comcast

FCC's net neutrality rules stack the deck in favor of the big boys

17 September 2014 by Steve Blum
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What would Billy Bob do?

Even without the back and forth voting over whether or not to treat broadband providers as common carriers Thursday’s California Public Utilities Commission meeting offered an excellent discussion of net neutrality and the regulatory questions that surround it (assuming you’re into that sort of thing, of course).

Helen Mickiewicz, the CPUC’s assistant general counsel, walked commissioners through the main issues. You can see the video here:

CPUC Commission Voting Meeting – September 11, 2014

The net neutrality discussion begins at about 1:17:00 and runs for about an hour and 20 minutes.… More

Comcast applauds FCC chair's talk of broadband competition but pimps for less

6 September 2014 by Steve Blum
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FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler laid out his vision for the future of broadband. We applaud his focus on the importance of broadband competition to benefit all Americans.

So says Comcast’s chief lobbyist David Cohen in a blog post yesterday. He goes on at length about how Comcast is a living example of everything Wheeler said about the wonders of a competitive broadband market in a speech the day before.

And Cohen is right. Wheeler’s vision is also Comcast’s vision: a broadband market managed in Washington by people like Wheeler and Cohen who rotate jobs between government posts and giant incumbent companies, pretending to be acting for the greater good of all.… More

FCC chair talks broadband hardball but keeps tossing slowpitch

5 September 2014 by Steve Blum
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Tom Wheeler, the chairman of the FCC, gave a ringing speech yesterday at a Washington incubator, calling for more broadband competition, decrying the poor choice and service across huge swaths of the U.S., plugging municipal broadband and admitting that mobile service is no substitute for wireline networks, particularly fiber.

All good things. All wonderful words. The question, though, is whether he’ll follow through or if he’ll use pro-competition rhetoric to lay down a smoke screen for incumbent-friendly policies.… More

CPUC to FCC: Comcast's proposed mega-merger poses particular problems for California

4 September 2014 by Steve Blum
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California knows fit characters.

The California Public Utilities Commission is urging the FCC to consider Comcast’s “character and fitness to hold FCC licenses or authorizations”, particularly in light of an ongoing enquiry into its admitted publication of confidential subscriber information. That’s one of the highlights of comments the CPUC filed with the FCC regarding its review of the proposed merger of Comcast and Time-Warner. (H/T to UCSC’s Jim Warner for the heads up – I was slacking off in the Sierra when this went down.… More

Comcast's lobbying is extraordinarily aggressive according to one of its peers

1 September 2014 by Steve Blum
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Comcast is a particularly nasty competitor at the political level, according to comments filed by CenturyLink with the FCC regarding the proposed mega-merger with Time-Warner (h/t to Fierce Cable for the pointer). Although CenturyLink claims to be the “third largest telecommunications provider in the United States”, it also points out that it’s relatively small player in TV terms – 215,000 subs in 12 markets, it says – due in part to Comcast’s unique influence and combative stance with local governments…

Comcast has been uniquely and extraordinarily aggressive in seeking to delay CenturyLink’s entry into new markets.

… More

Comcast honors FCC commissioner with $110,000 contribution

17 August 2014 by Steve Blum
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No conflict of interest, it seems.

FCC commissioner Mignon Clyburn was – and still is, really – to be honored at a dinner sponsored in part by Comcast and Time-Warner, despite the fact she is reviewing, and will presumably vote on, their proposed merger. The occasion is the Walter Kaitz foundation dinner next month, where she’ll receive the group’s diversity award for being the first African-American woman to chair the FCC, a position she held last year while Tom Wheeler was waiting to be confirmed by the the U.S.… More

Broadband infrastructure can – and sometimes will – be regulated in California

16 August 2014 by Steve Blum
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The California Public Utilities Commission is squarely back in the game of regulating broadband service providers, at least up to a point. That was the second shot across the bow fired in a ruling on Thursday ruling by a CPUC administrative law judge. In it, the commission declared that it would use broad powers it believes was granted by federal law to “remove barriers to [broadband] infrastructure investment”, as well as state law that charges it with deciding whether mergers it clearly does regulate – in this case, involving subsidiaries that provide telephone service – are in the public interest…

The ultimate test of a proposed change of control is whether or not it is in the public interest.

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CPUC steps in front of Comcast train, asserts authority over California broadband

15 August 2014 by Steve Blum
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Rejecting Comcast’s and Time-Warner’s claim that the California Public Utilities Commission can only consider a narrow set of largely technical questions regarding their proposed merger, a CPUC administrative law judge ruled yesterday that the commission can evaluate – and approve or disapprove – aspects of the merger on the basis of a wide range of public interest issues.

The ruling tracks closely with protests filed by advocacy groups and the commission’s office of ratepayer advocates.… More

Wall Street isn't fooled: the (paid) political winds are at Comcast's back

9 August 2014 by Steve Blum
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If you’re less cynical than me – not tough – then you might think the reaction of Wall Street cable TV analysts to the end of Sprint’s bid to buy T-Mobile is amazingly cynical. I call it a refreshingly honest assessment of the current coin-operated leadership at the FCC. According to a story by Daniel Frankel in FierceCable…

The reported decision by Sprint to end its $32 billion quest to buy T-Mobile will provide a significant regulatory boost to Comcast in its $45 billion attempt to buy Time Warner Cable, and AT&T in its $49 billion effort to buy DirecTV.

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A highly concentrated Comcast would be nasty medicine for California

7 August 2014 by Steve Blum
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There’s a great analysis by William Conlow of the impact of the Comcast/Time-Warner merger on cable market concentration in Techdirt (h/t to Bud Colligan for the pointer). Using a standard measure of market concentration – the Herfindahl–Hirschman Index (HHI) – the article shows that the result of the merger will be an increase in market concentration in the U.S. as a whole, to the level of a Moderately Concentrated Market. That’s the middle tier of the HHI scale, which is well-explained in the Techdirt piece and in a linked federal department of justice manual on anti-trust assessment.… More