Comcast and Time Warner Cable: The upshot for us

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	TOP STORY Comcast and Time Warner Cable: The upshot for us
	By Woody Leonhard Last month, cable TV giant Comcast announced it had agreed to buy Time Warner Cable for U.S. $45 billion, merging the largest and second-largest cable companies in the U.S. While the raging debate over the advisability of the merger focuses primarily on TV, ultimately the far larger question will be our future access to the Internet.

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Is this article utterly irrelevant for the approximately 95% of the world population which lives elsewhere than in the United States?

BATcher

Plethora means a lot to me.

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Is this article utterly irrelevant for the approximately 95% of the world population which lives elsewhere than in the United States?

I hardly believe that 95% of the world population is suscribed or reading this newsletter. It is, in fact relevant to those who do.

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I hardly believe that 95% of the world population is suscribed or reading this newsletter. It is, in fact relevant to those who do.

While Windows Secrets does not reach a very large percentage of people outside the US, those who do read this newsletter tend to be influential in their own countries. So this publication can serve interests outside the US, while focusing on US Windows users.

-- rc primak

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Thank you Woody for a great piece–let’s have more! I’ve been with Time Warner for umpteen years and waffle from hot to cold with their service or lack of service (sort of like the faucets in my bathroom sink–hot/cold;=). TW’s reliability in delivery is grossly undependable and, of course, they never offer to give me credit for the time when I can’t gain access because of their “technical problems” sometimes for several days. I have to recycle my cable box far too often–why should I need to do this at all? Further frustrations include their frequency in changing channel numbers and offerings for TV. I have eliminated several of TW’s packages (including HBO) and don’t miss them one bit. My Internet service has been moderately reliable although slow, but I have to admit that I have appreciated their phone cable service with unlimited long distance calls. I have to admit that I don’t fully understand this Comcast/Time Warner Cable merger, but please keep us informed. Fortunately, I live in the “land of Google super fast fiber service” which seems to be expanding rapidly in the Kansas City area. However, I don’t know how this is going to affect my TV and phone service. Actually, I’m finished with TV for the season since all of my favorite “big” basketball teams have been eliminated–one of my major objections to the way the NCAA runs the tournament. Oh well so much for TV, nothing much worthwhile there anyway except sports, but I am concerned about the future of Internet access and cable phone service. Please keep us informed. Thanks.

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Is this article utterly irrelevant for the approximately 95% of the world population which lives elsewhere than in the United States?

No, it is definitely NOT irrelevant outside the US. What is happening inthe US is mirrored in fights between ISPs and regional regulators in the EU and East Asia, with Australia and New Zealand standing out as defenders of Net Neutrality and against bandwidth caps.

Regional monopllies in any industry can affect commerce (and in this issue, communications) all over the globe. Our fight in the US is very relevant to the Worldwide Web and the future of the three-quarters of Humanity who have yet to get online in their homes.

-- rc primak

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No, it is definitely NOT irrelevant outside the US. What is happening inthe US is mirrored in fights between ISPs and regional regulators in the EU and East Asia, with Australia and New Zealand standing out as defenders of Net Neutrality and against bandwidth caps.
….

Even in these countries the US is using communications as part of a free trade deal negotiation to try to get them to go along with the US’ version of digital copyright and other “foreign” – for those countries – policies. And it’s not government that’s trying to defend Net neutrality, it’s mainly non-government private organisations. Government is behind anything that gives them greater control, and will ride on the coat-tails of anything the US says/wants that will help them to achieve those goals. They publicly state otherwise, but the devil’s in the detail, and the detail’s secret unless Edward Snowden releases some more stuff.

Regarding data caps in New Zealand: basic plan with some ISPs:

1. http://www.orcon.net.nz/external/genius/combined.php?data_cap=30

2. https://myaccount.snap.net.nz/signup/home

$NZ1 = $US0.80c approx

The plans may not be expensive, but the “over data” charges are $NZ2.00 per GB – unless one purchases another data block, if the ISP has that as an option – with Orcon that’s not an option. With SNAP an extra 100gb (minimum size), is $NZ15.00 and the extra data dies at the end of the period it’s bought in. Most of the major ISPs do not have data “overs”, they either slow the speed down to dial-up, or charge the $NZ2.00 per GB.

