Comcast defends Time Warner mega-merger as criticism increases

[unhappycamper]

http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2014/04/08/comcast-defends-time-warner-mega-merger-as-criticism-increases/



Comcast defends Time Warner mega-merger as criticism increases
By Agence France-Presse
Tuesday, April 8, 2014 17:28 EDT

Comcast opens its campaign to get approval of its mega-merger with rival Time Warner Cable at a congressional hearing Wednesday, amid intense criticism from some activists.

Comcast filed documents Tuesday with antitrust regulators saying the $45 billion tie-up of the biggest U.S. cable television and broadband companies “will provide unique benefits to both consumers and businesses.”

The Federal Communications Commission filing “lays out in considerable detail how Comcast and TWC are better together for millions of customers and businesses,” said a blog post from Comcast vice president David Cohen, who is among the witnesses set to appear at the Senate Judiciary Committee hearing.

“Importantly, we show that these significant benefits are achieved without diminishing competition in video, broadband, phone, programming, advertising and other markets.”

[liberal N proud]

1. In the early part of the 20th century they broke up monopolies. Now - they facilitate their forming.

I hate dealing with Time Warner and can't imagine how much worse it will be with Comcast

We started out with a much smaller cable provider that was gobbled up by a bigger fish which was then gobbled up by Adelphia and then Time Warner.

Now we are facing the conglomerate of Comcast and Time Warner. My wife is pushing streaming, but she doesn't understand we still have to deal with these idiots to get network bandwidth to handle it.

[unhappycamper]

2. You can thank St. Ronnie for that.

In 1981 the Justice Department decided to break up a monopoly to show they could.

At the time the choices were IBM and AT&T. Since the Cold War was going on, they decided to keep the computer monopoly and ditch the phone system.

AT&T split into seven regional companies in 1984 (how appropriate). One day I was working for New England Telephone and the next day I was working for NYNEX. During the next seventeen years NYNEX changed its name three times: NYNEX --> Bell Atlantic --> Bell Atlantic --> Verizon.

BTW, did you know it costs the phone company $0.008/minute to make a connection anywhere in the continental United States? That 10 minute long distance phone call that costs you $1.00 ($0.10/minute) cost the phone company $0.08 to deliver. Nice markup.