14 ms·

If this merger goes thru, (and the AnitTrust people would have to be really asleep at the wheel for that) two things are certain: 1) Americans can expect some

If this merger goes thru, (and the AnitTrust people would have to be really asleep at the wheel for that) two things are certain: 1) Americans can expect some of the worst Cable price gouging they have ever seen 2) NetFlix, Amazon Prime et al will become really popular as a result of all the customers saying "FU ComcastWarner"

rhizome 13y ago
3) Centralizes putting the neutrality screws to Netflix, Amazon Prime, Itunes, et al.
delucain 13y ago
I don't think your second premise is entirely true, since Comcast doesn't provide enough bandwidth for streaming services like Netflix and YouTube already. Those services are going to become harder and harder to use if anything.
- mkr-hn 13y ago
  I have no problem with Netflix on Comcast's lowest tier. 6mbps, 10 TV channels.
  - doubt_me 13y ago
    Literally the same situation here. No throttling yet I just hope it doesn't take 10 years for fiber to get to Chicago
    - mkr-hn 13y ago
      The presence of AT&T and Windstream probably keeps the local form of Comcast from falling too far.
    - Killswitch 13y ago
      That's good to hear, I just moved to Chicago and my biggest fear was using these big named companies because of all the horror stories.
- jonknee 13y ago
  This would be a perfect point for the regulators to harp on for approval... No need to divest, just require a condition of the sale to provide a neutral network.
  - schnable 13y ago
    Which they did when Comcast bought NBC.
axus 13y ago
Does Comcast compete with Time Warner? I thought they had geographically separate monopolies
- WaterSponge 13y ago
  I don't think they compete directly in vast majority of markets and for this to go through they will surely forfeit those smaller contested ones. I think this will go through. Then they will have a huge "content and subscriber" stick to wave around at Aereo, Netflix, Apple and anyone else wanting to play the net content hero.
  - AnthonyMouse 13y ago
    > Then they will have a huge "content and subscriber" stick to wave around at Aero, Netflix, Apple and anyone else wanting to play the net content hero. That's really the play here. Get a ton more captive users in order to better extort Netflix et al for access to those customers, and beat that stick until all their over the top service competitors are either out of business or uncompetitive. Then the real screwing of customers can commence in earnest.
    - alttab 13y ago
      Cheaper and faster urban mobile networks will take over before that reality is allowed for an extended period of time in some protracted way.
      - niels_olson 13y ago
        Err, simple physics ensures mobile will never have the bandwidth of copper wire. Every band and protocol can be transmitted over the wire to each node independently.
      - AnthonyMouse 13y ago
        I think people are overly optimistic about the ability to endlessly increase the performance of wireless networks. The existing networks make fairly efficient use of the spectrum they're allocated. That means you really only have two options to make it go faster. 1) More spectrum. But it's massively in demand (read: expensive), nobody wants to give any up, and even if you had "all" the spectrum there are still practical physical limits about how much data you can transmit without using a wavelength that won't penetrate walls. 2) More towers that each use lower power. This is the one that can get you almost arbitrarily large amounts of wireless bandwidth, but it's also the one whose cost converges on the cost of building a new fiber optic network as the number of towers you need approaches the number of users you have. Neither one of those is going to make for an inexpensive roll out of a wireless network capable of handling Netflix's video traffic to millions of customers simultaneously in the same city.
codezero 13y ago
Another problem is that Comcast is an internet provider for a lot of people. It's actually my only option right now, so if I want to access that Netflix subscription, I still need to pay Comcast, so point 1) will make that all the worse since it's already clear they throttle heavily on Netflix, this will only make the degraded experience even more expensive.
- nine_k 13y ago
  Looks like a VPN service for a few dollars more could let people circumvent the throttling.
  - codezero 13y ago
    Sort of. I stream from Apple TV so this doesn't work for me and it shouldn't be required :P
    - rahimnathwani 13y ago
      You might have to install dd-wrt on a router beefy enough to run a VPN client. That way your ATV doesn't need to understand VPN.
      - sitkack 13y ago
        This would be a really interesting experiment. Measure downlink speeds over a fully VPNd connection.
        nkrumm 13y ago
        This was on HN recently, though it sounds like there's more experimentation to be done.. http://mattvukas.com/2014/02/10/comcast-definitely-throttling-netflix-infuriating/ http://mattvukas.com/2014/02/10/comcast-definitely-throttlin...
  - IvyMike 13y ago
    That works for now, but I don't understand why it's unthinkable that Comcast start throttling VPN services, too.
gorner 13y ago
