The AT&T-Time Warner Merger Must Be Stopped (backchannel.com) 139
New submitter mirandakatz writes: AT&T's proposed merger with Time Warner is evidence that AT&T doesn't ever plan to invest in fiber to the home, writes Susan Crawford at Backchannel -- and that's just one of many reasons the merger is a catastrophic idea. Crawford writes: "It's hard to think of a single positive thing this merger will accomplish, other than shining a bright light on just how awful the picture is for data transmission in this nation. This deal should be dead on arrival. In fact, AT&T should spare us by dropping the idea now. This merger must not happen."From the report: Think about it. AT&T sells wires to about 51 million homes, far more than any other telephone or cable company in the country. Because of its large presence in many markets, it overlaps with cable companies in many places -- AT&T overlaps with Comcast in 45 percent of Comcast's footprint and with Charter in 52 percent of its footprint. But, after a flurry of debunked press releases, it's totally clear that AT&T has no real interest in upgrading its copper networks to fiber to the home. Its capital expenditures keep going down, not up. (Would you trust the future to a company that doesn't see the need to increase investments in its core business, and instead is content to harvest profit from its subscribers?)
Re:AT&T does what it wants (Score:5, Insightful)
actually it was
the railroads were built by cheap government backed loans and the protection of the US Army. lots of other infrastructure was built by the government or with heavy government support. very few are dumb enough to risk their own money on risky business adventures
Re:AT&T does what it wants (Score:5, Insightful)
the railroads were built by cheap government backed loans and the protection of the US Army. lots of other infrastructure was built by the government or with heavy government support. very few are dumb enough to risk their own money on risky business adventures
Conservative business people, they are the biggest hypocrites. They supposedly hate socialism but when it suits them they let the taxpayers foot the bill for transportation systems that they use for transportation of goods and make profits off of those goods. Who's not getting skin in the game again?
Millenials want everything for free without getting any skin in the game? What about businesses not wanting to succumb to the almighty cost of doing business but want to reap all the profits? Who's the free loader again? It's all selfish greed no matter where you look. Everyone trying to spin their own self interest into some crusade for principles to appear to be some hero while they take the shirt right off your back. We are a mess in this country.
Socialized medical care? That's evil unless it's for the military then it's noble.
Disclaimer: I'm MUCH older than the millenial generation
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Conservative business people, they are the biggest hypocrites. They supposedly hate socialism but when it suits them they let the taxpayers foot the bill for transportation systems that they use for transportation of goods and make profits off of those goods. Who's not getting skin in the game again?
That is like saying democratic business people are the biggest hypocrites because they supposedly love government, but when it comes to paying taxes they pay no more than have to.
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There are at least 50 shades of gray I'm told.
As a grumpy old bastard, is it possible for us to use our experience to help adopt new systems that benefit most people while harming few?
Or will you try to re-infuse life into the word whipersnappers in you response?
I'm just wondering... when you retire, will you stand on your own principle and turn down social security? After all, you'll take out 3-4 times more than you put in. And what's worse is that you had the benefit of bar
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but not old enough to be mature.
Ad hominem, nice. :)
There are at least 50 shades of gray I'm told.
Agreed. I think you're assuming I'm engaged in black and white thinking meaning conservative vs. liberal. Think again, friend. You know what they say about assumptions.
As a grumpy old bastard, is it possible for us to use our experience to help adopt new systems that benefit most people while harming few?
How do you know you can't do it? If you assert it can't be done, how would you prove such a thing? Think about that for a minute and let it sink in. That came from a former CEO I used to work for who is now an early retired millionaire.
Or will you try to re-infuse life into the word whipersnappers in you response?
I'm not sure what you mean by this...
I'm just wondering... when you retire, will you stand on your own principle and turn down social security?
I have planned my finances around not expecti
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That's not what socialism means - that's just the government supporting businesses. Socialism means "government controls the business, and keeps the profits". Fascism means "government controls, but private owners keep the profits".
