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Comcast Officially Gives Up On TWC Merger 112

Posted by Soulskill from the keeping-them-small-enough-to-govern dept.
An anonymous reader writes: Confirming speculation from yesterday, Comcast announced this morning that its attempt to merge with Time Warner Cable has been terminated. The announcement was very brief, but indicated that regulatory pressure was the reason they killed the deal. CEO Brian Roberts said, "Today, we move on. Of course, we would have liked to bring our great products to new cities, but we structured this deal so that if the government didn't agree, we could walk away." The Washington Post adds, "The move by regulators to throw up roadblocks shows that the government has grown concerned about massive media conglomerates bigfooting rivals that are finding success by streaming content over the Internet, analysts said. And after years of approving a wave of mergers in the industry — including that of Comcast and NBC Universal in 2011 — federal officials are taking a new tone, they said."
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Comcast Officially Gives Up On TWC Merger More

Comcast Officially Gives Up On TWC Merger

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  • Comcast and Time Warner, a match made in . . . (Score:5, Funny)

    by DickBreath ( 207180 ) on Friday April 24, 2015 @09:33AM (#49544543) Homepage
    It is truly sad that we will be deprived of Time Warner getting the Customer Service that Comcast is (in)famous for, while at the same time Comcast getting the forward looking understanding of technology that Time Warner, a copyright focused company would have brought to the relationship.

    • Re:Comcast and Time Warner, a match made in . . . (Score:5, Interesting)

      by Moridineas ( 213502 ) on Friday April 24, 2015 @10:03AM (#49544727) Journal

      I know you're making a joke, but I just thought I should add--I've lived in Comcast, Cox, and Timewarner cable areas. I'm commenting solely on Internet service, but Timewarner has far and away been the best. They're rolling out their ridiculously named "Maxx" service in my area in the next month or two. 25/5 will be upgraded 100/10 or 200/20 (I'm not entirely clear which it is). It's no Google fiber, but it will do until Google rolls out next year... I'm overjoyed the merger is not going through.

      • I don't know about that. I can't intelligently comment on Comcast (as I have the pleasure of saying I've never lived in an area plagued by Comcast) but between Cox and TWC I've always had better internet service through Cox. The speeds are better, the downtimes are extremely rare, and although they claim a data cap, I've gone over it numerous times and have never been penalized for it. I called them on it and they indicated that in reality it's a soft cap and all they do is send a warning email. I suppose i

        • It probably depends a lot on the specific area you live in. Cox was fine (no major complaints other than a billing dispute when I moved), but I do like that TWC doesn't even have a soft cap on usage.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by Holi ( 250190 )
          My one problem with Cox lately is jitter. It makes my evening gaming extremely frustrating more often then not.

        • Re: (Score:1)

          by Anonymous Coward

          I don't understand your comment as someone who has 8/4, characterized it well, with often Netflix HD, VoIP, Web Browsing, even downloads going all at the same time with hardly, if ever, perceptible contention. If you have needs for greater than 25/5, I can understand if you have some significantly unique (among average consumer) habits like torrenting, moving containers around, or many people in the household doing these concurrently. But most of us it really is not that big of a deal. Maybe you truly aren'

          • More is always better.

            MURICA!

          • I'll let you enjoy that 8/4. I do a lot of video conferencing and online gaming (and downloading of games via Steam), and having had a 10/5 at one point I can tell you that my current 100/25 is leaps and bounds much easier on my sanity.

      • Re: (Score:3)

        by ooshna ( 1654125 )

        Where I live Cox already offers 150/20 doesn't throttle and has almost perfect uptime.

        • Cox is Las Vegas is 100/20 with very good uptime. Netflix ranked Cox one of the fastest ISPs. I think the only faster ones were Google, and one or two tiny little ISPs.

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by DarkOx ( 621550 )

            I have to agree I have lived in both places where I have had Cox and other places with Comcast, Cox has been the best experience.

      • Re: (Score:1)

        by Tablizer ( 95088 )

        TWC has had crappy reliability in my experience.

        • Re: (Score:1)

          by Shakrai ( 717556 )

          Where I live they haven't bothered to make any provision for back up power to the repeaters on their coax plant. Power goes out? Kiss your phone service goodbye, even if you've got the battery in your modem. They finally did upgrade us to DOCSIS 3, about eight months ago, so now our peak hour speeds have gone from atrocious to tolerable FWIW.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by zwede ( 1478355 )

        I've lived in Comcast, Cox, and Timewarner cable areas. I'm commenting solely on Internet service, but Timewarner has far and away been the best.

