you actually trying to fix? Internet access in the US is widespread and pretty cheap.
No, but it is more than good enough for basic Internet access and that's where the job of government ends.
Even if there were a problem with lack of competitiveness (there isn't), It would not be the job of government to ensure non-monopolistic practice
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"Need" in the sense of keeping the Internet functioning more or less as it should. Most of the big ISPs want to turn it into a content delivery service delivering their content.
There *is* a problem with lack of competitiveness. Most places in the US have two choices of companies to use for last mile, if they're lucky. A lot have only one.
WTF do you mean that it's not the job of government to ensure non-monopolistic practices in anything, BTW? And why do you think that everything better than dial-up
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"Should" according to who? You?
That's not substantially different from Europe in my experience.
It's not the job of government to ensure non-monopolistic practices i
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I am referring to how the Internet should work to fulfill at least a small part of its potential, and the vision of the people who created and developed it.
In Europe, you're not going to have multiple lines to the house, either. (This is evidence that the limited options are not due to government, but that the last mile is a natural monopoly.) However, lots of people have said they can select multiple ISPs through their connection, which isn't at the whim of a content provider.
It is the job of govern
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You mean the Internet should be a non-commercial network for defense related research? Because that was the "vision of the people who created and developed it". It turned into what it is today only through massive private investment.
Furthermore, the creators and developers of the Internet no more get to tell people how to use it than the people who built
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I didn't say it was the job of the US government to favor competition, I said "government". The Federal government has Constitutional authority to regulate only interstate business (although the Supreme Court has pushed that far beyond any reasonable interpretation). States have the authority to favor competition in their states.
More competition isn't always desirable, but it usually is. Either we need more competition (so people can find deals they can live with), or more regulation. Regulated monop
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Well, what you said was ambiguous. That's why I enumerated all the different ways in which it isn't the job of "government".
That's a false dichotomy. There are other choices besides arbitrary gove
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The last mile problem could be solved easily with wireless if the FCC opened up more spectrum and allowed more range for standards like WiMax and WiFi.
Wireless won't work in general for anything more than static content / downloads. No high performance 2-way streaming, for example.
Precisely: most of the easements are for public roads, and most of the regulations have been lobbied for by incumbents. So why are you proposing more of that as the solution?
I stated this was part of the problem. Please get it right.
And if you make them municipally owned, the only upside is saving the commercial ISP's profit margin (realistically, maybe 10-20%); in reality, you are going to end up almost certainly with a horrifically inefficient monopoly.
As opposed to the current horribly inefficient monopoly that also controls who or what I can connect to to promote their own profits? Municipal owned cables can have many pros, not the least that they're not being milked for every last red cent of profit.
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Yet, your solution is more of the same. You simply don't realize that you are advocating exactly what you claim to be against.
I'm sorry, but you obviously don't understand what a "monopoly" is.
Munic
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I'm sorry, but you obviously don't understand what a "monopoly" is.
I'm sorry, but you must be trolling or truly clueless.
Municipal utilities are subject to lobbying by public sector unions, local businesses, and all sorts of other special interests. They end up being far more expensive than the modest profit margin cable companies have.
So you're a cable company shill? Should have known.
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Sure, there are numerous advantages:
It is not such much as what you see, but what you don't see.
Content licensing fees go up roughly X% per year. A merged company would have more leverage to bargain for lower licensing rates. This would allow Comcast to not be "forced" a subscription rate increase for consumers; with better bargaining customers would have the same pricing.
Potentially more content would be available.
More resources would be available to pool and expand coverage. The technical term use by
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In Comcast territory now, and thinking about moving to Time Warner territory. Better the devil you know and all that. I hope they merge before I move, so I don't have to change companies and deal with a bunch of all new bullshit.
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I am in favour, providing certain stipulations are in place.
I would argue that merging the infrastructure of both companies in to one, and then the retail operations of both companies in to one could be beneficial, if it was also mandated that said infrastructure be made available to other, competing retail ISPs at some regulated fair and equal cost.
For one, it would mean the retail operations of Comcast would now be competing with other retailers so they'd have to stop being dicks to customers because now
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(just in case it isn't clear, there would still be 2 companies - one would be wholesale/infrastructure only and they don't deal with the public, the other retail only)
We are a business. (Score:1)
"We area a business but we will not try to defeat out competition." Yes, we believe you...
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The wonderful words of Bull Shit !
Trust me, the housing market will only continue to go up.
Trust me, it doesn't bite. (seconds later.. chomp!)
Trust me, the check in in the mail.
Trust me, there will be no more tax increases.
Trust me, Comcast and Time Warner will never try to suppress competition.
Re:We are a business. (Score:5, Insightful)
Actually I think their argument is closer to:
Trust us, Comcast and Time Warner have already colluded to suppress competition, so the merger won't change anything.