Also, spare us the "you didn't build that"..
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No Socialism means the people control the business, sometimes through government, sometimes through co-ops, worker owned businesses, credit unions and similar. Sometimes the government does a good job such as in Scandinavia, though too often it turns corrupt, as seen in most 3rd world authoritarian regimes, sometimes government is thrown out, such as Spain in the civil war (until the Stalinists showed up) and northern Italy. Actually currently in Spain, http://archive.is/SvI7U [archive.is]
Most Americans forget, or rathe
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"The people" control the business in the US, where most of us own stock, and collectively control all publically traded companies. But keep telling yourself that Socialism is about the people.
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the railroads were built by cheap government backed loans and the protection of the US Army.
Neither of these is an example of socialism. Socialism means that the government owns the means of production. That's all there is to it. If the railroad was produced by the private sector, then it's by definition not socialism.
- Government financing is not the same as government production. Otherwise this is the same as saying that if you take out a loan to build a house, then the bank built the house.
- There isn't a requirement to work for the government in order to receive military protection. And in fac
Fiber to the home (Score:1)
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I think Google is plenty interested in fiber to the home, they're not interested in the unending lawsuits from incumbents seeking to block them from using public right-of-ways (the same ones they themselves use) to compete.
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they are only being sued cause they are trying to get around established rules on how to run their wires
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once the cable companies got rid of analogue cable it freed up a lot of bandwidth for internet and HD video and lessened the need for fiber to the home
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Cox compresses the shit out certain channels but not others. It seems like someone at AMC finally bitched them out. The 2 episodes this season, at least during the first run, didn't have the usual blockiness and color shifting (it shifts to magenta gradually over a few seconds then the green pops back in on, probably when it hits a keyframe, only for it to shift back to magenta, repeating endlessly).
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i've heard they use an algorithm that gives more bandwidth to shows that more people are watching. which is why sports looks awesome and your average STARZ or some other rerun movie looks like a used VHS tape
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As everything in life. It depends where in the US you have Cox service.
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Nobody is doing fiber to the home, even Google has now bailed. It's way, way too expensive. Leverage the copper you already have in place that was built back when it didn't cost so much to do it.
Nobody except the rest of the world maybe. You know, that place where there is actual competition in the market.
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Nobody except the rest of the world maybe. You know, that place where there is actual competition in the market.
It is a lot more complicated than that. Most of the rest of the world actually has less competiton. Many countries have a single "national champion" provider. America has more older infrastructure, a legal system that favors obstructionism, and a political system that favors NIMBYism.
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Not to mention governments who properly enforce specifically consumer-friendly regulatory regimes.
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The U.S. government has become weak. (Score:1)
It seems that the U.S. government has become weak. Citizens don't get protection from abusive activities of organizations. The rich are allowed to do anything they want.
Re: The U.S. government has become weak. (Score:2, Interesting)
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Hugo, is that you?
I don't like this potential merger, or the current situation, any more than you do.
However, let's not go overboard.
Re: The U.S. government has become weak. (Score:2)
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It's a unique situation, where government would work, provided that they didn't have an oppressive permit process.
Most of the poles and some towers are owned by localities, and most of the remaining poles by government owned utilities. It would just be shifting everything to an easier and national process.
Although I think poles owned by the local government wouldn't be a horrible idea (and as you said they mostly already are), I think being owned by the federal government is a horrible idea. The federal government was never suppose to regulate stuff that goes on inside of the state. The federal government shouldn't be maintaining poles (or roads for that matter). The state and local governments are more than capable of taking care of their own poles. Now if the federal government wanted to mandate that t
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I agree completely with this. It's a state/local government issue, not a federal government issue. That said, I have no issue with the federal government doing what they are supposed to be doing... Mainly maintaining inter-state commerce and a federal militia. Other than those two things, they should butt out and leave it to the states -- as our constitution says it is supposed to be.