        Same experience here. I've had TWC internet-only for 5 years. No outages, no data cap, no artificial slowdowns on "non-approved sites" (AFAIK). There's a local phone number on the bill. The times I've needed service I called it rather than the 800 number and each time I've talked to an on-shore call center that was able to fix the issue.

        Now Comcast on the other hand... yuck.

      • I have Cox and am thankful of it every time I even hear these twin pillars of suck mentioned. Absolutely rock-solid, with tech support people located within my own Podunk rural state.

    • Re:Comcast and Time Warner, a match made in . . . (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Dutch Gun ( 899105 ) on Friday April 24, 2015 @10:05AM (#49544741)

      CEO Brian Roberts said:

      but we structured this deal so that if the government didn't agree, we could walk away

      Translation: "We knew it was sketchy as hell, but hey, might as well give it a try! If they see through the BS, no harm done."

      • Re: (Score:3)

        by TWX ( 665546 )
        That part kind of got me too, shouldn't all deals subject to regulatory approval be structured where they could walk away? Wouldn't anything else be outright flaunting in the face of regulation?

        • Re:Comcast and Time Warner, a match made in . . . (Score:5, Informative)

          by Rastor ( 8752 ) on Friday April 24, 2015 @10:33AM (#49544951)

          That part kind of got me too, shouldn't all deals subject to regulatory approval be structured where they could walk away? Wouldn't anything else be outright flaunting in the face of regulation?

          What they meant here was that unlike AT&T, they didn't screw up and allow a penalty clause in the agreement if the merger didn't go through.

          T-Mobile made out pretty well in that one.

        • Re:Comcast and Time Warner, a match made in . . . (Score:4, Informative)

          by djrobxx ( 1095215 ) on Friday April 24, 2015 @10:42AM (#49545007)

          That part kind of got me too, shouldn't all deals subject to regulatory approval be structured where they could walk away? Wouldn't anything else be outright flaunting in the face of regulation?

          I think he meant walk away without significant impact. For example, the AT&T/T-Mobile deal failure had very serious repercussions for AT&T. From Wikipedia:

          "Deutsche Telekom will receive $3 billion in cash as well as access to $1 billion worth of AT&T-held wireless spectrum."

    • Re:Comcast and Time Warner, a match made in . . . (Score:5, Funny)

      by NotDrWho ( 3543773 ) on Friday April 24, 2015 @10:14AM (#49544801)

      I would say it was a match made in hell, but even hell would never stoop THAT low.

      • You think Satan wants to wait on hold for tech support? The King of Hell has better things to do than "have you tried turning your router off and back on?" or being at home sometime next week between 8AM and 7PM.

        • Re: (Score:1)

          by dysmal ( 3361085 )
          Having had to call all of the major ISP's for service, I'd be floored if Satan even made it as far as anyone in support. The phone trees that they use ("please tell me about your problem") are awful enough to make the Dark Lord go do a keg stand with holy water!

    • Time Warner, a copyright focused company would have brought to the relationship.

      It's worth pointing out that Time Warner Cable is, confusingly, not owned by Time Warner Inc. It used to be, of course, and for some reason it still has the name (likely some sort of obligation with an expiration date) but since 2009 it's been an independent company.

      It's resulted in some asinine incidents, like how TWC for a while could not use HBO Go even though Time Warner proper owns HBO.

    • Re:Comcast and Time Warner, a match made in . . . (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Andrio ( 2580551 ) on Friday April 24, 2015 @11:12AM (#49545257)

      CEO Brian Roberts said, "Today, we move on. Of course, we would have liked to bring our great products to new cities..."

      Hey Brian, guess what. You still can! Nobody is stopping you.

      Oh wait, what's that? You don't want to enter a market where there's any competition? I see.

    • I can't even get past the fact that the TWC - AOL merger was labeled the worst in the entire history of the US and then they went for a second indentical title with Comcast. Who the hell is running things at Time Warner?

      • I can't even get past the fact that the TWC - AOL merger was labeled the worst in the entire history of the US and then they went for a second indentical title with Comcast. Who the hell is running things at Time Warner?

        Different people from the ones who are running things at Time Warner Cable, as Time Warner Cable was spun off from Time Warner in 2009. (And Time Warner has nothing to do with Time Magazine; that's now a product of Time Inc.)

    • ... the forward looking understanding of technology that Time Warner, a copyright focused company would have brought to the relationship.

      So why would a cable company be "copyright-focused"?