Time to give more politicians free cable tv and HS (Score:3)
Time to give more politicians free cable tv and HSI.
Just don't piss off the sports fans who have Directv with it's way more HD. But maybe Comcast this your wake up call to get moving on that part.
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Re:Time to give more politicians free cable tv and (Score:5, Informative)
However, the companies said that they are in different regions and are not going to suppress the competition.
By surreptitiously "agreeing" to operate and different areas, they ARE suppressing competition. In most areas your "one" cable operator is the only game in town for broadband.
DirecTV might be great for TV, but not so much for internet.
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You make it sound like it's a conspiracy. But the current cable operators are simply consolidations of local operators that often already dominated individual markets. And there isn't much economic incentive for them to enter each other's territories: it means high capital expenditures and high risk with little expected return. Choosi
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You make it sound like it's a conspiracy.
Only in your own mind.
Anti-competitive practices do not require "conspiracy". They only require mutual complicity.
The main thing that's actually "suppressing" competition is regulations, which make it costly and risky to create alternative Internet providers in an area.
If that were true, then the municipalities that created public infrastructure would not be as tremendously successful as they actually are. These "regulations" you refer to are often the result of lobbying (read: "bribery") by the cable operators to keep other players out. Not only has it been in the news, I've watched it happen, pretty damned transparently, with my own City Council.
That's
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That's not "conspiracy". It's just all-too-common, unethical, anti-competitive business practice. If you want to call lobbying and expensive presents "conspiracy", then you're saying that most of Congress are conspirators.
I'd argue it is a conspiracy, although the level of conspiracy was at the local level, repeated many times across many localities, and then merged and acquired and continued across several decades into what we have today: de facto monopolies that not only control access to large segments of the population individually, but also use their influence to affect industries outside of themselves. Allowing Comcast/TW to merge would fulfill Comcast's ultimate goal of controlling access to most of america and be abl
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Yes, businesses try to gain monopolies, and they try to gain it by lobbying, and politicians let them succeed. That's obvious. Now what are you going to do about it?
You cannot fix that by railing at the businesses, they are never going to be any more ethical, and they don't give a f*ck wha
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Yes, businesses try to gain monopolies, and they try to gain it by lobbying, and politicians let them succeed. That's obvious. Now what are you going to do about it?
You cannot fix that by railing at the businesses, they are never going to be any more ethical, and they don't give a f*ck what you think. You cannot fix it by voting better politicians into office; we tried that, and even Obama and Warren have succumbed (as have all previous politicians who have tried). And you cannot fix it by passing more regulation to punish businesses or politicians, because the new regulations will fall prey to regulatory capture just like the old ones.
What businesses fear most is competition and deregulation. Of course, even "deregulation" is subject to regulatory capture, in the sense that a lot of "deregulation" simply amounts to giving away public property at bargain basement prices without actually leading to more competition. But true deregulation is the only way we can fix regulatory capture; none of the other approaches work.
Right.... cause deregulation worked soooo well for the banking and mortgage industries and the economy... oh, wait...
Industries need a certain amount of regulation to keep them somewhat honest. I agree that regulations and laws have been passed that benefit specific companies but the the way to fix it is to roll back regulations to the basic stuff and get ride of all of the rules that add barriers to entry. However, the biggest barrier to entry in the ISP/cable space is fair access to the infrastructure.
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Well, regulation certainly didn't work: Obama added tons of regulation and engaged in massive crony capitalism as part of that. And the economy has been in the toilet ever since.
Deregulation of the telecoms industry, however, worked very well, both in Europe and the US. It's why we have a flourishing Internet at all.
S
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Comcast & Warner Cable Bullshit (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Comcast & Warner Cable Bullshit (Score:5, Insightful)
is getting pretty deep.Competition?In Most areas,THERE IS NO COMPETITION! Like here where I live in Southeastern Kentucky,It is either Warner Cable or nothing.
Bingo! That's exactly why they said that the merger won't affect competition.
Re:Comcast & Warner Cable Bullshit (Score:5, Interesting)
As long as Comcast and Time Warner are competing with each other, Netflix can say "Well Comcast only charged us this much, can you lower your price?" to Time Warner. But if they merge, that reduces competition. Websites have to pay more, and they'll have to charge their customers (you and me) more to compensate.
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As long as Comcast and Time Warner are competing with each other, Netflix can say "Well Comcast only charged us this much, can you lower your price?" to Time Warner.
And Time Warner will say "How nice that Comcast is giving you a break. But if you want access to our customers -- which you cannot get from Comcast -- then this is the price."
Competition only exists when customers have a choice of suppliers for the same good, or goods that are substantially interchangeable. In this case, Comcast is selling access to one set of users and Time Warner is selling access to a different set. Netflix wants and needs access to both, so it can't trade one off against the other.
