WWTBAM Bored

http://www.philly.com/philly/business/2 ... Cable.html

Good grief!

The deal will likely face intense regulatory scrutiny in Washington.

I hope so.

Cable maverick John Malone controls 27 percent of Charter. He has said the cable-TV industry must consolidate and enlarge to gain leverage in negotiations with content companies such as the Walt Disney Co. and CBS Corp., and to compete with Netflix.

It's the customers who need to gain negotiating leverage.

I hope the Feds say, "No way in hell!"

It frickin' TV folks. Its not milk or bread.

OK, its internet, too. But still.

If you want to take your own billions and provide cheaper better service, you can. That's what makes this country great.

What's happening here in the Houston area, and maybe Texas, and likely other places, is that when new neighborhoods are being developed, no providers are putting in the distribution lines unless they get some sort of guaranteed user base, typically a long term contract to provide bundled services to the homeowners, forcing the homeowners to pay for the service even if they don't want it or want someone elses. The power company is also refusing to install electric distribution in deregulated areas increasing the lot prices, which I'm OK with, but then the homeowners own the distribution system so when storms come it will get sticky as to who pays to repair and reconnect.

Right now I have available to me Charter, Comcast and AT&T (twisted pair only). AT&T has the best customer service and most consistent service but the internet is slower (10-15mbs). I'm with AT&T and am satisfied with the service, though I enjoyed Charters 45-50mbs service, when it was working.

I don't know how many areas have both Comcast and Time Warner. Time Warner was in Houston but not Comcast, then Comcast bought Time Warner's Houston business and now we have them. As far as I know we've never had both here.

Cable maverick John Malone controls 27 percent of Charter. He has said the cable-TV industry must consolidate and enlarge to gain leverage in negotiations with content companies such as the Walt Disney Co. and CBS Corp., and to compete with Netflix.

And the fact that Comcast already owns Universal, NBC, USA Network, etc. etc. doesn't help their negotiations with those folks?

My dad worked for Time for over 20 years, back when Time Inc. was an independent company. I expect this deal will work out better than the clusterfuck when AOL acquired Time Warner.

You'd think this would be big news in Philly, where Comcast plans to build a second skyscraper. But 6ABC has nothing but snow coverage. Come on, you can stop now, we get that it's snowing.

I sure hope the Feds give this a nice long look and then say "no". But I don't expect they will. If they didn't put any roadblocks in the way of Comcast acquiring NBC/Universal, I don't expect they'll say much here, especially since Comcast has agreed to give up 3 million subscribers to other cable companies.

Here in River City we went through this a year or so ago when Insight, the local provider, was bought out by Time Warner. I don't want to have to go through the hassle again. All we got from Time Warner was higher bills and poorer service.

According to the American Customer Satisfaction Index, these two companies are dead last in customer satisfaction.

Sounds like a match made in consumer heaven.