US Justice Dept Approves Charter's Time Warner Cable Purchase With Conditions (reuters.com) 67
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Reuters: The U.S. Justice Department has approved Charter Communications Inc's proposed purchase of Time Warner Cable Inc and Bright House networks, which would create the second-largest broadband provider and third largest video-provider. The Justice Department valued the purchase of Time Warner Cable at $78 billion and Bright House at $10.4 billion. Under terms, New Charter has agreed to refrain from telling its content providers that they cannot also sell shows online. The deal must also be approved by the Federal Communications Commission. FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler said Monday he circulated an order seeking approval of the merger with conditions that "will directly benefit consumers by bringing and protecting competition to the video marketplace and increasing broadband deployment."
No caps = higher base price / forced hardware rent (Score:2)
No caps = higher base price / forced hardware rent
Re:No caps = higher base price / forced hardware r (Score:4, Interesting)
No caps = higher base price / forced hardware rent
My price went down with the plan change that got rid of caps at Charter, and my speed went up from 30 to 100mb/s. They require you use their modem but they don't charge a fee for it. Charter hasn't been all that bad, at least by comparison to other cable companies. Hope TWC doesn't rub off on them.
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One annoying issue with Charter was the random monthly internet drop out. Worse is you try contacting customer support and they say your connection looks fine from their end. Aft
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One annoying issue with Charter was the random monthly internet drop out. Worse is you try contacting customer support and they say your connection looks fine from their end. After 10-15 minutes of them trying to have you reboot your modem, computer, and light bulbs, they go "ohh, yeah, we can't contact your modem". WTF did you mean by "your connection looks fine" if you can't fk'n communicate with it?!
I read this and laughed, because that's my experience with them (random failures, etc). They suck on the internet side (lowest upstream of any provider other than DSL... even their 100mbit business plans only have 4mbit up) and they're even worse on the TV side.
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I believe Charter is the ONLY cable company that doesn't have a subsidized service for low-income families. They dropped their lower-cost packages years ago, and now their service STARTS at $40/mo.
Meanwhile, Time Warner still has a $15/mo plan, which is only 3/1Mbps, but you don't even need evidence of income. Time Warner is also one of the only cable companies that allows other service prov
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Don't worry, Time Warner screws their customers in completely different ways that I'm hoping that Charter will remedy. Like their absolute abuse of the CCI flag on cable television that requires you to use either one of their absolutely terrible set top boxes, TiVo, or Windows Media Center (a dead product).
No other cable company does this, which leaves every other subscriber not paying Time Warner open to using the myriad of other roll-your-own DVR solutions out there with a CableCard and tuner.
If Charter
Re: No caps = higher base price / forced hardware (Score:1)
Only because they want to get that sweet profit margin no matter what.
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I see the same thing using Firefox and have no explanation for it.
".. refrain from telling its content providers .." (Score:2)
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Marrying the least ugly sister is still marrying an ugly girl!
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Still getting laid is still getting laid. :)
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have you not heard? there are at least 2 benefits to marrying an ugly girl:
1) no one would steal her
and
2) if they do, WHO CARES!
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Charter has never lied to me, Comcast did all the time. The X1 platform is far supe
How about forcing them to provide service to... (Score:1)
their entire monopoly areas? Comcast has a government-granted monopoly over most of Seattle, but they don't offer service to a lot of Capitol Hill or many poor or mostly minority areas. If you think cable companies are bad, imagine not even having the option of getting cable TV or Internet from them. I probably wouldn't buy from them, but it would be nice to have an option.
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Well, obviously if its not at least 1gbps and free then we are just out to sc^ew those poor people!
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their entire monopoly areas? Comcast has a government-granted monopoly over most of Seattle, but they don't offer service to a lot of Capitol Hill or many poor or mostly minority areas. If you think cable companies are bad, imagine not even having the option of getting cable TV or Internet from them. I probably wouldn't buy from them, but it would be nice to have an option.
My new house is in the same boat. Charter's contractors want $6,500 to run a cable down my driveway (about 900 ft). I have bump poles for power all the way to the house but of course they don't want to use those. Charter will pay up to $3,000 for it so I would have to pay the other $3,500. Or I'm stuck with AT&T 18/1 service.
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If you were a real geek, you'd put a small shed by the road.
In that shed, you'd put a laptop. It doesn't need power: A small, hidden UPS will do fine.
You would call this your "home," and have them install cable to it, which they will do for a nominal low cost.
Afterward, you'd string your own coax (whether RG-6 or RG-11 or 1/2" hardline or whatever) to your house, down your driveway along your "bump poles" (whatever those are).