Don’t know what Australia’s like, don’t live there.

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@ BATcher,
Instead or wondering if this affects “the 95%”, it could prove behooving to think about the utter lack of control you’ll feel when Comcast inhales SW England’s little bit of curd along the whey.
Since we know 100% that Comcast is the largest Telecommunications Conglomerate in this Solar System, it’s not so much an “if” thing as it is a “when” thing… so don’t blink.

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While I definitely share Woody’s concerns over the Comcast/Time-Warner merger, it is hard to imagine that T-W’s service could get any worse. As I wrote to Congressman Franken, indifferent (and sometimes insulting) customer service, speed that can slow to a crawl, constantly rising prices and added fees, and an inability to access management to resolve problems are all part of what made Time-Warner second from the bottom in a recent J. D. Powers customer satisfaction survey of our region’s ISPs. (Alas, the only other option in our city at this time ranked dead last.) Every time T-W raises prices (and always far in excess of the inflation rate), they claim it is partially for investment in improved infrastructure, but few of us have seen evidence of that in our basic services. Rather, those dollars would appear to go for new products (like home monitoring systems) that are themselves revenue generators for T-W.

There are stirrings in our area of an independent ISP trying to enter the market. My fear is that a Comcast/Time-Warner megalith could crush small entrants into our area by temporarily lowering prices only to continue jacking them up after the competition has been eliminated.

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While I definitely share Woody’s concerns over the Comcast/Time-Warner merger, it is hard to imagine that T-W’s service could get any worse. As I wrote to Congressman Franken, indifferent (and sometimes insulting) customer service, speed that can slow to a crawl, constantly rising prices and added fees, and an inability to access management to resolve problems are all part of what made Time-Warner second from the bottom in a recent J. D. Powers customer satisfaction survey of our region’s ISPs. (Alas, the only other option in our city at this time ranked dead last.) Every time T-W raises prices (and always far in excess of the inflation rate), they claim it is partially for investment in improved infrastructure, but few of us have seen evidence of that in our basic services. Rather, those dollars would appear to go for new products (like home monitoring systems) that are themselves revenue generators for T-W.

There are stirrings in our area of an independent ISP trying to enter the market. My fear is that a Comcast/Time-Warner megalith could crush small entrants into our area by temporarily lowering prices only to continue jacking them up after the competition has been eliminated.

Thank god I’m a AT&T DSL customer (/sarcasm) !

-- rc primak

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… it is hard to imagine that T-W’s service could get any worse.

Service for me has been pretty rock solid in the last 2-3 months, but it was pretty dismal before that. The worst month, I had outages more than half the days, ranging from minor (a few minutes) to major (8-12 hours at a time).

Normally, there were outages several days a month, ranging from 5 minutes (several times in the same day) to 8 hours or more (quite often), to one outage that lasted 3 days. Since I have phone service with them, any outage means loss of Internet and phone services.

Sure, they gave me some credit, but I’m just glad I had no health or other emergencies when the phone was down.

When I had Comcast, service was just as flaky.

Now, I never chose to get Comcast or TWC service. I started with Home.com about 17 years ago, and they sold out to another provider, who sold out to someone else, who sold out to TWC. The two in between were AT&T and Comcast (Verizon/Comcast?), but I forget the order. Each time, the service went from bad to worse, then got great shortly before they sold it to the next in line.

I guess now I know why the service has been so good lately, and customer service has become pretty stellar…

Two phrases come to mind: “musical chairs” and “putting lipstick on the pig”…

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Service for me has been pretty rock solid in the last 2-3 months, but it was pretty dismal before that. The worst month, I had outages more than half the days, ranging from minor (a few minutes) to major (8-12 hours at a time).

Normally, there were outages several days a month, ranging from 5 minutes (several times in the same day) to 8 hours or more (quite often), to one outage that lasted 3 days. Since I have phone service with them, any outage means loss of Internet and phone services.

Sure, they gave me some credit, but I’m just glad I had no health or other emergencies when the phone was down.

When I had Comcast, service was just as flaky.

Thankfully I live in the UK where there are some pretty efficient ISPs. Mine will even ring you back if you phone at a busy time and leave your number, and they are there 24/7. Outages are rare.

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“Don’t know what Australia’s like, don’t live there.”

