Comcast To Buy Time Warner Cable In $44.2 Billion All-Stock Deal 303
symbolset writes "CNBC and many others report Time Warner Cable has agreed to be acquired by Comcast for $44.2 billion. From the article: 'The agreement comes more than eight months after Charter Communictions and Liberty Media made their first foray to try and negotiate a deal to acquire Time Warner Cable (a story broken by CNBC) and follows months of conversations between Time Warner Cable and Comcast about the prospect of a Comcast acquisition of the company. '"
Antitrust lawsuit? (Score:5, Interesting)
Meridith Atwell Baker was Re:Antitrust lawsuit? (Score:5, Interesting)
America was fun while it lasts, but if people can keep being bribed to do favors, corruption can inevitably kill a country. We have laws that you can't buy a vote. That seems noble. But the fact is that politicians can accept campaign contributions which is just a fancy word for a bribe. Who needs to buy votes when you can buy a politician?
Again, I love America, but corruption unchecked can destroy any nation no matter how strong. And with campaign contributions running rampant, the game is rigged in favor of the corrupt.
Re:Antitrust petition (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Antitrust lawsuit? (Score:5, Interesting)
If these two cable providers don't have overlapping markets, it seems to me they were like a cartel to begin with, dividing the territory between them and entering a do-not-compete agreement, which should have already prompted an anti-trust case.
Re:Antitrust lawsuit? (Score:2, Interesting)
Actually this was done between 1996 and 2001 for telecom, as a result we saw huge boom in internet service providers, $/bandwidth, and overall service. Dubya killed that for us, how helpful. Since it was repealed, things have gone to pot, at least with twisted pair. It's a little harder for cable companies in terms of video service, but thanks to the internet that too is changing.
What is truly the blocking issue here is that these people scream bloody murder if they're forced to compete.
Re:ogahdno (Score:5, Interesting)
I've been all for the government to claim ownership of the physical aspect of these networks for years and then sell the physical service to ISPs for over a decade. The companies have proved time and again, regardless of massive subsidies, that they only care about milking users and not the experience of those users. Hence 1.5m/128k ADSL 'competing' with 10-25m/512k cable internet and 3G/4G capped wireless networks more recently.
At least with the government doing it we could hold someone accountable, even if the the politicians only care at election time and would likely stick the blame on someone else...
Re:ogahdno (Score:5, Interesting)
Hence 1.5m/128k ADSL 'competing' with 10-25m/512k cable internet and 3G/4G capped wireless networks more recently.
ADSL2+ will do near 30/3 on short loops (~1mi) and can be bonded. VSDL gets up into the hundreds of megabits. Mostly, ILECs just aren't interested/serious in competing, and would generally rather have bunches of unused, zero-revenue copper laying around than resell it to someone who *is* interested, because making no money at all is better than "helping" your competitor (who you aren't interested in competing with) by selling them something.
Careful what you wish for (Score:2, Interesting)