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It's a unique situation, where government would work, provided that they didn't have an oppressive permit process.
Most of the poles and some towers are owned by localities, and most of the remaining poles by government owned utilities. It would just be shifting everything to an easier and national process.
Although I think poles owned by the local government wouldn't be a horrible idea (and as you said they mostly already are), I think being owned by the federal government is a horrible idea. The federal government was never suppose to regulate stuff that goes on inside of the state. The federal government shouldn't be maintaining poles (or roads for that matter). The state and local governments are more than capable of taking care of their own poles. Now if the federal government wanted to mandate that there is open access to them or set certain rental rates I *might* be ok with it but I still think it should be a state level issue and I definitely think that the federal government shouldn't own the poles or really anything inside of the sovereign states.
Good thing the Internet is only limited to my state.
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Good thing the Internet is only limited to my state.
Which is why we have the interstate commerce clause. The interstate commerce clause is horribly abused for everything under the sun but it does have a limited use in this situation. The federal government shouldn't control the poles but it is perfectly acceptable for it to say that states need to maintain a right of way so that people can use the roads and the internet for interstate commerce.
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i'm sure the gubmint will magically give you the unlimited data you're dreaming about
maybe you should think about doing something else other than watch TV all day everywhere you go?
Re: The U.S. government has become weak. (Score:5, Insightful)
What needs to happen in the US is what you guys had back in the 90's and early 00's where the last mile providers were required to rent out their infrastructure to other ISP's. There was an incredible glut of ISP's, and I can remember driving down I75 seeing the billboards for $19.95 5/1 DSL with no caps, and the new higher speed cable connections for $29.95 with no caps. This is what we have running in Canada now, after nearly 14 years with Bell, Rogers, Telus and so on saying "it'll be the death of our companies!!!!!111111" and so on. It hasn't happened, and most recently they got a huge slap in the face when the CRTC told them they must lease last mile FTTN and FTTH to third party ISP's(called TPIA's here).
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Yes, I was a CLEC for a brief shining moment. Good business. My competitor is now 20 years in business, delivers reliable DSL service far further than the ILEC, several TIMES faster, for lower fees. The ILEC virtually stopped advertising their service.
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yeah, most of those guys went out of business because they never made any money. a few like RCN are still around on perpetual life support
and the way it worked was you needed a POTS line and service for the $20 DSL and they would rip you a new a$$hole with the POTS prices and charging you per minute on calls
the cable companies were doing $30 internet for a little while because a lot of people were buying their VOIP as well, but once AT&T and Verizon went unlimited cell minutes that was the end of that.
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That wasn't my experience when I used Speakeasy DSL up to eleven or twelve years ago. The phone was flat-rate and cheap, and Covad was the CLEC and passing through to Speakeasy.
The problem comes when something breaks. The ILEC has no incentive to fix it because you're not really their customer. My DSL was out for seven weeks while AT&T and Covad pointed the finger at each other and miss each other's appointments at the central office. The only time they actually fixed it is when AT&T started to
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Watch when this merger is approved. The head of the SEC will resign and take a cushy new job on the board of the company. It happened with the Comcast/NBC merger.
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Depends on your point of view. Citizens are protected from "abusive" governments that want to tear up part of their property to lay down new stuff (fiber, water, sewage, copper) -- NIMBY (Not in my back yard). So while the government may want to lay down new stuff because 80% of the people in an area want something (or maybe just 10%), they can't because they need permission (or regulation) to be able to tear up people's property because there is one crazy person that claims the internet fiber will give h
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Except for Eminent Domain.
There are plenty of examples where Eminent Domain has been used to put an easement on a property for utilities.
We can't help it (Score:2)
Opposite day? (Score:2, Insightful)
Should the conversation be about breaking up AT&T and Time-Warner in order to create MORE competition in the marketplace not discussing a merger that would basically make the United States serviced by a single broadband provider (I assume that an AT&T/Comcast merger would quickly follow).
