No monopoly here, move along. Today I turned on my T.V. and noticed a scrambled signal (I don’t subscribe for any cable, only free local channels). After doing a quick channel scan it is revealed that all channels will now require a special Comcast box to view local and public channels. I have posted two stories below. One from Computerworld about the changes and another from Politico about congress being bought off to push this merger through.
Computerworld – If the Federal Communications Commission allows Comcast to buy Time Warner Cable, you can kiss any dreams of truly high-speed access to an open Internet goodbye. The Internet will be a far poorer place. And Comcast will be a far richer company.
There’s already little broadband competition in the U.S., and this deal will all but kill it. Susan Crawford, a professor at the Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law and a visiting professor at Harvard Law School who has studied broadband competition, is a harsh critic of the proposed buyout. In an article for Bloomberg, she writes, “The reason this deal is scary is that for the vast majority of businesses in 19 of the 20 largest metropolitan areas in the country, their only choice for a high-capacity wired connection will be Comcast.”
With little or no competition, Comcast will have little reason to increase the speed or lower the cost of broadband. And we need faster, cheaper broadband; the U.S. lags behind many countries in both areas. Akamai says that the average broadband speed in the U.S. is 7.4Mbps, only eighth in the world. And at an average price of $6.14 per Mbps, our broadband access is one of the most expensive in the developed world.
Comcast has already begun introducing broadband data caps, charging higher rates when those caps are exceeded. With the reduction in competition that will ensue from a Time Warner buyout, those caps won’t go away.
When Comcast purchased NBCUniversal, it signed a consent decree with the FCC to adhere to Net neutrality, but only until 2017. After that, Comcast is free to do what it wants. Without any real competition able to offer customers an alternative, what chance is there that Comcast will stick to that agreement a minute longer than it has to?
I keep saying “if” this buyout goes through, but it’s practically in the bag. Comcast has spread its tentacles deep into Washington’s power centers. Meredith Attwell Baker, a onetime FCC commissioner who voted to approve Comcast’s merger with NBCUniversal, is now a Comcast lobbyist. The New York Times reports that Comcast spent $18 million on lobbying in 2013 alone, that Comcast CEO Brian Roberts has golfed with President Obama and that Obama has visited Roberts’ home on Martha’s Vineyard. David Cohen, who heads Comcast’s relationship with government regulators, has been a big Obama fundraiser, once hosting an event at his home that raised $1.2 million. Cohen was also recently a guest at a White House state dinner for French President Francois Hollande.
Still, the deal isn’t done yet. Luckily in this case, the wheels of government grind slowly, and it could take up to a year before the FCC rules on it. It’s a year that opponents should use to do everything they can to stop it.
Preston Gralla is a Computerworld.com contributing editor and the author of more than 35 books, including How the Internet Works (Que, 2006).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mMChhrmUe3o
There’s little that tends to unite a leading liberal like Dick Durbin and a conservative firebrand like Ted Cruz.
But when the two senators join their colleagues for a hearing this month on Comcast’s $45 billion bid for Time Warner Cable, many of them will have something in common — they’ve each collected Comcast cash.
The Philadelphia cable giant historically has been a major Beltway player, and it’s sure to strengthen its political offense in order to sell the new, controversial megadeal. Yet even before announcing its plans for Time Warner Cable, Comcast had donated to almost every member of Congress who has a hand in regulating it.
In fact, money from Comcast’s political action committee has flowed to all but three members of the Senate Judiciary Committee. Checks have landed in the campaign coffers of Sens. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.) and Mike Lee (R-Utah), who oversee the chamber’s antitrust panel.
Meanwhile, the cable giant has donated in some way to 32 of the 39 members of the House Judiciary Committee, which is planning a hearing of its own. And Comcast has canvassed the two congressional panels that chiefly regulate cable, broadband and other telecom issues, donating to practically every lawmaker there — including Rep. Greg Walden (R-Ore.) and Sen. Jay Rockefeller (D-W.Va.).
