Comcast Forgets To Delete Revealing Note From Blog Post 114
An anonymous reader notes that Comcast inadvertently posted a bit too much in a blog post today. Earlier today, Comcast published a blog post to criticize the newly announced coalition opposing its merger with Time Warner Cable and to cheer about the FCC's decision to restart the "shot clock" on that deal. But someone at Kabletown is probably getting a stern talking-to right now, after an accidental nugget of honesty made its way into that post. Comcast posted to their corporate blog today about the merger review process, reminding everyone why they think it will be so awesome and pointing to the pro-merger comments that have come in to the FCC. But they also left something else in. Near the end, the blog post reads, "Comcast and Time Warner Cable do not currently compete for customers anywhere in America. That means that if the proposed transaction goes through, consumers will not lose a choice of cable companies. Consumers will not lose a choice of broadband providers. And not a single market will see a reduction in competition. Those are simply the facts." The first version of the blog post, which was also sent out in an e-mail blast, then continues: "We are still working with a vendor to analyze the FCC spreadsheet but in case it shows that there are any consumers in census blocks that may lose a broadband choice, want to make sure these sentences are more nuanced." After that strange little note, the blog post carries on in praise of competition, saying, "There is a reason we want to provide our customers with better service, faster speeds, and a diverse choice of programming: we don't want to lose them."
Huh? What does this reveal? (Score:5, Insightful)
This is a goof, but it doesn't reveal anything interesting. The note says that they have to make sure that the number of places where they compete with Time Warner for the same customers really is zero and not just very low.
What is more revealing is the statement which stayed in: that the market is not competitive.
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No, the note says they are prepared to adjust the language IFF the FCC datasheet shows that the original text is not correct due to a few exceptions.
If there was any region of the USA where Comcast and Time Warner were actively competing, one of the market-drones would've had that information for them in a minute. That notice is just admitting that while they had no internal records of competition with Time Warner, there might be a region where both companies have a presence.
I type this as someone who lost
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No, the note really does say, "To the best of our knowledge we aren't overlapping, but be prepared to change this text if a thorough examination of every square inch of the country reveals a single overlap."
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no, the note says they make claims they aren't sure about (LIES), and have a plan in case they are found out (EVIL)
I think you are misunderstanding what happened here. The plan was to verify the claim before releasing the document.
If furthur research found even one place where Comcast and Time Warner were offering service to the same households, they planned to tone-down the statement before release. So instead of saying "not one customer will lose competition" they would say something like "fewer than 0.01% of customers will lose competition". They are trying to forstall hair spliters who would label a statement which
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Hah! I've got you beat by a mile. I pay $104 per month for 7mbps service.
I win. Lucky me.
Re:Huh? What does this reveal? (Score:5, Interesting)
I type this as someone who lost a good ISP when it was bought out by Time Warner, and I've seen too many Comcast issues from people I game with to look forward to a merger.
The funny thing, though, is it is that passage that OP seems to be mostly about, when it is the earlier part that should most alarm everybody: they aren't competing.
And they aren't competing (this is just simple truth), because they have most of the country "divided up" between them: "You have this territory, and we have this territory."
But that's ILLEGAL. Dividing up the country between companies into non-competing regions is in violation of a Federal antitrust law that was passed clear back in 1926. It's just as bad in its own way as the "no compete for employees" agreement that Apple and other tech companies had. But they've practically bragged about it to the FCC!
And yet the FCC is looking entirely the other way. This is Obama's crony-capital government for you. I mean sure, Bush did it too, to a lesser extent. But this merger would never have been even CONSIDERED during the Bush years.
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Sadly, the shills seem to have modded you down. Sorry, I don't have mod points myself, but +1 insightful. Keep it up.
Amazing. I've often been surprised here on Slashdot how a simple statement of fact can get someone modded "troll". There's a lot more politics on this board than people usually admit.
What's really sad, though, is that people with mod points know that's not proper use of a "troll" mod. They're being dishonest.
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One reason I still read Slashdot is that the comment is already at +5.
Politically modding tends to be overwhelmed by good quality mods.
