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DOJ Could Nix Comcast-Time Warner Merger 76

jriding (1076733) writes The Comcast-Time Warner Cable merger has been in the works for so long, it's starting to feel like the impending monopolistic telecom Frankenbaby was inevitable. But the Justice Department may kibosh the deal for violating antitrust laws, according to a report from Bloomberg.
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DOJ Could Nix Comcast-Time Warner Merger

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  • great Band name.
  • by PolygamousRanchKid ( 1290638 ) on Saturday April 18, 2015 @05:50PM (#49501955)

    This truncated headline would have been more pleasurable.

  • May kibosh in 2017 (Score:5, Insightful)

    by liquid_schwartz ( 530085 ) on Saturday April 18, 2015 @05:51PM (#49501959)
    Unless sufficient bribes are paid in the 2016 election cycle
    • by rtb61 ( 674572 )

      As for as the corporate psychopaths are concerned control main stream media and you control the world. Psychopaths, whilst content to conspire together to lie, cheat, steal and kill, the rest of us being the targets, they know full well, the greatest threat to them, is each other. That merger would simply place too much power in the hands of one group of psychopaths for the rest of them to accept. Any threat to that power base is attacked ie right now the Sony group is attacking RT News by working to censo

      • As for as the corporate psychopaths are concerned control main stream media and you control the world.

        This applies equally well if you replace the word "corporate" with "government".

        Or do you really believe that the guys with the $4T budget are less of a problem than the guys whose budget is measured in billions?

        • by rtb61 ( 674572 )

          So what is the average individual budget of a typical corrupt politician and who funds it, the tax payer or those corporations and what do the corporations expect in return.

    • "Campaign Contributions", geeze. How are the politicians supposed to make a living without them?!

  • This seems highly unlikely given the pro-monopoly stance that the administration of Barack Hussein "Lawnchair" Obama has taken up to this point. They didn't stop any of the airline or bank mergers that we have seen since 2009. They didn't reign in the massive control that the insurance industry has over the consumer (indeed they gave the industry more power). They didn't stop telecoms from merging either. Why would they get involved in this?

    This looks like window dressing more than anything. The Ad
    • by Livius ( 318358 )

      Since they are already de facto merged into a single monopoly, denying the de jure merger would make for good PR but make no actual difference to the companies or to consumers.

    • The feds are saying they need more campaign donations and more guaranteed jobs with Comcast when they quit Uncle Sam.

    • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward

      Based on this list [wikipedia.org], it looks like merger activity between US banks dramatically slowed since Obama took office, after going through the roof during the Bush years.

      But don't let the facts get in the way of good ol' right wing populist rhetoric.

      • by tomhath ( 637240 )
        I counted 48 mergers during the Clinton years versus 39 during Bush. Who let the facts get in the way? That said, the economy has been in the tank for most of the Obama administration, banks weren't doing well for a long time.
        • Based on this list [wikipedia.org], it looks like merger activity between US banks dramatically slowed since Obama took office, after going through the roof during the Bush years.

          I counted 48 mergers during the Clinton years versus 39 during Bush.

          Well, shit, when an industry is consolidating of course there are going to be a bunch of mergers (of small companies into medium companies) at the beginning, then a moderate amount of mergers (of medium companies into big companies), then just a few mergers (of big

    • by Anonymous Coward

      Whoosh?

      They didn't stop telecoms from merging either.

      U.S. Moves to Block Merger Between AT&T and T-Mobile [nytimes.com]
      T-Mobile Antitrust Challenge Gives AT&T Little Recourse [bloomberg.com]

      They didn't stop any of the airline or bank mergers that we have seen since 2009.

      US government seeks to block American-US Airways merger [cnn.com]
      U.S., Filing Suit, Moves to Block Airline Merger [nytimes.com]

      They didn't reign in the massive control that the insurance industry has over the consumer (indeed they gave the industry more power)

      BLUE CROSS BLUE SHIELD OF [justice.gov]

    • by jfern ( 115937 )

      So how'd AT&T buying T-Mobile work out?

  • There's DirecTV and Dish Network available in most places, and Comcast and Time Warner don't overlap, even in NYC where there's a line drawn between the two. FIOS is being offered where Verizon thinks it's possible, and AT&T U-Verse exists where it was set up.

    You have to get this down to one before you can call it a monopoly.

    • Re: (Score:1, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward

      Satellite and cellular internet are different products that do NOT compete directly with terrestrial broadband services like Comcast's: Cable is low latency, high bandwidth; Satellite is high latency, high bandwidth; Cellular is low latency, low bandwidth. For applications like streaming audio and video (internet radio, voip, Netflix, etc.), where only bandwidth matters, one could argue there is competition. For applications like online gaming and web browsing, where both latency and bandwidth matter, there

    • actually verizon stopped rolling out fibre to the home a few years back. if you dont have it, you never will
    • by ixidor ( 996844 )
      see here is the fallacy. the vast majority of people have 1 or maybe 2 providers where they live. if it is 2 it's usually dsl vs cable. so in all practivle terms for maybe 90% of America only 1 isp serves any given location. yes there are more than 1 providers across the land. and more to the point, the map provided by Time warner/comcast showed they only overlapped service by a very small percentage.
  • First problem in the U.S. Is the dominance of a few anti-competitive companies. Second is the FCCs blunder of selling ALL of OUR best longer range spectrum to AT& T and Verizon. Wireless Solar powered small inexpensive Microcells, arranged in a mesh network, Will chage the World in a few short years. Be they ground, car, balloon, drone or low earth satellite Based. And this will change the world faster for less money than ANYTHING else! The sabre-toothed tiger can't even begin to of had the impact tha
    • by Anonymous Coward

      Apparently Dr. Bronner [subgenius.com] is a broadband advocate now.

  • Why merge? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Dutch Gun ( 899105 ) on Saturday April 18, 2015 @06:21PM (#49502097)

    A rejection of the deal would be a blow to Comcast, which has sought to gain valuable cable assets in major U.S. cities including New York and Los Angeles, where Time Warner Cable is dominant. Expanding Comcast’s broadband Internet and video footprint would help it better compete with satellite, Web and telecommunications competitors that have taken hundreds of thousands of TV subscribers from the Philadelphia-based company in recent years.

    Or, Comcast, you could stop treating your customers like poop you scrape off your sole and instead offer competitive and innovative services at a reasonable price. Maybe then your customers wouldn't flee from you at the first opportunity they get. Just a thought.

  • Nixing individual mergers doesn't help anything. What government should do is nix the regulations that created these monopolies in the first place.

  • Right now I suspect it's only a matter of time and bribery before they deliver a de facto or fait accompli merger, regardless of what anyone says.

    I have zero faith in either wing of the US political monoparty's desire to actually stop this.

  • Seriously, these are removing competition, not improving it.
    What is needed is to encourage companies to compete against each other, not just turn themselves into companies for takeovers so that the executives walk away with large golden parachutes.

    WRT data comm, with comcast-TW merger, it will remove real competition. As such, if this is to be allowed to happen, we need to require that all laws that reward monopolies in data comm, to be removed. Cities should be allowed to put in their own network as l
  • Paul Krugman has just two questions about Comcast's deal to buy Time Warner. "First, why would we even think about letting it go through?" he asks in the New York Times. "Second, when and why did we stop worrying about monopoly power?" The broadband industry is already so non-competitive that once upon a time regulators would have been trying to break up Comcast. "Letting it expand would have been unthinkable," Krugman writes. But the bipartisan antitrust consensus has been eroding for decades—and tha

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