Comcast stresses its donations are a function of its business. “Comcast NBCUniversal operates in 39 states and has 130,000 employees across the country,” said spokeswoman Sena Fitzmaurice. “It is important for our customers, our employees and our shareholders that we participate in the political process. The majority of our PAC contributions are to the senators and members who represent our employees and customers.”
But others see Comcast’s strategy as more than geography. “Comcast is a very sophisticated political player. They know that the money they give to both Republicans and Democrats buys them access — everybody admits that in Washington today,” said Ellen Miller, executive director of the Sunlight Foundation. “So they have covered their bases by giving to nearly every single member of the committees that do oversight.”
Comcast even in normal years is a major political donor. The company spent more than $3.5 million during 2011 and 2012 on a slew of Democratic and Republican candidates, and it has shelled out just under $2 million already in the 2014 cycle, according to federal records. That’s in addition to millions of dollars of lobbying — and big donations to charitable causes and groups — that Comcast has committed to Washington annually.
The company similarly donated to lawmakers and lobbied aggressively on Capitol Hill before winning the government’s permission in 2011 to buy NBCUniversal. A stable of congressional allies at the time wrote letters and publicly defended the NBC acquisition.
With this recent bid to buy Time Warner Cable, Congress again will be a key political battleground — a source of potential support for the company as it submits to a formal review by the Justice Department and FCC.
“Comcast reportedly has an army of over 100 lobbyists ready to swarm Capitol Hill and whose goal is to push this through. Their top priority is Comcast’s bottom line — not whether this deal will be good for consumers,” said Sen. Al Franken (D-Minn.) in an email, adding the merger could result in higher prices and less choice for consumers. “There’s also a pretty cozy relationship between Comcast and the regulators that will evaluate this deal, which I find troubling.”
And many of the lawmakers who might scrutinize Comcast’s purchase have received the company’s campaign contributions.
The NSA spying scandal has done irreparable damage to the 1 sector of the US economy that was still viable.
Now, the communist & fascists in DC will collectivize, centrally plan, & stifle the internet because it is uncontrollable & a bastion of free-thinking that blowing holes in their credibility. It is like the printing press to the Church, destroying their monopoly BS.
The Pentagon (aka “Department of Killing Poor, Mostly Brownish People for Their Natural Resources”), under Bush, deemed the internet a threat to the US.
The internet, in a truly free country, would actually be the savior of the economy, pushing creative destruction of inefficiency, saving money, creating new sectors of innovation, but in the US it must be shackled so the peasants don’t start thinking too much.
The retards in DC will fuck up the internet until it’s dead in the USSR, I mean USSA.
The Pentagon has an alternate name, btw, the “Department of Enforcing The Petrodollar”.
Stepahnie,
Why don’t you quit watching TV. Take your set and sell it. You’ll be better off without one.
Any news you can get on the internet. In addition the best reporting and the most cogent political analysis don’t come from TV’s talking heads, they’re found on internet sites like… well, you know which ones.
Consider too…
If the people you see on TV knocked on your door, would you let them into your house?
Would you want to associate with people like that?
If they said, “We want two or three hours of your time each day, would you give it to them?”
If they said, “We want to control the images and thoughts in your mind” would you let them do it?
If the TV people said, “You’ll be better off and feel more satisfied if you let us entertain you instead of you creating your own entertainment,” would you believe them?
And, if they said, “You’ll be better informed if you listen to us…” Think that’s true.
Again, as I wrote above, toss your TV and take charge of your own life. Don’t give a good part of it away to someones else
Jackson- I haven’t had cable in years. I only watch local channels for the weather. I live in Tornado alley so not having those channels is a problem. But the bigger issue is Comcast is the largest internet provider in my State. After the merger a lot of people on Reddit it were reporting internet issues.
A weather radio would be a better option. One of these,