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As long as Comcast and Time Warner are competing with each other, Netflix can say "Well Comcast only charged us this much, can you lower your price?" to Time Warner.
And Time Warner will say "How nice that Comcast is giving you a break. But if you want access to our customers -- which you cannot get from Comcast -- then this is the price."
Well, maybe one day unicef will get into the extortion business. Until then, we're the people to see. Do you want access to our customers or not?
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Isn't that why Dice bought slashdot?
Sure. But Dice could not have gotten slashdot's customer base by buying, for example, MySpace.
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Why can't FCC make cable companies compete each other in the same areas? Change the dang city laws.
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Appalling.
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"Admit" it? You make it sound they are under some obligation to invest in more infrastructure. Companies aren't Santa Claus; they make investments if they can expect a return, and under the current regulatory and intellectual property climate, there is no money in competing in markets with already established players.
If you want to change that, you need to change the regulatory environment. Oh, and simply mandating competition isn't going to work, because then investors are simply going to pull their money
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Re:I wish theyd make up their mind (Score:5, Insightful)
My experience is AT&T is worse than Comcast.
They're already suppressing competition (Score:1)
By letting these two merge, they'll just have the ability to devote even more resources to crushing specific pockets of competition, including the local governments that just want to provide internet for all of their constituents. Maybe it's time for those governments to revoke the big cable companies' business licenses? Eh, I'm sure there'd be something about damage to the economy or some such bullshit that always spews out of the mouths of people that can't seem to understand that not all business is good
or not renew govt enforced monopoly franchise (Score:2)
> revoke the big cable companies' business licenses?
Or maybe just not renew their franchise, the monopoly those governments enforce.
Re:or not renew govt enforced monopoly franchise (Score:5, Interesting)
It doesn't work to give the franchise to a smaller competitor. As soon as the smaller competitor wins the contract, it just gets bought-out by whatever mega-corp you were trying to keep out in the first place.
This happened twice in the small town where I grew up. Every time the city tried to get rid of Charter by picking someone else, Charter would just by that other company out after the contract was awarded.
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+1, Funny
No modpoints today.
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Great idea! Customer service will be as good as the DMV! You get to pay for putting cables into the ground directly (whether you are a subscriber or not) because the city will simply pass "special assessments" to finance the infrastructure! And prices and innovation will be as good
If the FCC and Congress was honest.... (Score:5, Interesting)
Internet would be deemed a public utility and regulated as such.
It's raging BS that all the companies involved were given buttloads of public dollars to build out the infrastructure and did not even come close to meeting the promises they made.
Should they merge? yes, only if they are forced to common carrier status for internet and fall under telephone regulation and requirements.
Re:If the FCC and Congress was honest.... (Score:4, Insightful)
Yes Yes Yes.
This bullshit about not calling them common carriers simply ensures and guarantees monopoly.
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The CEO of Comcast posts as Anon here on slashdot! NEAT!
A Strategic Delay (Score:5, Insightful)
Anyone else think this is simply an attempt to let the issue calm down and be forgotten by the public?
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Yes. /. summary reads, "Citing inadequate responses by both cable companies to earlier FCC requests for additional information". This implies that as soon as the information is supplied to the FCC, the requested merger will fly through.
The
Don't be too thrilled with having "option 2". We have an "option 2" and it only is marginally better than Comcast. In my area we also have WOW!. WOW! bought Knology. WOW! is really crummy: they haven't bought any new equipment since acquiring Knology last year. They
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Anyone else think this is simply an attempt to let the issue calm down and be forgotten by the public?
I'd toss in that they're probably negotiating the sequence of events; they have to kill net neutrality soon as well. And, expect the announcements to be timed for minimal coverage, so Friday afternoon. They might even hold the net neutrality announcement to the Wednesday before Thanksgiving.
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Far more likely that the folks in the White House would rather this issue goes away until AFTER the election...and then they'll continue cashing those checks from the monopolists and let the merger happen while they throw up their hands and claim they used that extra time to "really stick it to the man"....
What competition? (Score:1)
They've already destroyed it.
No competition (Score:5, Insightful)
"However, the companies said that they are in different regions and are not going to suppress the competition."
Technically, they are telling the truth, because they had already suppressed all competition the BEFORE merging, and there isn't any left to suppress.
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Looking at this from that vantage point, this means that the only way they could raise revenue is by going after each other's territory. Without a merger they'd be forced to compete. They'd rather merge than compete.
Getting tired of this (Score:5, Insightful)
My Experience With ATT (Score:3)
For years, I used a small ISP called Hiwaay Information Services here in Alabama. Great people, I was on a first-name basis with tech support and sales. ATT owned the lines, of course, but Hiwaay bought the service wholesale and resold it to individuals like me. It cost me a little more, but if I had a problem, instead of going through ATT's byzantine voice menus and slower-than-molasses "escalations," I called and they'd hound ATT until it was fixed.