Combining two companies which (to my knowledge) do not currently directly compete for subscribers would not violate any anti-trust laws I'm aware of. The FCC previously had a 30% coverage limit but that was struck down by the courts in 2009: http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB125147230997266951 http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB125147230997266951
cenhyperion 13y ago
> 2) NetFlix, Amazon Prime et al will become really popular as a result of all the customers saying "FU ComcastWarner" Not when they're direct competitors to Comcast, Comcast is the only ISP for most people, and Comcast can legally charge Netflix et al out of the market.
chimeracoder 13y ago
> 2) NetFlix, Amazon Prime et al will become really popular as a result of all the customers saying "FU ComcastWarner" I agree with your first point, but your second point doesn't follow. If anything, Comcast will price gouge Netflix out of business, and we'll be back to being stuck watching their awful "On Demand" instead. They can do this, because Comcast owns the content (NBC), the delivery mechanism for said content (cable TV), and the only delivery mechanism (broadband Internet) for their competitor (Netflix/Amazon Prime). On the other hand, the (failed) merger attempt between AT&T and T-Mobile was the best thing to happen to consumers in a long time, due to the breakup fee that AT&T had o pay T-Mobile($1+ billion worth of spectrum). I'm trying to imagine a similar silver lining that could happen here, though I can't think of any.
- rayiner 13y ago
  To play devil's advocate, what it means is that Comcast has the better business model. After all, that's why Apple and Samsung dominate the cellular industry. iApps running on iOS running on an iPhone using an Apple A7 offers the ability to optimize the user experience and integrate the layers that vendors doing things piecemeal can't match. If Netflix et al want to survive, they have to evolve from being mere middlemen, funneling someone else's content through someone else's pipes.
  - ClashTheBunny 13y ago
    Apple is an integration house. The screen and the A7 are actually fabricated by Samsung. They would have a tough time going it alone.
  - deleted 13y ago
    [deleted]
  - SEJeff 13y ago
    Google has threatened to go nuclear over net neutrality and open up their dark fiber network should things get ugly. Google has more fiber than most any one single company in the us and could be a legitimate threat should comwarner try to call their bluff. I have a feeling google would win that fight
deleted 13y ago
[deleted]
Aloha 13y ago
Show me how Comcast and Time Warner Compete? They have 100% non-overlapping service areas. If anything, I'd expect prices to stay the same, because they have far greater leverage over the other media companies.
dba7dba 13y ago
>the AnitTrust people would have to be really asleep at the wheel for that Call me a pessimist but I think this will go through. Why? The lobbyists already sounded out (lobbied/paid-off/promised-job-in-future) enough people in govt to feel that this will go through, or at least there is enough chance of it happening. I bet this will go through, especially using the point that they don't compete against each other (which would be stupid reason to accept by AntiTrust people). They were NOT designed to compete against each other in the first place. They were given geographic divisions by regulators for that very reason.
- flavor8 13y ago
  > The lobbyists already sounded out (lobbied/paid-off/promised-job-in-future) enough people in govt to feel that this will go through, or at least there is enough chance of it happening. I don't think that follows. AT&T / TMobile gave it a shot a couple years ago, and that was shot down.
  - dba7dba 13y ago
    In the end ATT ended up paying hundreds of millions of dollars as a fine to TMobile. I doubt Comcast would repeat the same mistake. This will largely go through with the ironic claim that they don't compete against each other, when they were NOT designed to compete in the first place.
    - gaadd33 13y ago
      Was that a fine? I thought it was a breakup fee common in merger contracts so that you can't have the other company show you all their internal details then you say "nah nevermind" and you walk away with their roadmap/customer numbers/etc.
unsignedint 13y ago
I wouldn't say it won't happen, but I don't know how much of #1 impact there will be considering it's already not practical to pull competing cable operator to begin with. (Unlike, mobile carriers, for instance.) Obviously, I'm just speaking out from my experience, but how common it is that certain region is served by multiple cable operators? (And that you get to choose from?)
deleted 13y ago
[deleted]
jader201 13y ago
As someone who bailed cable/satellite a long time ago in favor of OTA broadcast, I'm personally less concerned about the impacts this will have on cable vs. the impacts this would have on cable broadband internet (though I definitely agree with concerns expressed over the impacts of cable). For cable, we have Netflix, Amazon, etc. as a possible alternative. And I guess for broadband internet, we always have DSL to fall back to. But Google Fiber can't get here soon enough.
deleted 13y ago
[deleted]
Istof 13y ago
I was thinking that they were already in a deep coma...
31reasons 13y ago
Its time Google provide internet access to the US with their Balloons. I would rather use slow free (neutral) internet than ComcastWarner.
elwell 13y ago
Get ready for even more outdated internet speeds, YouTube throttling, and underhanded deals for bandwidth.