We look enviously at unlimited access in the US and UK. ISP plans in Australia have always been ferociously expensive and capped at low levels; by way of example, 50 GB per month is AUD73 (over 50GB, data is slowed to dial-up speeds); prepaid, using the “wireless”/ cellphone network for access, is AUD180 for 12 Gb.

This makes the providers of the internet pipeline (cable, ADSL, cellphone) handsome profits. i would expect Comcast to want to enjoy the same rewards.

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– http://windowssecrets.com/top-story/comcast-and-time-warner-cable-the-upshot-for-us/
Mar 19, 2014 – “… money from Comcast’s political action committee has flowed to all but three members of the Senate Judiciary Committee… 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…”

The NYTimes reports higher numbers:
– http://www.nytimes.com/2014/02/21/business/media/comcasts-web-of-lobbying-and-philanthropy.html
Feb 20, 2014 – “… The correlation between giving and support for its deals extends to Congress: 91 of the 97 members of Congress who signed a letter in 2011 supporting the Comcast NBC merger received contributions during that same election cycle from the company’s political action committee or executives…”
.

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Yeah! Our public servants should be forced to wear the patches/logos of EVERY PAC contributor in the visible portions of their attire, so that we can truly have full transparency! :angry:

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@PC.Tech >> Yeah! Our public servants should be forced to wear the patches/logos of EVERY PAC contributor in the visible portions of their attire, so that we can truly have full transparency! :angry:

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Thank you, Woody Leonhard.
This topic hits a raw nerve with me, since the days when Adelphia brothers were hit with corruption charges (bank/wire/securities fraud) that landed them in jail and the their assets were partially purchased by TWC; about a dozen years ago. As a result, many consumers (including self) got the royal shaft on this deal and I had promised myself that I no longer wanted to have anything to do with monopolies in my search for entertainment options.
Then I took off my rose colored glasses and realized that there is no alternative option(s); unless consumers want to go to with some vigilante tactics in feeding their appetite for entertainment.
In the Part1 of your great article, you had mentioned something about

“At this point, if you truly think the U.S. Congress will block the takeover, I have some offshore investments I’d like to discuss with you.”

Per chance, do any of these “offshore investments” include any telecommunications (or entertainment) companies? Because it is getting very difficult to pick out the lesser of all evils (aka monopolies) for my addiction? :huh:

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To those who wonder if this letter is relevant for people outside US , definiteley the answer is YES for two reasons :
I am french ; the same is happening here for the moment in the mobile providers industry ; Woody Leonard says :”On the surface, Comcast’s proposed purchase of Time Warner Cable looks like any other billion-dollar merger of an industry’s two largest players: consolidated operations, reduced overlap, economies of scale, and larger customer base are all supposed to lower customer costs and provide better service. (Show me one case where all that has come to pass.)” he is right ; the merging of two giants namely Numéricâble and SFR is GOING TO RAISE THE COSTS OF SUBSCRIPTION for customers as happened already in Italy for an amount of 15%!

Second , WTO and EU ARE DEFINITELY IN BIG NEGOCIATIONS for a new TRANSATLANTIC PACT ; from that point of view the worst regarding medias is to come yet for Europe where giant US companies are to take control over more or less “independant” medias
Add to that the fact that merging creates inevitably jobs losses and you are almost done ; not only the trend is to build up new monopolies but as the banks in US have already proved ,”too big to fail” will become the moto in case of …….. Financial problems which are to be expected ; the taxpayers wil then of course have to pay the bill ; some years earlier , one liked to say ” small is beautifull”; the rule has changed ; we are driving to a major catastrophe; thanks for reporting; as one contributor says : to spred the word around the world is of definite and utmost importance OLIVIER GEBUHRER

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Time Warner is increasing my internet bill by 15.25% beginning next month. I wonder how that is saving me money?:confused:

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Time Warner is increasing our cable bill as well… by about $10 a month I think it was. All because they could not tell some of these networks NO when they held out for more money.

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It may interest everyone to know that Woody Leonhard lives in Thailand, not the US.

I have Cox, not Time Warner nor Comcast. So far, my internet service is excellent.

Group "L" (Linux Mint)
with Windows 10 running in a remote session on my file server

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It may interest everyone to know that Woody Leonhard lives in Thailand, not the US.

