Comcast-Time Warner-Charter mega deal is dead

24 April 2015 by Steve Blum
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Comcast’s “merger agreement with Time Warner Cable and its transactions agreement with Charter Communications, Inc. have been terminated”, according to a company statement this morning. CEO Brian Roberts was quoted as saying “today, we move on. Of course, we would have liked to bring our great products to new cities, but we structured this deal so that if the government didn’t agree, we could walk away”.

And walk away they did.

So far, no official statement from Charter.… More

Comcast deal shuddering to a halt in Washington

24 April 2015 by Steve Blum
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Hard to guarantee good predatory behavior.

UPDATE 24 April 2015: Comcast and Time Warner have officially called it off.

The mega-merger and market swap involving Comcast, Time Warner and Charter is either dead or dying, according to news reports. Bloomberg reported that Comcast isn’t happy with FCC and federal department of justice plans to send the deal into a hearing process, which is usually a prelude to killing proposed mergers, although it’s possible to mount a defence.… More

Harder push for faster broadband speeds in California

23 April 2015 by Steve Blum
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California should raise its minimum standard for broadband, CPUC commissioner Catherine Sandoval said during yesterday’s meeting of the California Broadband Council in Sacramento. The goal “is to the increase the minimum speed that counts as served in California to mirror the FCC’s speed of 25 mbps down and 3 up”, she said. “I think it’s imperative that the state amend its definition”. Sandoval said she’ll be working to do that via existing California Public Utilities Commission processes, and also pointed to a bill sponsored by Santa Cruz legislator Mark Stone – assembly bill 238 – that would do the same thing.… More

Public sector broadband customers are slow to change, even when it means fast broadband

22 April 2015 by Steve Blum
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Click for a bigger version.

Schools and other big broadband users have been slow to sign up for service on Digital 395, a 500-plus mile fiber network that reaches from Reno, down the eastern Calfiornia side of the Sierra Nevada, along U.S. Highway 395, to Barstow. The slower than expected take up rate for anchor institutions is causing financial headaches for the system, according to Michael Ort, president of Praxis Associates, the lead company on the Digital 395 project.… More

Feds figure out that the Comcast deal looks the same from Washington as it does from California

21 April 2015 by Steve Blum
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Looks the same from either side.

The federal justice department might save the California Public Utilities Commission the trouble of killing the Comcast/Time Warner/Charter deal.

First Bloomberg reported that the justice department is about to send the matter into a proceeding – an administrative hearing – that would, in all likelihood, end with the mega-merger and market swap being tanked on anti-trust grounds. Then, the Wall Street Journal followed up with an article saying that Comcast and Time Warner execs were planning to meet with the justice department on Wednesday to try to negotiate their way out of that dead end process.… More

Tacoma considers a private bailout plan for muni broadband system

20 April 2015 by Steve Blum
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Local choice is not a free ride.

The City of Tacoma might back out of the cable TV and broadband business, and lease its municipal cable system to a private operator for 40 years (h/t to the Baller-Herbst list for the pointer).

The muni system – branded Click – was built on the back of a fiber optic network originally installed to support the city-owned electric utility. It competes against Comcast and CenturyLink, which is a benefit to local residents in the sense that they have a third option and a source of pressure on what would otherwise be cable and telephone monopolies.… More

Comcast offers California a few crumbs

19 April 2015 by Steve Blum
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Not what the CPUC was thinking of ordering.

It’s almost certainly too little, too late, but Comcast has offered a few concessions to the California Public Utilities Commission, in the hopes of gaining approval for its proposed mega-merger and market swap with Time Warner and Charter. According to an article in the Los Angeles Times, Comcast came to a public meeting in LA last week with a much lighter alternative to the long list of conditions proposed by a CPUC hearing officer…

On Tuesday the company submitted a list of voluntary commitments that it said would be acceptable.

… More

Google's Project Loon floats a business model

18 April 2015 by Steve Blum
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Click for the video.

Project Loon isn’t so loony, according to the latest Google video about the project. In it, Mike Cassidy, the Project Loon team lead, said that they’ve figured out how to scale up from single test launches in New Zealand and California to dozens of launches a day, supported by a manufacturing facility that can turn out the thousands of balloons they need.

The idea is to float high-altitude balloons equipped with LTE mobile phone technology in the stratosphere, and steer them into a usable telecoms constellation by varying the altitude.… More

Even Google needs video to compete against broadband incumbents

17 April 2015 by Steve Blum
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Cut the cord carefully, if you bleed Dodger blue.

Video is an essential part of high speed broadband service. That’s the conclusion that Google has apparently reached. Google Fiber exec Milo Medin spoke at a conference in Florida earlier this week and, according to a story in Fierce Telecom, said…

What we have found is that while it’s not necessary to offer voice service because of wireless [substitution], if you don’t offer a good TV service your ability to compete with incumbents that bundle Internet and TV together is significantly impaired.

… More

Comcast sings the same old tune in LA

16 April 2015 by Steve Blum
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You weren’t expecting a new act, were you?

It doesn’t look like any progress was made at a California Public Utilities Commission-supervised meeting between Comcast, its would-be mega-merger allies and opponents of the deal in Los Angeles on Tuesday. I was thinking of flying down to LA to see the show, but after reading the news accounts of it, I’m glad I didn’t. It seems – judging from those reports, anyway – that it was more of the same old, same old.… More