rhizome 13y ago

3) Centralizes putting the neutrality screws to Netflix, Amazon Prime, Itunes, et al.

delucain 13y ago

I don't think your second premise is entirely true, since Comcast doesn't provide enough bandwidth for streaming services like Netflix and YouTube already. Those services are going to become harder and harder to use if anything.

mkr-hn 13y ago
I have no problem with Netflix on Comcast's lowest tier. 6mbps, 10 TV channels.
- doubt_me 13y ago
  Literally the same situation here. No throttling yet I just hope it doesn't take 10 years for fiber to get to Chicago
  - mkr-hn 13y ago
    The presence of AT&T and Windstream probably keeps the local form of Comcast from falling too far.
  - Killswitch 13y ago
    That's good to hear, I just moved to Chicago and my biggest fear was using these big named companies because of all the horror stories.
jonknee 13y ago
This would be a perfect point for the regulators to harp on for approval... No need to divest, just require a condition of the sale to provide a neutral network.
- schnable 13y ago
  Which they did when Comcast bought NBC.

axus 13y ago

Does Comcast compete with Time Warner? I thought they had geographically separate monopolies

WaterSponge 13y ago
I don't think they compete directly in vast majority of markets and for this to go through they will surely forfeit those smaller contested ones. I think this will go through. Then they will have a huge "content and subscriber" stick to wave around at Aereo, Netflix, Apple and anyone else wanting to play the net content hero.
- AnthonyMouse 13y ago
  > Then they will have a huge "content and subscriber" stick to wave around at Aero, Netflix, Apple and anyone else wanting to play the net content hero. That's really the play here. Get a ton more captive users in order to better extort Netflix et al for access to those customers, and beat that stick until all their over the top service competitors are either out of business or uncompetitive. Then the real screwing of customers can commence in earnest.
  - alttab 13y ago
    Cheaper and faster urban mobile networks will take over before that reality is allowed for an extended period of time in some protracted way.
    - niels_olson 13y ago
      Err, simple physics ensures mobile will never have the bandwidth of copper wire. Every band and protocol can be transmitted over the wire to each node independently.
    - AnthonyMouse 13y ago
      I think people are overly optimistic about the ability to endlessly increase the performance of wireless networks. The existing networks make fairly efficient use of the spectrum they're allocated. That means you really only have two options to make it go faster. 1) More spectrum. But it's massively in demand (read: expensive), nobody wants to give any up, and even if you had "all" the spectrum there are still practical physical limits about how much data you can transmit without using a wavelength that won't penetrate walls. 2) More towers that each use lower power. This is the one that can get you almost arbitrarily large amounts of wireless bandwidth, but it's also the one whose cost converges on the cost of building a new fiber optic network as the number of towers you need approaches the number of users you have. Neither one of those is going to make for an inexpensive roll out of a wireless network capable of handling Netflix's video traffic to millions of customers simultaneously in the same city.

codezero 13y ago

Another problem is that Comcast is an internet provider for a lot of people. It's actually my only option right now, so if I want to access that Netflix subscription, I still need to pay Comcast, so point 1) will make that all the worse since it's already clear they throttle heavily on Netflix, this will only make the degraded experience even more expensive.

nine_k 13y ago
Looks like a VPN service for a few dollars more could let people circumvent the throttling.
- codezero 13y ago
  Sort of. I stream from Apple TV so this doesn't work for me and it shouldn't be required :P
  - rahimnathwani 13y ago
    You might have to install dd-wrt on a router beefy enough to run a VPN client. That way your ATV doesn't need to understand VPN.
    - sitkack 13y ago
      This would be a really interesting experiment. Measure downlink speeds over a fully VPNd connection.
      - nkrumm 13y ago
        This was on HN recently, though it sounds like there's more experimentation to be done.. http://mattvukas.com/2014/02/10/comcast-definitely-throttling-netflix-infuriating/ http://mattvukas.com/2014/02/10/comcast-definitely-throttlin...
- IvyMike 13y ago
  That works for now, but I don't understand why it's unthinkable that Comcast start throttling VPN services, too.

