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Judge Approves AT&T and Time Warner Merger
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I can see their new logo now: two turds, polishing each other.
Spectrum is absolutely garbage. I have 100Mbps internet hard wired into my $300 nighthawk router which is hardwired into my TV and I STILL have buffering issues.
Oh and outages galore. And they are the only ISP in my neighborhood. So much for consumer choice /s
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Excuse me... Time Warner owns HBO. You’re telling me Game of Thrones, West World, The Night Of, The Sopranos, etc. is crap? I’d hate to see what your idea of “good content” is.
I have to be honest. I hate this crap. Content creators and/or distributors have no business also being an ISP unless they are heavily regulated. The conflict of interest is jaw dropping.
You’re inviting anticompetitive behavior. Plus we all know that politicians are bought and paid for by special interest lobbies so the notion that even if this new entity is heavily regulated by law or executive order that there will not be the oversight necessary to keep it in check.
While I’m sure I’ll benefit in the short term since I use AT&T as my cell phone provider, TV provider and ISP I’m sure we all will pay more as a result of this down the line.
For instance right now since I have all of the above I get a bill credit for HBO on my cell phone bill each month that allows for full access to all HBO channels in U-verse as well as HBO Go and the result is that it’s essentially free. The credit on my phone bill covers the added expense of carrying HBO on U-verse.
There will no doubt be more short term savings for customers with promotions like this. The problem is that AT&T will not be more heavily regulated than it is today and now that net neutrality is no more they will most certainly make up every cent plus a nice chunk of change in profit on top of it by charging companies like Apple, Netflix, Google, etc. a fee not to throttle the bandwidth for the services they offer to AT&T and Time Warner customers who pay for cell/cable/DSL Internet service.
The result will be increased prices for everybody using other streaming services and that money that I appear to be saving will quickly disappear given the increase in pricing for the other streaming services I use like iTunes, Netflix, YouTube, Hulu, etc.
The big boys like Apple, YouTube and Hulu may be able to absorb most or all of it on their subscribers behalf but if you’re a startup without the massive revenues the tech giants have in the streaming space than you can forget about any kind of a level playing field.
The whole thing is a bad look and from here on out I’ll be heavily donating to groups like the EFF that are actively lobbying to make net neutrality the law of the land instead of a a set of executive orders that will be put in place when a Democrat is in the White House only to be quickly removed again when Republican win it back.
You’re inviting anticompetitive behavior. Plus we all know that politicians are bought and paid for by special interest lobbies so the notion that even if this new entity is heavily regulated by law or executive order that there will not be the oversight necessary to keep it in check.
While I’m sure I’ll benefit in the short term since I use AT&T as my cell phone provider, TV provider and ISP I’m sure we all will pay more as a result of this down the line.
For instance right now since I have all of the above I get a bill credit for HBO on my cell phone bill each month that allows for full access to all HBO channels in U-verse as well as HBO Go and the result is that it’s essentially free. The credit on my phone bill covers the added expense of carrying HBO on U-verse.
There will no doubt be more short term savings for customers with promotions like this. The problem is that AT&T will not be more heavily regulated than it is today and now that net neutrality is no more they will most certainly make up every cent plus a nice chunk of change in profit on top of it by charging companies like Apple, Netflix, Google, etc. a fee not to throttle the bandwidth for the services they offer to AT&T and Time Warner customers who pay for cell/cable/DSL Internet service.
The result will be increased prices for everybody using other streaming services and that money that I appear to be saving will quickly disappear given the increase in pricing for the other streaming services I use like iTunes, Netflix, YouTube, Hulu, etc.
The big boys like Apple, YouTube and Hulu may be able to absorb most or all of it on their subscribers behalf but if you’re a startup without the massive revenues the tech giants have in the streaming space than you can forget about any kind of a level playing field.
The whole thing is a bad look and from here on out I’ll be heavily donating to groups like the EFF that are actively lobbying to make net neutrality the law of the land instead of a a set of executive orders that will be put in place when a Democrat is in the White House only to be quickly removed again when Republican win it back.
Sometime, in the not too distant future, there will be a shakeup that separates content companies from distribution companies, and we will all be better for it.