      • Re: (Score:1)

        by Shakrai ( 717556 )

        They're not. The GP obviously doesn't realize that Time Warner spun off Time Warner Cable quite some time ago.

  • I was tired of hearing those commercials.
  • Netflix, Amazon, Sling
    Possibly Google, Apple, anyone else?
  • It's nice to know that money can't always buy government representatives all the time.

    • Re:Nice to know... (Score:5, Funny)

      by DickBreath ( 207180 ) on Friday April 24, 2015 @09:42AM (#49544611) Homepage
      You can buy all of the government some of the time, and some of the government all of the time, but . . .

      it takes a lot of money to buy all of the government, all of the time. So that option is only available to oil companies and major defense contractors.

      • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

        by alphatel ( 1450715 ) *

        You can buy all of the government some of the time, and some of the government all of the time, but . . . it takes a lot of money to buy all of the government, all of the time. So that option is only available to oil companies and major defense contractors.

        And Google, And Apple, And ...

        • Re: (Score:3)

          by ShaunC ( 203807 )

          And Google, And Apple, And ...

          Neither Apple nor Google have made enough payments yet; the FBI director is still loudly accusing them of supporting terrorists and pedophiles.

      • The merger may be off, for now, but that does not mean that there will be no collusion and behaviors of a merged company down the line. Proxies are not something new in terms of abusing monopoly powers.

        Sure, I am glad this deal is off. At the same time, I don't trust these mega companies holding monopolies to do the right thing.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by Krojack ( 575051 )

          I'm almost sure this will make a return. Right now they saw what was happening and they were going to lose out. All Comcast & TWC are doing is stepping back out of the spot light so they can do some more behind the doors deals and 'gift buying' for more politicians.

      • The last two major regulatory issues these companies have faced are net neutrality and the merger- and they've lost both. So at least recently, they don't seem to be buying any of the government any of the time.

    • Sure you can. Comcast just wasn't paying enough this time.

    • It's nice to know that money can't always buy government representatives all the time.

      Too many people hated Concast for this to work. Had it gone through, well.... I'm fairly certain there would have been a black hole knocked off course or something somewhere :-)

      Honestly they've simply pissed off way to many people. They have a serious PR issue which has lasted for years and they were arrogant enough to believe it wasn't going to prevent this from happening.

      Personally I'm pleased and hope for more (not less) competition in the Industry.

      Yeah I know. That's a tough wish. maybe I'll go find

      • I doubt very much this had anything to do with Comcast's customer service reputation. The government doesn't give a shit about that stuff. I, perhaps niavely hope, that this decision was actually an intelligent, reasoned one, but really, I wait to hear the details of the machinations that went on behind it all. Someone somewhere made some money from this.

    • Re:Nice to know... (Score:5, Insightful)

      by NotDrWho ( 3543773 ) on Friday April 24, 2015 @10:19AM (#49544833)

      It's nice to know that money can't always buy government representatives all the time.

      Just give them a little more time.

      2017 headline: Time-Warner/Comcast merger approved by a last-minute, late night amendment to the Veterans Administration funding bill.

  • The government should continue investigating as a follow up, to see if Comcast has fully followed through with the promises/requirements of the NBC Universal purchase.

    • May I remind you that NBC made those promises as a condition of acquiring Universal. So Comcast can claim, sort of with a straight face, suppressing involuntary evil laughter, that Comcast shouldn't be held to NBC's promises. Alternately, Comcast can say that NBC made those promises in an earlier financial Quarter, even an earlier fiscal year, and therefore should not be held to them. Or finally, Comcast can say, here's a 'campaign contribution' now go investigate something else like Net Neutrality or fi

      • Re:The Government Should Continue Investigating (Score:4, Interesting)

        by TWX ( 665546 ) on Friday April 24, 2015 @10:23AM (#49544859)
        Unless Comcast acquired NBC/Universal's property, but not the company itself (like a bankruptcy asset purchase) then I don't see them getting out of the NBC obligations. When a company purchases another company outright it keeps those obligations. One of the big banks that absorbed one of the big mortgage lenders still had to deal with billions of dollars in fines from that mortgage lender if I'm remembering correctly, and if the bankers couldn't get out of it, a few media moguls sure as hell aren't going to.
        • > I don't see them getting out of the NBC obligations

          I didn't expect to see a lot of things earlier in my life.

          But Corruption. And Congress.

          Believe me, anything could happen if the right palms are greased and enough grease is used. Simply not pushing the merger any further may avoid scrutiny into how they already may not be honoring those obligations.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by thaylin ( 555395 )

      This, I really think this is actually the reason. Comcast knows they have not lived up to the agreement and does not want the FCC looking too closely.