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Time Warner (media company, HBO, Turner, Warner Brothers) is NOT Time Warner Cable (owned by Charter, being renamed to Spectrum). They are completely separate companies. The article gets this wrong too, though.
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+1 ... people are jumping to conclusions without checking the facts of the deal.
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Time Warner is not Time Warner Cable (Score:5, Insightful)
Time Warner is the entertainment wing. Think Warner Bros and the former Turner networks.
Time Warner Cable is the former cable wing that was spun off years ago and is now owned by Charter Cable. The only common ground was their name since it never changed it when they spun it off. That's why their changing their name to Spectrum now that Charter bought them.
This would have no effect on broadband. If anything it will make DirecTV cheaper (since they won't have to pay for the Turner channels anymore since they own them) and possibly other cable companies more expensive by raising the retransmission rates to Turner channels.
Still not good for consumers but its not going to kill broadband as we know it.
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If anything it will make DirecTV cheaper (since they won't have to pay for the Turner channels anymore since they own them) and possibly other cable companies more expensive by raising the retransmission rates to Turner channels.
Right, and most likely, that's the sort of thing driving this merger. AT&T is competing with Comcast, which already owns a bunch of content in addition to being an ISP and cable company. I suspect the big concern here should be less about expenditures on infrastructure, and more about why these ISPs are so interested in owning media content. My fear is that they're hoping to return to more of a "walled garden" ecosystem (e.g. the old AOL) where ISPs are tying their content to their networks in some w
Re: Time Warner is not Time Warner Cable (Score:3)
In my opinion, AT&T wants time Warner because of the retransmission fees.
They know that in the end, the channels are where the money is, and if Comcast doesn't want to pay 3x as much for Turner channels then we'll just put in ad in the paper with a crying Scooby Doo telling Comcast Customers why their kids can't watch Cartoon Network and the Comcast customers will force their hand to pay for it. (And Comcast passes the cost on the customers as well) Of course nothing stops Comcast from doing the same th
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And who ultimately loses? The people that don't subscribe to Comcast or DirecTV, because they get a double-helping from the bowl of shit. That is, until their provider buys / merges with some other content house in order to have a seat at the big boys' table too.
ABC/Disney has a shitload of money, and holds the ESPN properties. Now taking bets on who they buy and when, should this TWAT&T deal happen.
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In my opinion, AT&T wants time Warner because of the retransmission fees.
That's among the sorts of things I'm talking about when I say they might be tying their networks and their content in some way, and this is part of the reason why net neutrality is so important.
I think these companies know that cable TV's days are numbered, and it's only a matter of time before we don't have "channels", but instead TV content is all streamed over IP. So why buy content owners? So they can make that content expensive or unavailable to users of competing ISPs. As much as they can, they'll
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AT&T was treading on thin ice when
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And thus it was OK for DSL to be a monopoly, cable to be a monopoly, and satellite to be a monopoy.
Except that DSL isn't a monopoly, satellite has never been a monopoly, and the government did outlaw exclusive franchise agreements (government-granted monopolies) for cable a long time ago. And in this context -- being an ISP -- there has never been a monopoly on that.
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This. It amazes me how people have no idea what they are talking about post utter non-sense and then get on Slashdot. When AT&T acquired DirecTV they were required by the FCC to pass 12.5 million residents with high speed broadband and they are building the infrastructure to do that. How do I know? Because I work for a vendor who just completed an RFP to supply exactly that.
Time Warner is for content, not service delivery. TWC (Time Warner Cable) was spun off years ago and has already been acquired by
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This merger is only about one thing: sticking it to Comcast the way that Comcast has been sticking it to everyone else for NBC/Universal content. With AT&T owning Turner Broadcasting / Warner Brothers Home Entertainment / HBO, they've got a way to negotiate lower rates from Comcast in trade for continued lower rates for TimeWarner crap.