gorner 13y ago

Combining two companies which (to my knowledge) do not currently directly compete for subscribers would not violate any anti-trust laws I'm aware of. The FCC previously had a 30% coverage limit but that was struck down by the courts in 2009: http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB125147230997266951 http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB125147230997266951

cenhyperion 13y ago

> 2) NetFlix, Amazon Prime et al will become really popular as a result of all the customers saying "FU ComcastWarner" Not when they're direct competitors to Comcast, Comcast is the only ISP for most people, and Comcast can legally charge Netflix et al out of the market.

chimeracoder 13y ago

> 2) NetFlix, Amazon Prime et al will become really popular as a result of all the customers saying "FU ComcastWarner" I agree with your first point, but your second point doesn't follow. If anything, Comcast will price gouge Netflix out of business, and we'll be back to being stuck watching their awful "On Demand" instead. They can do this, because Comcast owns the content (NBC), the delivery mechanism for said content (cable TV), and the only delivery mechanism (broadband Internet) for their competitor (Netflix/Amazon Prime). On the other hand, the (failed) merger attempt between AT&T and T-Mobile was the best thing to happen to consumers in a long time, due to the breakup fee that AT&T had o pay T-Mobile($1+ billion worth of spectrum). I'm trying to imagine a similar silver lining that could happen here, though I can't think of any.

rayiner 13y ago
To play devil's advocate, what it means is that Comcast has the better business model. After all, that's why Apple and Samsung dominate the cellular industry. iApps running on iOS running on an iPhone using an Apple A7 offers the ability to optimize the user experience and integrate the layers that vendors doing things piecemeal can't match. If Netflix et al want to survive, they have to evolve from being mere middlemen, funneling someone else's content through someone else's pipes.
- ClashTheBunny 13y ago
  Apple is an integration house. The screen and the A7 are actually fabricated by Samsung. They would have a tough time going it alone.
- deleted 13y ago
  [deleted]
- SEJeff 13y ago
  Google has threatened to go nuclear over net neutrality and open up their dark fiber network should things get ugly. Google has more fiber than most any one single company in the us and could be a legitimate threat should comwarner try to call their bluff. I have a feeling google would win that fight

deleted 13y ago

[deleted]

Aloha 13y ago

Show me how Comcast and Time Warner Compete? They have 100% non-overlapping service areas. If anything, I'd expect prices to stay the same, because they have far greater leverage over the other media companies.

dba7dba 13y ago

>the AnitTrust people would have to be really asleep at the wheel for that Call me a pessimist but I think this will go through. Why? The lobbyists already sounded out (lobbied/paid-off/promised-job-in-future) enough people in govt to feel that this will go through, or at least there is enough chance of it happening. I bet this will go through, especially using the point that they don't compete against each other (which would be stupid reason to accept by AntiTrust people). They were NOT designed to compete against each other in the first place. They were given geographic divisions by regulators for that very reason.

flavor8 13y ago
> The lobbyists already sounded out (lobbied/paid-off/promised-job-in-future) enough people in govt to feel that this will go through, or at least there is enough chance of it happening. I don't think that follows. AT&T / TMobile gave it a shot a couple years ago, and that was shot down.
- dba7dba 13y ago
  In the end ATT ended up paying hundreds of millions of dollars as a fine to TMobile. I doubt Comcast would repeat the same mistake. This will largely go through with the ironic claim that they don't compete against each other, when they were NOT designed to compete in the first place.
  - gaadd33 13y ago
    Was that a fine? I thought it was a breakup fee common in merger contracts so that you can't have the other company show you all their internal details then you say "nah nevermind" and you walk away with their roadmap/customer numbers/etc.

unsignedint 13y ago

I wouldn't say it won't happen, but I don't know how much of #1 impact there will be considering it's already not practical to pull competing cable operator to begin with. (Unlike, mobile carriers, for instance.) Obviously, I'm just speaking out from my experience, but how common it is that certain region is served by multiple cable operators? (And that you get to choose from?)

deleted 13y ago

[deleted]

jader201 13y ago

As someone who bailed cable/satellite a long time ago in favor of OTA broadcast, I'm personally less concerned about the impacts this will have on cable vs. the impacts this would have on cable broadband internet (though I definitely agree with concerns expressed over the impacts of cable). For cable, we have Netflix, Amazon, etc. as a possible alternative. And I guess for broadband internet, we always have DSL to fall back to. But Google Fiber can't get here soon enough.

deleted 13y ago

[deleted]

Istof 13y ago

I was thinking that they were already in a deep coma...

31reasons 13y ago

Its time Google provide internet access to the US with their Balloons. I would rather use slow free (neutral) internet than ComcastWarner.

elwell 13y ago

Get ready for even more outdated internet speeds, YouTube throttling, and underhanded deals for bandwidth.