    • Re:The Government Should Continue Investigating (Score:5, Funny)

      by BVis ( 267028 ) on Friday April 24, 2015 @09:49AM (#49544645)

      You want a big company to actually do what it promised it will do? Why do you hate America?

    • Comcast are being investigated. One of the conditions of the NBC Universal / Comcast deal was that HULU would remain independent from Comcast oversight. The WSJ (IIRC) reported that Comcast was directly involved in a meeting between high-level execs when HULU was being considered for sale. Comcast convinced the execs in question not to sell.

    • The government should continue investigating as a follow up, to see if Comcast has fully followed through with the promises/requirements of the NBC Universal purchase.

      Well, MSNBC is still on the air despite not making any money, so I'd say the executive branch regulators who they made the promises to are pretty happy with them.

  • On both of them long ago.

  • This really suggests that the Comcast/TWC merger had more to do with empire building (or expanding an effective monopoly) than good business.

    Too often, mergers and acquisitions are driven by ego and result in an overall conglomerate that is less efficient.

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by swb ( 14022 )

      My sense is that it maybe wasn't good business.

      The sectors represented by Comcast (content, cable, internet) all face a ton of pressure from various competition. Amazon and Netflix are actively creating content and building alliances with production companies. Cable is being decimated by streaming and downloadable content (accelerated by excessive cable pricing and poor customer service). Even Internet is showing signs of competition from municipal broadband and other providers -- CenturyLink, who is jus

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by bigpat ( 158134 )

        The sectors represented by Comcast (content, cable, internet) all face a ton of pressure from various competition.

        Comcast is often the only effective provider of all of the above in many local areas with local franchises that give them exclusivity to lay their cables and with anti competitive agreements with Verizon which have blocked an expansion of Verizon FiOS into competing areas in exchange for Comcasts agreement to not get into Wireless. In many places if you want to get content, cable and/or Internet Comcast is the way you get it.

        Pricing models mean more expensive Internet if you don't bundle content which giv

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by swb ( 14022 )

          I don't disagree that blocking was the right choice. What I question was whether Comcast's current monopoly practices in the face of pressure across all business sectors (some more than others) are enough to make this merger make sense as a strategic business decision.

          2-3 years ago where I live, you had a "choice" of high speed Internet -- DSL from CenturyLink, permanently stuck in the sub-2 Mbit/sec range or Comcast at 10+. A local Internet provider has been wiring part of the city for fiber -- it's a pr

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by gtall ( 79522 )

        I rather think it was Comcast wanting to put their valve on the intertubes between content provides and content users. Then they hoped to extract money from both sides as the price for the floor of information through their pipes.

    • This really suggests that the Comcast/TWC merger had more to do with empire building (or expanding an effective monopoly) than good business.

      Too often, mergers and acquisitions are driven by ego and result in an overall conglomerate that is less efficient.

      Mergers are always done as a way to create a bit of chaos and negotiation opportunities so that CEOs and top shareholders can pocket a bit of the wealth they control, but isn't theirs.

  • If anyone believes that Comcast is giving up, I have some swampland in the Sahara for sale too! I believe that Comcast made this announcement as a PR move, and will still be pursuing this merger behind the scenes in secret and we will only find out when they think they can succeed. What really needs to happen is that Comcast needs to be broken up into small municipal ISPs as should all of the ISPs. These municipal ISPs should then be run as not-for-profit public utilities, only able to charge customers

  • Comment removed (Score:5, Funny)

    by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Friday April 24, 2015 @09:57AM (#49544691)
    Comment removed based on user account deletion

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by pr0t0 ( 216378 )

      +5 Funny is not enough. I bestow the title upon you, "Today's winner of the internet". Bravo!

    • Today, we move on. Of course, we would have liked to bring our great products to new cities, but it turned out we don't actually have any. This took us by surprise but a quick poll among our executive staff came to the result that nobody actually knows how we make money or why we're still in business. Money comes in, certainly, and from what I could gather some of it is government money so we seem to be providing some kind of service, I guess. And some of it to the government, it seems. But the exact nature
  • "Comcast will have to give us more money before we let them merge with Time Warner"
  • Does anyone know how much they spent on lobbying to get this to go through?
  • "...we would have liked to bring our great products to new cities..." I'm not American, but as I understand somehow cities are run by one ISP only or something like that? Wouldn't a better approach for them "to bring our great products to new cities" be to lobby and break this system so that they can enter new cities alongside their competitors? Maybe build some healthy competition? Yeah yeah, I know, that'll never happen... but somebody should at least call them on their crap, since this would be the b
    • Competitors? Ha, ha, ha. It's mostly monopoly here friend.