Surprise! After 13 years in Phuket, I moved to the Nashville area in January…. Man, it’s COLD out here…:cool:

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Surprise! After 13 years in Phuket, I moved to the Nashville area in January…. Man, it’s COLD out here…:cool:

Welcome home, Woody!

Group "L" (Linux Mint)
with Windows 10 running in a remote session on my file server

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IMHO, this is just another example of the move toward the one entity I grew up thinking was illegal in this country: The Monopoly. But that’s just my opinion.

In reality, though, it’s leaving consumers with fewer and fewer choices. We live in an old suburb of Buffalo, NY. We have our choice between two providers: Time Warner or
Verizon. It’s really not a choice. DSL’s unreliable service and Verizon’s complete lack of competent, much less English-speaking, support render that option a non-choice. Because this is an old neighborhood FiOS is not an option. Period.

As of this moment, Time Warner is decent. If we are capped, we haven’t yet hit it. I’m guessing all bets are off if this merger goes through.

Years ago when I lived down south, I had DirecTV’s DirecPC satellite Internet service. It was every bit as fast as the 15 Mb Roadrunner service we have now and equally reliable in all weather short of actual tornado warnings. For me, however, now that I’m 100% disabled even if the service is still available, it’s too cost prohibitive.

Consumers are running out of choices and those choices are disappearing by design. The bottom line is that the bottom line is slowly devouring all semblance of choice for the consumer. Profit is the sole motivator and the best way to increase profit is to eliminate services & competition. TWC & Comcast may not be direct competitors per se, but it’s still a means to an end: Complete control of an industry.

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molly_dog, you are right on target, let’s hear more from you as you seem to have excellent perspectives on this situation. I love to watch sports on TV, and appreciate cable phone and Internet from Time Warner. However they keep changing options to the point that I can hardly keep up with their continual variations and price fluctuations (certainly not the TV channel number changes;-). I recently quit HBO and a couple of other choices (don’t miss a thing) and, when approaching TW, they seem more than willing to cooperate like a panting dog wanting affection. This obviously is because they are rapidly losing customers and are doing everything possible to keep their business afloat. Then, I wonder, what will happen to their business should Charter Communications, rebuffed last year, when it proposed a merger with Time Warner Cable, then lost out to Comcast, should reenter the picture. With direct TV entering the competition, I’m convinced that this entire media scene is due for a vast overhaul. Note: Has anyone ever been credited or reimbursed from Time Warner when their service is disrupted for a day or several days? Nope, I pay my bills on time and never receive any interest in or offer for compensating their customers. Let’s hear more!

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Note: Has anyone ever been credited or reimbursed from Time Warner when their service is disrupted for a day or several days? Nope, I pay my bills on time and never receive any interest in or offer for compensating their customers

Amazingly, since we dumped Verizon in ’07, we have not had a single service interruption with Time Warner other than those related to power outages. However, I lived in the Rio Grande Valley of South Texas for about 10 years & because of the extreme heat and low humidity, static electricity kept TWC down almost as much as it was up.

There seemingly was no established policy about credit for service interruption (if you had time to call and possessed the patience of Job to wait to speak to someone). It was absolutely like Forrest Gump’s immortal analogy for life–you never knew what you were going to get. If you got a moderately empathetic rep, you could get a credit, but that was always a BIG “if”. Most of the time you got a wannabe lawyer type that would argue you into submission or put you on hold indefinitely when you asked for a supervisor.

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I enjoy listening to Susan Crawford about the internet in the US.

Full Show: Is Net Neutrality Dead?
May 2, 2014
http://billmoyers.com/episode/full-show-is-net-neutrality-dead/

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but wait there is more…
Although there had been some merger talks between DirectTV and DishNetwork in the past 3 months; on Thursday AT&T announced an offer of $40Billion USD for DirectTV.
It used to be that AT&T was in cahoots with DishNetwork and we used to get special package deals and a single bill for both.
Then, AT&T split up from that bundle-tie with DishNetwork and introduced U-Verse TV.
Consumer Reports is showing many irate customers with the U-Verse TV service.
Now I find out that AT&T is currently offering DIRECTV Satellite TV Bundles
Of course, the smart consumer already knows about “Aereo App Battles TV Networks in Supreme Court”
All these fights for market dominance for our entertainment dollars are making my head hurt.
:o:

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