Who loses? People that subscribe to companies that aren't AT&T or Comcast, as they're going to discover the length, width, and breadth of the shaft until their serv
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And to make things still more confusing, there *was* Time Warner Telecom, which was acquired by Level 3 a couple years ago.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
Time Warner is the entertainment wing. Think Warner Bros and the former Turner networks.
Time Warner Cable is the former cable wing that was spun off years ago and is now owned by Charter Cable. The only common ground was their name since it never changed it when they spun it off. That's why their changing their name to Spectrum now that Charter bought them.
This would have no effect on broadband. If anything it will make DirecTV cheaper (since they won't have to pay for the Turner channels anymore since they own them) and possibly other cable companies more expensive by raising the retransmission rates to Turner channels.
Still not good for consumers but its not going to kill broadband as we know it.
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No, Spectrum was Charter's new "100Mbps internet for everyone!" rebranding that they went through prior to the TWC and BrightHouse buyouts. I've had "Spectrum" internet for close to 3 years now. TWC/BH only finalized a few months ago.
Charter is rebranding all their services under Spectrum, and that name will become the customer facing brand. Just go look at their (TW and Charter) homepages. They are using transitional names/logos already.
Transmission is Public Utility (Score:5, Insightful)
Water, Electricity, Gas, Data - it's all at the same level of national importance.
The network should not be in the hands of a profit driven company.
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What are you, a socialist?
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Water, electricity, gas, all provided by profit-driven companies. I'm not sure what the correlation is.
I'd be weary if my government got into the utility business.
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Why would that make you sleepy?
Weary: feeling or showing tiredness, especially as a result of excessive exertion or lack of sleep.
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Why would that make you sleepy?
Otis Redding said it best [azlyrics.com]:
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Water, electricity, gas, all provided by profit-driven companies. I'm not sure what the correlation is.
Where I live, electricity and gas are profit-driven corporate services.
Water is a city service. This makes the water bill the go-to method for the city council to add new taxes for just about everything. Our water bill has a tax to provide free bus service for everyone, a tax to pay for tree trimming, a tax to pay for sidewalk maintenance, a tax to pay for street maintenance .... That last one was the first major tax added to the water bill and was supposed to be temporary to pay for fixing one specific b
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Would you trust the future to a company that doesn't see the need to increase investments in its core business, and instead is content to harvest profit from its subscribers?
What exactly is your problem here? Just because you don't like AT&T is no reason to single them out for engaging in the standard acceptec business practices of all other major Corporations in America
Maybe you haven't paid attention, but for the last 20 years, the standard business practice is to commit fraud against the plebeian population of "wage slaves" in order to generate billions in profit against which they pay millions in "business costs" via "settlements" once their fraud is "exposed" and the DOJ gets involved
So why shouldn't this deal go through?
Why you ask? You just got done listing the very (corrupt) reasons as to why this deal should not go through, and then defending it with the notion that they need even more revenue (as if they're financially suffering) in order to continue their corrupt business practices, all under the guise of keeping up with the corporate Joneses.
Fucking hell, talk about nonsensical. I sure as hell hope my sarcasm meter is broken or something. Yeah, I think we all agree that regulatory agencies need to do their fucking
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Your sarcasm meter was broken by the sonic boom of the woosh.
TW, not TWC (Score:1)
Me thinks Ms. Crawford is confused. The proposed merger is with TW, not TWC. TW is the content arm, owning such interesting properties as HBO, CNN, and of course the Warner Bros. Studios library.
The proposed merger is not with TWC, which is the infrastructure arm.
That said, the ATT / TW proposed merger is still a very, very bad idea. It's all about making money from giving their own content a free ride (or at least a less expensive ride) on ATT's infrastructure. That is, it's about killing off net neutralit
opinions are not news (Score:1)
But it isn't news.
They wont be proactive but will be reactive (Score:2)
If they don't eventually invest in fibre, companies like Google that are laying fibre will eventually eat their lunch.
