comcast

Comcast fights for fast track merger approval in California

6 August 2014 by Steve Blum
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Broadband is out of bounds for the California Public Utilities Commission, according to a private pitch made to the CPUC by a Comcast staff lobbyist and a trio of lawyers representing Comcast, Time-Warner and Charter. They want the CPUC to limit its review of the companies’ proposed massive merger and market swap to a very restricted evaluation of the telephone service aspects of the deal. And ignore the near monopoly control over the cable television market and the commanding position in Internet services Comcast would gain in California.… More

Comcast to California: we want it all

26 July 2014 by Steve Blum
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Click for the full version.

One of the (apparent) revelations in the arguments Comcast submitted to the FCC in support of its proposed take over of Time-Warner Cable and a market consolidation swap with Charter Communications is that it is not going to give up even a tiny piece of California. I guess we should feel flattered.

When the market swap was announced in April, the plan was for Comcast to add all of Time-Warner’s and all of Charter’s cable systems to its extensive California holdings, except for the Lake Tahoe area.… More

Comcast apologises for beating up customers, all the way to the bank

23 July 2014 by Steve Blum
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You want to cancel? Squirt a few first.

Comcast’s senior management had a mommy/daddy moment this week. On Monday, COO Dave Watson sent a memo to employees saying basically that the viral recording of a Comcast customer service rep browbeating a subscriber who wanted to cancel was a wee bit over the top, but hey, we understand…

The agent on this call did a lot of what we trained him and paid him — and thousands of other Retention agents — to do.

… More

Comcast's broken promises detailed in letter to FCC

22 July 2014 by Steve Blum
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“Fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice, shame on me.”

The California Emerging Technology Fund and a long list of affiliated groups want the FCC to force Comcast to live up its own commitments, if the proposed merger with Time-Warner Cable and the market swaps with Charter Communications are approved. In a letter to the commissioners and supporting documents, CETF blasts the way Comcast has handled a program – called Internet Essentials – it claimed would give $10 per month Internet service to low income families with children…

In 3 years, Comcast has signed up only 11% of the eligible households in California and the nation.

… More

Can Californian activism derail cable consolidation?

6 July 2014 by Steve Blum
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The California Public Utilities Commission might have something to say about the proposed Comcast/Time-Warner merger and the follow-on market swapping with Charter Communications. Most of the regulatory and legal approval focus has been on Washington, where the department of justice and the FCC are looking at issues such as compliance with anti-trust laws and the impact on the national broadband and television service markets. But according to an article in the Capitol Weekly, there’s an argument to be made that the CPUC has a major role to play too.… More

Broadband astroturf grows thicker

10 June 2014 by Steve Blum
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The astroturfing season is officially open. According to a story in Vice, big incumbent ISPs are trying to make their opposition to new FCC network neutrality rules or, worse, reclassification of broadband as a regulated, common carrier service look like it’s coming from the common people. A group calling itself Broadband for America – who could be against that? – is cranking up an artificial grassroots – astroturf – campaign against net neutrality. But the group’s leadership is not exactly made up of consumer advocates…

Last month, Broadband for America wrote a letter to the FCC bluntly demanding that the agency ‘categorically reject’ any effort toward designating broadband as a public utility.

… More

On the whole, it's broadband market failure


What’s a snowball’s chance in Washington?

Telecoms mega-deals (or have we upgraded to giga-deals?) are snowballing: four in four months. First Comcast and Time-Warner, then Comcast and Charter, AT&T and DirecTv and now Sprint and T-Mobile. Each new merger – of companies or markets – looks to the previous ones for justification. If Comcast is bulking up, AT&T needs to as well. A bigger AT&T, in turn, requires that Sprint and T-Mobile combine forces, or so they say.… More

Major ISPs are a major consumer fail

22 May 2014 by Steve Blum
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Outside of arms reach of desire.

Big Internet service providers have the worst customer satisfaction rating of any of the 43 industries rated by American Customer Satisfaction Index in the past year, and Time-Warner is rock bottom of the bunch. Comcast and Charter aren’t much better.

A three-way merger of the bottom feeders is likely to lead to less customer satisfaction, not more…

“Comcast and Time Warner assert their proposed merger will not reduce competition because there is little overlap in their service territories,” says David VanAmburg, ACSI Director.

… More

Comcast keeps pay-per-byte consumer metering option open

14 May 2014 by Steve Blum
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Pay on the way in and pay on the way out.

Comcast’s chief staff lobbyist – executive vice president David Cohen – spoke at an investment conference today, covering a wide range of topics, including an update on usage-based pricing experiments in a handful of markets. He said that Comcast is looking for a way to bill subscribers for monthly downloads over a certain amount, without making them mad or driving them to competitors.… More

Comcast occupies Crimea, I'm sorry, California

28 April 2014 by Steve Blum
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Comcast will be, by far, the dominant cable company in California, if the proposed acquisition of Time-Warner Cable and today’s announcement of a pie-slicing deal with Charter Communications come to pass.

In order to get the Time-Warner purchase past federal regulators, Comcast wants to trim back what would be its combined customer base to 30 million homes, which is about half the cable TV subscribers in the U.S. So this morning it announced a scheme to spin off some Time-Warner subscribers into a company effectively controlled by Charter Communications (which would become the second biggest cable operator in the U.S.),… More