Comcast & Time Warner deal . Opinion.

Between  Russia , and the deep blue sea . One BIG event in American capitalism is the merger of organizations and businesses that no longer leave any room to the little guy. Comcast’s deal to buy Time Warner Cable is not fantastic  . Its a matter of  fact frighting in this day and age of "free flowing internet " ( free was never free , but...)  . The flow of information is vary vital . We have heard that there was  issues with the control of bandwidth , and streaming . As a Comcast subscriber in the digital age I see that last remnants of the long failed  (1) "Deregulation" of Cable  is down the sewer. The proposed $45-billion transaction has sparked social media solidarity among those who hate Comcast, Time Warner Cable or both. Also *** AT&T Uverse is no better . Consumers are left with vary few choices , that are extremely expensive , and that steal your money. Sen. Al Franken, the MN Democratic who once toiled on behalf of Saturday Night Live, fears the plan will result in higher cable bills and worse service.

“There’s not enough competition in this space, and what we need is more competition, not less,” Franken said in a statement to The Hill.

Another problem resides with this deal.  3 million subscribes will soon be kicked out of bother services , just to barter a merger. Companies as large as Comcast & TWC should never been allowed to merge, both for anti-competitive reasons and jobs. Can anyone really argue that mega-mergers of the past have been good for consumers? The 10 largest cable operators serve about 85 percent of all cable subscribers. And the three largest cable operators - Comcast, Time Warner and Charter - together serve approximately 56 percent of all cable subscribers, up from 48 percent in 1996. Consolidation in the cable industry has been justified on the grounds that bigger companies would operate more efficiently and incur lower costs, which would translate into lower rates.Congress must empower state public utility commissions (PUC) to regulate all cable rates and charges for video services until meaningful competition emerges. Congress should grant state public utility commissions the authority to regulate all cable rates and charges and to combat anti-competitive predatory-pricing business practices. With the 1996 Act's deregulation, rates for the cable programming tier to which the vast majority of consumers subscribe have inflated without restraint. Consumer rate protections at the state level are needed, but state PUC rate regulation is only necessary and desirable until robust competition that actually disciplines cable prices emerges.Prohibit cable broadband content restrictions to allow consumers full use of the Internet. Cable operators have a long history of restricting consumer access to content that cable operators disfavor. With the cable industry's ongoing dominance of the broadband market, cable operators must be prohibited from restricting consumer access to Internet content based on the source or nature of the consumer's request. The Future depends on some great inventor who would make WI-FI free to the public in America , with all air-waves that are digital , and sold out to the giant monsters like Comcast and Warner . WI-FI is the only hope to cut the cable cord , the digital cord . It will also depend on the public out cry to reach Congress , set the air waves free again.

NOTES AND COMMENTS:

***Nobody's safe anywhere anymore, but my choice on communications would always be ATT over charter, time warner and all the rest. Our building is monopolized by charter who holds an actual key to the room that ATT would like to enter to provide us with ATT service, and are not allowed. It's monopoly and we are not happy campers here. (1) .Certainly deregulation has been good to cable. Consumers Union, the nonprofit that puts out Consumer Reports magazine, took a look at the results. Their conclusion? It led to much, MUCH higher prices. "Until 1984, local governments kept cable prices in check," says CU. "Then deregulation resulted in a torrent of price hikes, interrupted only by a brief period, 1993-1996, when rates were regulated. The Telecommunications Act of 1996 opened the flood gates to deregulation and more price hikes. Since passage of the 1996 Act, cable rates have increased by 59 percent—almost three times the rate of inflation—according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics." However, Comcast backlash is not new — websites have popped up over the last few years denouncing the company.  One such site, comcastsucks.org, has a simple message: “This site is dedicated to letting Comcast know what they need to do to (hopefully) become a responsible business entity.”