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If they don't eventually invest in fibre, companies like Google that are laying fibre will eventually eat their lunch.
The fact that Google is drawing back on fiber tells us that the demand for fiber is not sufficient to create the supply. It's easy for a technological web blog to think that everyone must want gigabit fiber service because, well, everyone should want it! But it is easy to forget that the vast majority of people in the US simply don't think they need fiber.
If /. was a good indicator of what "everyone wants", then everyone on /. would a billionaire for coming up with ideas for things that everyone wants.
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Maybe not right now but over time the demand for more and more bandwidth will keep growing..
Between the trends of increasing resolution such as 4k video (and supposedly 8k is now the next big thing), and that fact that all software is getting more and more bloated so using more and more resources to do the same thing, and companies like Microsoft are driving everyone into the cloud whether its actually good for them or not, it seems inevitable.
Profits all (Score:1)
The 80s beckon, AT&T (Score:1)
Why fiber??? (Score:2)
Why is fiber to the home needed? Copper is capable of much more than it's currently being used for.
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Too fucking right. I made the mistake of hiring a hipster plumber and now my house is full of fiber pipes.
I had to hire another hipster to mop the floors but he kept holding the thing upside down so I had to let him go.
The AT&T-Time Warner Merger Can't Be Stopped (Score:2)
fixed that for you. The problem is that the Sherman anti-trust act was set up to prevent anti-competitive monopolies within an industry. Time Warner is content while AT&T is delivery so there's no problem here except probably a few FCC mandates related to the handful of TV stations which most likely will be sold or given away to make the deal go through.
Of course, that doesn't mean it's not a problem or an effective monopoly. This large scale vertical integration is the same as what happened with Com
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For AT&T's part, this is their response to their loss of the natural monopoly they had in the 80's,
It would be silly to claim that they're thinking about something from almost four decades ago when they consider merging with Time Warner. AT&T from four decades ago is a very different company from what they are today.
And it wasn't a natural monopoly, it truly was a government-granted one. Even then, there were other local telcos. General Telephone, for example. They had to jump onto Ma Bell's long distance circuits to provide that service, however.
but which is seriously threatened by the advent of mesh area networks which could in theory obviate the need for ISP's altogether.
It is hard for them to be threatened by something tha
Straight up monopoly issues. (Score:2)
Where I live - a semi-rural area outside of Austin TX (sadly *just* outside of Google Fiber's coverage area), there are only four ways to get Internet:
1) AT&T (their service is basically cellular-to-the-home - they don't own wires).
2) Time Warner Cable (they have cable TV wires to my home)
3) Dish Network (they have satellite for downloads and use AT&T cellular for uploads).
4) Carrier pigeons.
Since Dish is AT&T - if TWC gets merged into AT&T - then there is literally no other way to get onlin
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My two cents... (Score:1)
Stop this Globalist/Fascist economic system I want to get off.
Gag me.
Fiber to the home isn't actually necessary (Score:2)
Fiber to the home can be very fast. And if you're building a new network it's the way to go. But existing cable companies can do nearly as much with a fiber to the pole infrastructure, and do it without the expensive operation of running new fibers to every house.
Cable via DOCSIS 3.0 can already deliver 300Mbps to the home, using its maximum of 16 channel bonding. DOCSIS 4.0 will be able to deliver gigabit speeds. That should be fast enough for home use for quite a few years, and by the time it's no longer
Funny, I just got Fiber (Score:2)
This Susan bint seems like a spaz. ATT just installed fiber in my neighborhood 2 months ago, and now I'm running at ludicrously fast speeds.Comcast was all butthurt, trying to offer a competing "faster" service after I dropped them after 5 years of shoddy "fast" net access. When they realized their own 2gigabit service wasn't available in my area, they gave up. ATT didn't even try to waste time using my existing in house connections (which sucked) and just drilled a new hole through the wall and straight in