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Maybe I've developed an over-sensitivity. But I've been mass-sockpuppet-modded before, and it's caused me a great deal of inconvenience. When you've had excellent karma for years it's pretty harsh to wake up one morning and find out that suddenly your karma is negative. And it can take weeks to build it back up again.
Re:Huh? What does this reveal? (Score:4, Insightful)
When Comcast-owned MSNBC is pretty much a fulltime Democratic campaign channel, it's easy to get the government to look the other way when Comcast breaks laws.
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Except that, broadly speaking, the democrats are the ones pushing for net neutrality regulations, and the republicans opposing.
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No, its not - simply not competing is not enough to violate anti-trust laws, there has to be an active component of cooperation between the two (or more) companies involved for it to violate anti-trust laws - each company simply deciding not to enter their competitors market is not illegal, no anti-trust law requires a company to always compete, it simply stops companies from agreeing not to compete.
If you can show a component of mutual, explicit agreement between the parties here, then anti-trust comes int
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each company simply deciding not to enter their competitors market is not illegal, no anti-trust law requires a company to always compete, it simply stops companies from agreeing not to compete.
Are you implying that you honestly believe there is no agreement? Again, that's what Apple and those other companies said, too. Turned out otherwise.
If you can show a component of mutual, explicit agreement between the parties here, then anti-trust comes into play
Of course. It has to be shown. But you seem to be presuming that such does not exist, while from my point of view, that's a ludicrous point of view. Of course they have agreements. But you are correct that it has to be shown.
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But that's ILLEGAL. Dividing up the country between companies into non-competing regions is in violation of a Federal antitrust law that was passed clear back in 1926.
Sadly, it's not illegal for municipalities to grant a monopoly to a communications provider, which is how the country got divided up. It's not something they were trying to do.
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Sadly, it's not illegal for municipalities to grant a monopoly to a communications provider, which is how the country got divided up. It's not something they were trying to do.
Of course it was.
Otherwise, they'd be COMPETING. That's what competitive companies do.
But in reality, the only places they compete even a little, is in the giant metropolitan areas. And even then, what do you want to bet they have (illegal) price agreements?
The evidence is all around you: the current state of broadband across most of the U.S.
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I type this as someone who lost a good ISP when it was bought out by Time Warner, and I've seen too many Comcast issues from people I game with to look forward to a merger.
The funny thing, though, is it is that passage that OP seems to be mostly about, when it is the earlier part that should most alarm everybody: they aren't competing. And they aren't competing (this is just simple truth), because they have most of the country "divided up" between them: "You have this territory, and we have this territory." But that's ILLEGAL. Dividing up the country between companies into non-competing regions is in violation of a Federal antitrust law that was passed clear back in 192
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The audacity.
it reveals a core Comcast truth (Score:3)
that they take their regulators and public statements like they take their customer complaints... with a wave of the hand, and "Bah." all they want is negotiable checks, and everything else is crap to ignore.
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With such a merger, the market is not competitive now, and if they merge, it will not be more competitive in the future either, even if someone changes the regulations.
If this is an actual argument for letting these companies merge, then they could just reconstruct an equivalent to Ma Bell. After all, if the only problem is not lessening local competition, then you can buy up all cable markets, because most of them aren't competitive by design already. No loss, except now there's just Ma Cable. We all sa
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Or someone whose option is that or have no internet at all?
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I am not aware (though undoubltly there are some places) where there is cable yet no POTS. My POTS carries a 20Mbps downstream connection, which while not as fast as Comcast, means I don't have to deal with them.
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Re: only an idiot would buy services from comcast (Score:4, Informative)
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i'm very wrong because your father has a very affordable and very usable service available to him?
i pay $180/mo for wired internet. not from comcast or timewarner. i also have a hughesnet dish on the roof, but i don't use it, but very easily could switch.
your father does have the option.... he chooses not to exercise that option. your father is very wrong, and has raised a child who grew up to be very wrong as well.
you're both idiots.
Re: only an idiot would buy services from comcast (Score:5, Informative)
i'm very wrong because your father has a very affordable and very usable service available to him?
...
AC industry shill. Color me surprised.