Well worth it, in my book. I MUST have high-speed access at home for remote administration of our servers after hours.
Then ATT introduced Uverse. We received monthly offers to switch to Uverse; I ignored them and stayed with Hiwaay. But Hiwaay finally sent me a letter: sorry, ATT is no longer making these products available to us, so we'll have to cancel your DSL. I had no choice but to go with UVerse.
Right now, the price is less, but they could raise it in the future and there is no competition (unless I want to use dialup; forget that). They send me WEEKLY offers to use the UVerse "cable" television service. They can't stop DirecTV from selling to me, so I'm still with that. For now. :)
Now: you decide if the big-hearted folks at Comcast and Time-Warner will do similar or equivalent things. Add to this the service that our company gets from them in some of our other markets, and I'm afraid I'm just not quite as impressed with their protestations as I might otherwise be.
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They can't stop DirecTV from selling to me, so I'm still with that. For now. :)
AT&T is planning to acquire DirecTV.
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keep DirecTV for TV.
I have DirecTV + ATT dsl deal right now in a UVerse area and I want to keep Directv for the TV side the HD steams limit and NO NHL NETWORK sucks.
NICE! (Score:2, Informative)
Competition has already been supressed ! (Score:2)
The merger sure isn't going to restart competition where it has already been suppressed.
I don't see a single advantage to the public in this merger.
What should happen is the other way around.
Not only the merger is forbidden, but the two companies must start competing between each other or else !
The merger would only escalate the anti net neutrality position those companies employ and stop any new revolutionary netflix like initiative on its tracks.
They are simply waiting until after the election (Score:1)
Then the lame duck politicians will put their rubber stamp on the deal. They were paid handsomely by the comcast lobbyists to do so, why wouldn't they. No need for any backlash from the approval of this merger to become a potential election issue.
yeah (Score:1)
Seriously (Score:2, Insightful)
I'm not talking about spread out rural areas here, so let's just stop that idiotic argument right up front.
For the top 50 major cities in the US, how can anyone argue that the government is less efficient than private enterprise? It would take maybe 10-20 years and we could get 95% coverage of gigabit fiber to every home in those top 50 cities. Any ISP that wanted to offer service could plug their router in on the back end.
Of course that's the joke about free markets. There is no such thing because politica
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Many if not most of those cities already have municipal fiber rings. What's more, everywhere Comcast provides service, or ATT provides U-Verse, corporate fiber rings have already been laid.
I'd say that your 10->20 year estimate should be pared down to 3->5 (after the innumerable corporate-backed court challenges to the plan are put to bed, natch.).
Oh Crap! (Score:1)
We got an election coming up.
Wait until after it, then we'll jam it down their throats.
Suppress Competition? What about their customers? (Score:1)
Why is everyone worried if the TW/Crapcast merger will suppress competition?
It won't! They'll be too busy suppressing their own customers to worry about some mom&pop ISP in their area.
Most? (Score:2)
"Comcast and Time Warner together control most of the Internet services in the country."
Only for values of "most" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
News Flash (Score:1)
"FCC Puts Comcast and Time Warner Merger On Hold" ... until the public outcry dies down.
Election (Score:1)
What's the betting line of what happens after the midterms?
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I can't support this merger given how horrible my current experience is with TWC. They've been to my house 6 times over 8 weeks and still no service. I've missed neatly 3 full days of work. It's not like I have another option either. One customer service rep canceled my order accidentally and had to start a new order.
Make sure you file a complaint with the FCC. You must know that the FCC isn't reading slashdot comments. Here: http://www.fcc.gov/complaints [fcc.gov]
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The FCC isn't reading FCC comments either.....
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That works until at&t buys directtv, and then merges with comcast-time warner
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I'm actually still trying to figure out why the *FCC* is getting involved in this, and not the *FTC* ...
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The FTC is waiting to see what the FCC decides.
Re:Abolish the FCC. (Score:4, Interesting)
You really want Eric Holder (who thinks backdoors should be left open for police, and that search warrants shouldn't be neccesary for drone use or cell-tapping) controlling our countries information infrastructure?
We would end up with rules requiring all new TV sets to have always-on cameras built in, in order to spy on the TV viewers (like the viewscreen from 1984)
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I can't imagine any rationale for private ownership of a ubiquitous asset with no physical form. This does not conform to existing property law and would not enure to the advantage of the public.... but rather only to the benefit of a few wealthy corporate bosses. Exactly whose side are you on?
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Should air be private owned? The airwaves belong to everyone.
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If the spectrum is not regulated, what would prevent me from creating a jamming device, or just a poorly designed transmitter, that would knock out your tv.
I don't own a TV, why should I care? I would probably be doing you a favor anyways.