Terminate both ends of the wire, optionally keep the shed for future reference,
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If you were a real geek, you'd put a small shed by the road.
In that shed, you'd put a laptop. It doesn't need power: A small, hidden UPS will do fine.
You would call this your "home," and have them install cable to it, which they will do for a nominal low cost.
Afterward, you'd string your own coax (whether RG-6 or RG-11 or 1/2" hardline or whatever) to your house, down your driveway along your "bump poles" (whatever those are).
Terminate both ends of the wire, optionally keep the shed for future reference, and call it a day.
What is wrong with you?
I think my neighbor who owns the property at the end of my driveway might object to me building on it maybe? Seriously I almost bought a small trailer that was for sale across the street from the end of my driveway just to get cable internet there and do wireless back to my house.
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Don't feel bad, I had never heard of them either before the cable guys called them that
Re:How about forcing them to provide service to... (Score:4, Informative)
Comcast has a government-granted monopoly over most of Seattle,
No, they don't. They have a non-exclusive franchise agreement. From the actual franchise [seattle.gov] itself, paragraph 1.4(A) on page 5:
And in paragraph 20.6:
Pretty explicit. Not a government-granted monopoly. If someone else wants to come along and meet all the requirements for the franchise, they can get one, too.
but they don't offer service to a lot of Capitol Hill or many poor or mostly minority areas.
Then your city council was remiss in not including a mandatory coverage clause in the franchise.
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Re:Not clear what the terms are (Score:5, Insightful)
The terms are the person who approved the merger then "retires" and takes a new high paid executive job at TW/Charters.
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I'm not a fan of Time Warner Cable already. I'm concerned about Charter taking over.
Same here. The article has this ; "We are confident New Charter will be a leading competitor in the broadband and video markets," the company said in a statement.
Being leader in both seems like a conflict of interest.
to protect and extinguish (Score:4, Insightful)
Townsfolk: There's a dragon attacking the city!
Dragon Patrol: That is troubling, if true.
Townfolk: You can see it flying from here! And burning! He's going to destroy everything!
Dragon Patrol: I know it seems that way on the face of it, but as yet we have no hard evidence that that's the case.
Townsfolk: Please do something, it's your job!
Dragon Patrol: Very well, we'll schedule an investigation for next week.
Townsfolk: AAAAAGH!! OH GOD WE'RE BURNING AAAAGH!
[Six months later...]
City Watch: After a thorough investigation, we have concluded that this dragon attack is really an actionable issue. Everything and everyone that could be burned already has been. And it's a good thing, in a lot of ways. For example, the dragon has given us, the Dragon Patrol, a portion of the proceeds from burning down the city down and looting its riches. We consider this case closed.
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Seems to be a good analogy for what's actually going on.
Prediction! (Score:4, Insightful)
Prices will go up. Quality will go down. How else can they pay the banks and investors who are underwriting this merger? Subscriptions per capita appear to be declining for both cable TV and cable internet. Together this indicates a possible death spiral. A good reason for the banks and the investors to try to get their pay out UP FRONT.
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It'll go down even more? TW Roadrunner is the reason I switched to public DNS. I mean, good grief man, if you can't even do the most basic shit for $100/mo and all... Upside is that when they *do* find something, the speeds are pretty good, hovering between 1000 - 2000 k down. Dunno what the up is. Practical upshot: I can pull an entire distro install DVD off kernel.org in like 20 minutes. Good enough for me.
Hey, wait a minute... (Score:1)
Wasn't Charter recently in bankruptcy [nytimes.com]?
Still a bad idea (Score:1)
Still a bad idea, because there are two sides to this market:
1) Consumers getting data
2) Cable companies negotiating with everyone else (content providers, other internet peers, etc.)
Consumers can still get shafted because of #2.
Competition used to be treated as a positive force (Score:2)
FCC just won in the Olympics of logical reasoning.
Less competition means protection of competition.
Less competition does not mean there will be more broadband deployment. In the past there was a theoretical chance for competition. With two companies merging to two: not a chance
New Charter has agreed to refrain from telling its content providers. Well... by this time we already know that it is not always necessary to speak to get your message across.
Body language, mimic, sometimes a tone contradicting the ma
I wonder ... (Score:5, Insightful)
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That's one of the "conditions". There will be an opening.
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They'll wait until the media gets distracted by something. So, any day now.
Attorney General Loretta Lynch (Score:3)
So, how long till the current head of the DoJ announces he is resigning his current position to join the Board of Directors of Time Warner?
The geek has tunnel vision.
There is more to the DOJ than Anti-trust.