$180/month for a 3mbs link is a monthly charge of $60 per mbps. The EU average for this service unit is $3.50. Also a 2 GB monthly cap is "very usable"?! The average home use consumes about 25 GB of bandwidth monthly, the average mobile phone user is hitting 2 GB/month right now.
So the AC Shill, paying 17 times a competitive world service rate for only 8% of what a typical American consumes in bandwidth is "very affordable and very usable". But to anyone not taking industry astro-turf cash it is a rip-off.
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Actually the average home use is now up closer to 50GB/month.
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Ouch, sounds harsh.
When I got cable installed at my house in small-town Illinois in June, we got TV + 50mbit/s Internet with a 350GB FUP for about $62 with modem rental.
I've since purchased my own (better) modem and dropped the TV in August (after about 3 weeks of putting up with ads, we stopped bothering and didn't even turn the cable box on), so I now pay $54.95 for 100mbit/s down, 10mbit/s up with a 1TB FUP, and I am able to exceed this (my record is about 120mbit/s down/17mbit/s up I think) most of the
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In America?
Exede (a Satellite provider covering North America with several reseller brands as well) is a lot cheaper than $180/mo for a lot more than 2GB. I've used it at my SO's parents house in rural Michigan and for satellite it doesn't seem to be too bad.
Re:only an idiot would buy services from comcast / (Score:4, Informative)
Please . . . (Score:5, Insightful)
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Unfortunately, this "innovation" is limited in area when it comes to Google Fiber and - when it comes to Netflix/Amazon - is limited to usage caps and attempts to make "fast lanes" to generate more revenue.
I don't see any actual innovation from the cable companies beyond "tighten our monopoly grip and use that to make sure our TV services business isn't replaced by Internet video."
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Comcast and TWC never competed. Neither does Verizon or AT&T. The 'big names' all have non-compete agreements. There is no reason for the merger other than to fuck over their customers by having more lobbying done to deny Netflix and others fair access.
In my town, Verizon was coming with FiOS. TWC and Verizon agreed not to compete here by splitting up some other markets and thus Verizon disappeared, leaving TWC the only choice. The local DSL provider has a 100-year agreement with the city over the gover
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A non-compete arrangement would be illegal. This is more of a non-compete informal mutual understanding. Nothing official, certainly nothing in writing, but they know what's expected of them.
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Re:They would lose me (Score:4, Interesting)
In my area, my options are Comcast and DSL. I opted DSL because I didn't want to directly fund Comcast's vision for our future. DSL is not as fast as Comcast, but it's fast enough to stream video, play games and download large files overnight. We get by.
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I will say Comcast's service has gone from pretty good with frequent patches of crappiness, to mostly pretty good. Which it damn well should be, for what we're paying them.
MOD PARENT UP (Score:1)
Yay free market!!!!!
You have attributed the poor work and product of two distinct government granted monopolies (your incumbent phone company and your cable company) to the "free market." You have done this in the context of a story about a monopoly cable operation attempting to convince a government (as opposed to customers, investors, or some other "market" based entity) that there is no competition; i.e. an absence of market force.
You appear to be capable of ascribing effectively any grievance imaginable to the "free marke
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To be fair, his problem with DSL was caused by physics, not the government.
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comcast does not even have CSN+2 HD (Score:2)
comcast does not even have CSN+2 HD and they own part of it. Both att and directv have all CSN chi feeds in HD.
Also comcast does not have any of the BTN alts in HD.
so what? (Score:5, Insightful)
I hate Comcast as much as the next guy, but I don't see how this is that bad. They don't think there will be reduction in competition, but they're double-checking to make sure that's true, and if it isn't, they'll have to be less bold with their language. Isn't that the right thing to do?
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Lemme translate this for you (Score:1)
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I hate Comcast as much as the next guy, but I don't see how this is that bad. They don't think there will be reduction in competition, but they're double-checking to make sure that's true, and if it isn't, they'll have to be less bold with their language. Isn't that the right thing to do?
There will be reduction in competition when it comes to buying content.
