Charter, Time Warner, and Bright House merger set for approval. No data caps for 7 years.

[winb83]

Giant cable merger cleared by regulators

Charter will be prohibited from putting data caps in place or charging customers based on usage, the two agencies said in a statement on Monday.

Additionally, the company won't be allowed to charge internet content providers fees for connecting them to customers -- what are sometimes called interconnection fees.

7 years is better than nothing. Comcast and AT&T are already implementing data caps and usage based pricing now.

 

[MercuryHayes]

Comcast couldnt buy Time Warner, but the 3 minor leagues can merge together?

 

[winb83]

Comcast couldnt buy Time Warner, but the 3 minor leagues can merge together?

Comcast owns NBC Universal and the #1 and #2 cable provider combining with all that brought about too much outrage. Time Warner is #2 and Charter is #4 so people didn't really care as much. Time Warner just pimped the system. They drove the price up 33 billion or so more than what Comcast was gonna pay. When Charter originally tried to buy Time Warner they only offered like 35 billion. Time Warner wanted more so they took Comcast offer for like 45 billion and when that fell through Charter ended up paying like 78 billion for Time Warner.

 

[Dr. Acula]

So we're going more towards a cable monopoly instead of away from one?

Man the government needs to come in a do to the cable companies like they did to bell telephone companies. I hate being tied to one cable company.

 

[winb83]

So we're going more towards a cable monopoly instead of away from one?

Man the government needs to come in a do to the cable companies like they did to bell telephone companies. I hate being tied to one cable company.

cable companies tend to not overlap much so this is 2 monopolies combining but seeing as how they service different areas its effectively not that different than it is now.

I mean they aren't gonna have 10 different area cable companies stringing up 10 different lines on poles through the country so there can be 10 different cable networks to deliver service. they'll just have cable compete with stuff like AT&T U-verse/DirectTV and Dish Network.

Also the bell breakup just split the giant company into regional ones and most of them have since joined back into either AT&T, Verizon, or Century Link.

 

[Tunez]

Years are going by fast now, so 7 years aint nothing