[Lynch] joined the Eastern District as a drug and violent-crime prosecutor in the U.S. Attorney's office in 1990. From 1994 to 1998, she served as the chief of the Long Island office and worked on several political corruption cases...
In 1999, she was nominated by President Bill Clinton to serve as the U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of New York.
2001, Lynch left the U.S. Attorney's office to become a partner at Hogan & Hartson (later Hogan Lovells). She remained there until January 20, 2010, when President Barack Obama nominated Lynch to again serve as United States Attorney for the Eastern District of New York. From 2003 to 2005, she was a member of the board of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York.
Hogan & Hartson has been around since 1904 and even before the merger was about as big and prestigious a law firm as you'll find anywhere in the world.
Lynch has far better options than TWC.
Lynch's office prosecuted Republican congressman Michael Grimm; prosecuted Democratic politicians Pedro Espada Jr. and William Boyland, Jr.; investigated Citigroup over mortgage securities sold by the bank, resulting in a US$7 billion settlement; and was involved in the US$1.2 billion settlement with HSBC over violations of the Bank Secrecy Act.
While Lynch was US Attorney for the Eastern District of New York, she supervised the investigation into senior FIFA officials from its earliest stages. The investigation culminated in the indictment of 14 senior FIFA officials and sports marketing executives shortly after Lynch was confirmed as Attorney General. For her work in the 2015 FIFA corruption case, Lynch was presented with the 3rd annual Golden Blazer by Roger Bennett and Michael Davies.
Lynch is the second woman to become Attorney General and the first African-American woman to become Attorney General. Growing up, her mother was a school librarian and her father was a Baptist minister. Lynch earned a Bachelor of Arts in English and A
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Thank you for the correction. It's not so much "tunnel vision" as outright ignorance since I haven't paid attention to who was actually running the US DoJ since Reno because I honestly don't care anymore. They are appointed by whoever is the President of USA at the time, will follow the doctrine of whoever appointed them and occasionally get replaced for one reason of another so I stopped keeping track. Did this current DoJ prosecute anyone form the last administration for violations of the Constitution
Should do a deal on last mile competition (Score:2)
The US government should tell all the cable companies that they can only merge with each other and get bigger if they agree to end ALL efforts to stop last mile competition in any form.
So that means no more monopoly deals with local government that prevents competing providers. No more pushing for legislation at any level of government that outlaws competition. No more doing deals with competitors not to roll out competing last mile offerings (i.e. the deal done with Verizon not to roll out more FiOS). No m
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So that means no more monopoly deals with local government that prevents competing providers.
Very few had them to start with, but they're already prohibited. 47 USC 541(a)(1) reads: [cornell.edu]
No more fighting against efforts by Google and others (including local municipalities) to roll out fast broadband.
Local municipalities are inherently unfair competition and the costs are unfairly spread onto the taxpayers -- even those who have no
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Taxpayers already fund all sorts of things that they may not necessarily agree with. Just look at the billions of dollars that have been paid by state and local government to fund sports arenas of all sorts as one example.
Also in quite a few cases the municipalities that want to roll out broadband have had local referendums asking the citizens of those municipalities whether they support tax-payers money being used to roll out broadband and gotten a clear yes vote. (you cant argue that its unfair for taxpay
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you cant argue that its unfair for taxpayers to spend money on infrastructure like this
I certainly can argue that it is unfair competition for municipalities, since they can charge less for the service (because they first don't have to make a profit and second can cover any losses by dipping into the general fund), and don't have to play by the same rules that they made the incumbent play by. It's not just an issue of taxpayers having to foot the bill for other people's conveniences.
Just look at the billions of dollars that have been paid by state and local government to fund sports arenas of all sorts as one example.
You mean the loans that add a considerable amount to the ticket prices, so eventually it is the ticket buyer w
Hurry Up Google Fiber! (Score:2)
Not anytime soon. (Score:2)
There are statutory prohibitions on a former government employee that generally prevent her from ''switching sides'' after leaving the government. The following are the main restrictions:
Lifetime Ban - An employee is prohibited from representing anyone else before the government on a particular matter involving specific parties in which she participated personally and substantially.
Two-Year Ban - An employee is prohibited for two years from representing another person on a particular matter involving specific parties which was pending under her responsibility during her last year of government service.
One-Year Ban - A senior employee includes Executive Level officials and all other employees whose rate of basic pay is equal to or greater than 86.5% of the rate for Level II of the Executive Schedule, which is $158,554.00 as of January 2015
Leaving Government -- Post-Employment Restrictions [justice.gov]
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Does not apply to members of congress, obviously. Just the worker schmucks.
More competition? (Score:2)