Currently Comcast and TWC are competitors for copyrighted works, and a publisher can play one off the other. If there's one less cableco/ISP, which a giant hammer of control over end-viewers, they can wield a lot of power over publishers.
Just look at Amazon and the book publishers: when Apple entered the market the publishers were able to play AAPL and AMZN off of each other. Now that AAPL has been hampered by the US DOJ, the publishers
Re:so what? (Score:5, Insightful)
It's the reason that's upsetting people. It's long been known by all that there's no competition in the cable internet market in the US because the major players have an informal agreement never to enter a market region where a rival is already established. The comment is an open admission of this fact. It addresses the FCCs concerns that the new company would have an anticompetative monopoly by just pointing out that there's already an anticompetative duopoly, so it really makes no difference wether people get screwed over by one company or two in collusion.
Err (Score:3)
I know what you mean! (Score:2)
It seems to say: (Score:1)
"There is no competion, so there cannot be any reduction in competion"
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Family Guy take (Score:3)
Cable Companies: Would you like a piece of candy?
Stewie: I smell death on you
Wordsmithing (Score:2)
Yeah somebody forgot to delete a commentary edit in the text. It's like people who ship word docs around. I have more fun scanning through the comments they thought they'd removed. It's all about the message folks and how clean they can make it. I like how they gloss over that they don't compete which again is another reason that this deal should be through down the shitter. Comcast is a pile of shit and now there's serious consideration to let them get bigger? Fuck that.
Appropriate time for this... (Score:1)
The First Honest Cable Company [youtube.com](WARNING! NSFW!!)
Why don't you read some FCC public notices? (Score:2)
It seems routine to me that a company such as a Telco or Cableco is making an application for various things and asserting that there is or is not effective competition in a certain market.
It is used as justification on the application to allow the Telco/Cable company to do things they might not be allowed to do otherwise.
If there is effective competition in the market; they can essentially raise rates and do a number of other things however they please. If there is not effective competition in the
Later it was heard... (Score:2)
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Then post a link to a reputable site showing that data, don't just make a claim like that.
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Where would Comcast's "Lost" Customers Go? (Score:1)
From TFS:
If Comcast's customers aren't happy with the company's customer service, speeds, programming, etc., where else could they go? It's not like most people have a lot of options to begin with. And if Comcast is allowed to expand it's empire, that will only ensure that US consumers have even less options in the future (for cable providers anyway). Y
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And if Comcast is allowed to expand it's empire, that will only ensure that US consumers have even less options in the future (for cable providers anyway).
That's not true. That's the point of the statement that Comcast and Time Warner don't compete against each other in any markets. If you live in a Comcast service area, you get to choose Comcast for wired television service. If you live in a TW area, you get to choose TW. One choice each. When TW and C merge, you still get one choice in either area -- ComTime. One equals one.
What this allegedly damning bit of evidence does NOT say, however, is that Comcast and TimeWarner have no competition at all. They ju
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From TFS:
If Comcast's customers aren't happy with the company's customer service, speeds, programming, etc., where else could they go? It's not like most people have a lot of options to begin with. And if Comcast is allowed to expand it's empire, that will only ensure that US consumers have even less options in the future (for cable providers anyway). You can't lose a customer if you're the only viable game in town.
Well, if Comcast customers are upset enough with their service, they have two options: 1) cancel all service or 2) move to a TWC area.
Option 1 will still be available after a merger, option 2 will no longer be available. Seems like a good reason for merging, from their perspective.
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Well, if Comcast customers are upset enough with their service, they have two options: 1) cancel all service or 2) move to a TWC area.
And after the merger, replace option 2 with "move to a Charter area". If you're moving just to get a certain brand of cable TV, then it's just as reasonable to move to a Charter area as a TW area.
Now, if there were truly only one cable company covering the entire US, that would be a good market force for the creation of more cable companies to compete directly. Or you could also get Dish/Direct/etc if you didn't want to limit "competition" for television services to wired providers.
The problem is there is no competition (Score:2)
I WANT TO BE SO ANGRY ABOUT THIS (Score:1)
Can you please tell me why I should be angry and where you keep the pitch forks?