At some point, I’m just going to cut out TV from my life if the prices keep rising. I’m down to Charter at $39.99/m for internet and $35/m for DirecTVNow grandfathered from the start. When the industry starts squeezing people too much, they change their habits. Look at what happened with Pay-TV, rising prices..users went cord cutters.
Going back to what I said before, when the justice department is doing what it should be doing they do their job. I agree, that, yes the banks should have been allowed to fail. But the government bailed them out because the justice department was not doing it's job properly.
How does this affect what I assume is a reference to cable (internet/TV/etc.) prices essentially?
The banks should not have been allowed to fail, as that would have been ruinous to millions of Americans. We just narrowly missed a second Great Depression.
However, there was a major regulatory screw-up much more recently with the lifting of regulations that were put in place to prevent it from happening again. It’s almost comical if it wasn’t so enraging.
Crap??? You mean like all those Emmy winners
Such as:
Big Little Lies
The Night Of
Veep
Game of Thrones
Banshee
And on and on......
TWI is bigger than you think.
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Directrum Bell Mega
Doing things, our way. Deal with it.
Directrum Bell Mega
Doing things, our way. Deal with it.
I sold my LG OLED and ditched Comcast for good last fall. I’ve read over 30,000 pages of books since then and my brain loves me for it. I won’t play their game anymore.
Exactly. I am no expert but believe thus is a good thing. I also believe that it will help Apple tremendously. Remember. Apple and att brought us the iPhone. Att made a big sacrifice to do so and I believe this will help elevate apples tv plans.
Could be very wrong but that had been my perspective.
My initial thoughts early in the thread...
Time Warner is not the cable provider that got merged with Spectrum (Time Warner Cable)... it is a content organization with assets such as HBO. There is zero consolidation of ISPs here.
Those who seem to think regulation by the government is a good thing... these companies are fearful of regulation so will not do blatant things that would prompt the government to bring them under regulation. I would be shocked if AT&T for example tried to charge customers from other ISPs a higher fee. That is not to say that they wouldn't bundle and offer their customers discounts, which has always gone on through partnerships anyway. Like you can't get the NFL package with every ISP. Companies will get creative and innovate to compete. That is what happens when you stay out of their way.
Time Warner is not the cable provider that got merged with Spectrum (Time Warner Cable)... it is a content organization with assets such as HBO. There is zero consolidation of ISPs here.
Those who seem to think regulation by the government is a good thing... these companies are fearful of regulation so will not do blatant things that would prompt the government to bring them under regulation. I would be shocked if AT&T for example tried to charge customers from other ISPs a higher fee. That is not to say that they wouldn't bundle and offer their customers discounts, which has always gone on through partnerships anyway. Like you can't get the NFL package with every ISP. Companies will get creative and innovate to compete. That is what happens when you stay out of their way.
I don't think the merger will affect prices so much as available content. I bet we'll see "exclusives" produced only for distribution through AT&T owned assets. You want to watch XXXXX? Then you'd better subscribe to DirectTV or UVerse.
Vertical integration is the key to milking more money out of consumers pockets. When you control the content and the consumption then you can require consumers to make two or three purchases from your company to view a show. Reasonable fee licensing to multiple distributors is going to go by the wayside in favor of exclusive content locked behind a streaming service paywall owned by each company.
You won't pay more for each individual service, but you will be required to subscribe to many more services just to get the content you want. Overall consumer prices are going to rise very quickly.
Vertical integration is the key to milking more money out of consumers pockets. When you control the content and the consumption then you can require consumers to make two or three purchases from your company to view a show. Reasonable fee licensing to multiple distributors is going to go by the wayside in favor of exclusive content locked behind a streaming service paywall owned by each company.
You won't pay more for each individual service, but you will be required to subscribe to many more services just to get the content you want. Overall consumer prices are going to rise very quickly.
You must be referring to the Dodd-Frank repeal, which was a good thing actually. The reason there was an economic crisis in 2008 is because of government regulation, adding more regulations is not going to solve the issue.
It's really just different ideologies of how to fix the issues with the country, and make it better.