The only thing that Comcast and Time Warner need . (Score:2)
The Japanese Way (Score:2)
I actually prefer the way it happens in Japan.
Basically, a single company (NTT) has laid down the infrastructure to every neighborhood. Then, they basically open it up and make it available to anyone who wants to start an ISP. NTT, of course, offers their own ISP, but their ISP portion still has to lease the line from the parent company. Essentially, the ISP pays a set amount per customer that is signed up with the service for the rights to use the backbone. Then, the individual ISPs compete based on se
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This is how it works in a lot of countries - NZ, Australia, some parts of India, most of Europe etc.
I prefer it as well, but Americans just don't seem to get it.
Propaganda (Score:1)
Real Competition (Score:5, Insightful)
When any company can come in and lay down lines and provide service without having to pay off the City Council/County Supervisors/State Legislatures, THEN there will be real competition.
Render all cable franchise agreements null and void. Let the providers beat a path to my TV/Internet.
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I don't want random companies digging up the streets and sidewalks any old time they want, some going bankrupt before they finish.
Re:Real Competition (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't want random companies digging up the streets and sidewalks any old time they want, some going bankrupt before they finish.
I also don't want every delivery service constructing another road through my neighborhood. What we should do is provide a single, publicly owned road to each neighborhood, and then all the delivery services, including USPS, UPS, FedEx, etc. can all share it. All they need to provide is the trucks.
Likewise, there should be a single, publicly owned cable conduit. A six inch conduit can hold hundreds of cables. Then let any bonded company pull cable through the public conduit.
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Likewise, there should be a single, publicly owned cable conduit. A six inch conduit can hold hundreds of cables. Then let any bonded company pull cable through the public conduit.
There should be a single, publicly owned fiber cable. A single fiber cable can carry the traffic of hundreds of different providers. Then let any bonded company connect to the exchange. Saves a lot of time laying cables.....
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That would make upgrades rather difficult, as every provider would have to coordinate.
Fiber is dirt cheap, it's the laying and endpoints that cost. So just lay a bundle of a hundred or so pairs to each distribution point, and three pairs from each home to the nearest distribution point. The extra two pairs per home are for redundency, so if one breaks you don't have to dig up the road.
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That's kind of what I was implying. A 'local utility' owns all the hardware. ISP's become virtual providers.
At least, that's how it is with the NBN here in Australia. I live in one of the first towns that had the full rollout - they disconnected my copper line in May and internet / phone now comes via my Network Termination Device. Currently it's 100Mbps, but the NTD has 1Gbps capabilities. There are about a dozen major ISPs in Australia who can supply internet via the NTD, and now it's not about who has th
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It really doesn't. The individual providers don't have to do jack, the single entity that owns, operates and maintains the plant does. That's how it works in many countries, and it works just fine.
Want to change providers? Call the new provider, they organize what essentially amounts to a software change from old provider's circuit ID to theirs and voila - takes about as much effort as changing the VLAN ID on a managed switch**
**May be oversimplifying it a bit, but the fact of the matter is, no additional c
Net neutrality... (Score:2)
Re: Real Competition (Score:2)
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Government Regulations CREATED the Monopolies for Cable. The suggested fix of MORE regulations to fix the problems created by the initial regulations should be flat out rejected, and a whole new model that removes the regulations that created this mess, needs to be found.
My solution, which will work for most places, is to build out LOCAL infrastructure to a COLO facility where the companies such as Comcast, TimeWarner, Cox and anyone else can compete for the last mile. This would cause innovation and compet
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You know that the regulations were written by industry lobbyists, right?
"We're not the corrupt ones! It's the legislators who took our bribes who are corrupt!"
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Wake up, dude.
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You are correct. Sadly, Democrats have become nothing more than Republicans without the bigotry.
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But...government regulation is bad!
1. Government regulations that interfere with fair and competitive markets are generally bad.
2. Government regulations that support fair and competitive markets are generally good.
Although most government regulation falls under #1, regulation of monopolies falls under #2.
Why should the government make demands of cable companies?
Because they are monopolies. If you don't like NN, then advocate a better way to promote a fair market.