    • I'm not American, but as I understand somehow cities are run by one ISP only or something like that? Wouldn't a better approach for them "to bring our great products to new cities" be to lobby and break this system so that they can enter new cities alongside their competitors?

      Well, keep in mind, the government just threw up dumb roadblocks to something that Comcast wanted to do because Comcast didn't pay the Leftist executive branch regulators a big enough bribe. Comcast's last big entry into politics was Net Neutrality*, where the institutional Left demagogued against Comcast, despite the fact that like the institutional left, Comcast was supporting the so-called Net Neutrality plan. A plan based on "Comcast will lobby the government to do the right thing" is obviously not goin

  • That was an incomplete quote (Score:3)

    by Minwee ( 522556 ) <dcr@neverwhen.org> on Friday April 24, 2015 @10:30AM (#49544925) Homepage

    "Of course, we would have liked to bring our great products to new cities, but we structured this deal so that if the government didn't agree, we could walk away"

    "...and besides, fuck you [youtube.com]."

  • Maybe they should focus on having great products first. I have yet to find an ISP that is even close to great.

  • This is far from over. This was just the first skirmish in a war that is going to last for some time. I have the feeling that a number of politicians are going to be surprisingly well funded in the next election.

  • From Consumerist, where I got this news a couple hours ago: "Comcast wonâ(TM)t want to sit idle; theyâ(TM)ve got $45 billion burning a hole in their pocket and will want to spend it on something."

    Gee, maybe if they would take that 45 billion dollars and invest it in not totally freaking sucking at everything, the public wouldn't hate them so much and want to block their attempts to get any bigger than they already are? Maybe invest in internal infrastructure and better processes so that they don't

  • ... how the shareholders react, and whether any C-level heads roll over this apparent institutional overreach.

  • They could have already been bringing their "great" products to new cities without this merger. Though, that would have required *gasp* competing with other companies rather than carving out local monopolies to prevent having to compete with each other.

    • And before someone comes along telling me how it's all the fault of local governments that we have these monopolies, that's simply not true. The reason these local monopolies exist, is that for decades the cable operators required these exclusivity agreements from the local governments as a condition of even serving their municipal area. It was not that the local governments decided to force these monopolies upon the cable companies against their will.

  • For the sake of 'the rest of us', glad to see that the sheer obscenity of something that was probably conceived as making sense in the minds of merger-happy investors and money managers didn't come to pass.

    Before celebrating too much, let's keep in mind that this may just be a temporary reprieve. They are sure to try again.
  • That is all.
  • As a central florida resident who has Bright House for cable, whom I've been happy with up until now, now wait to see if Charter continues to court Bright House for a possible merger or even if they think the merger will be approved. Here is one of the stories about that potential merger. [nytimes.com]

    I personally don't think we need any more cable companies merging.

  • Dear Comcast:

    I know this is hard to figure out, but I found a map of areas that you could bring your products to.

    Comcast and Time Warner in 1 Map [mashable.com]

    You can start by wiring those areas that are blue, then proceed into the areas that are white.

    No need to thank me.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by neminem ( 561346 )

      That'd be nice - even if I have no desire to ever touch Comcast with a 100 foot pole (unless it had a dagger on the end and I could touch them... forcefully), just having them in the same city would force whoever was already there to stop sucking so much themselves. Sadly, there are usually laws specifically designed to protect whichever ISP is already entrenched, because competition hurts whoever already has a local monopoly, and money can do almost anything. Amazingly, not this time, but still, this was a

  • There seems to be so little good news lately, that I just have to savor this for a while!

  • I understand this is a good thing in general.

    However I kind of feel it sucks for me. I have TWC in my area and the best plan I can get is 100/5. 5 measly Mbps upload...

    If we got Comcast instead I would have been able to get their 105/20 plan which would have quadrupled my upload speed.

    I just want more upload and now that this sale is dead I feel like i'm years away before TWC ever increases their upload speeds...

  • Here's what Comcast said in their official press release-
    “Today, we move on. Of course, we would have liked to bring our great products to new cities, but we structured this deal so that if the government didn’t agree, we could walk away,"

    Here's what Comcast didn't say in their official press release, but should have-
    Now that we no longer have to 'play nice' to help get the merger approved, you can all expect big price increases in our monopolistic markets, reinstated data caps with BIG upch

  • I think THE biggest reason why the merger was called off was the very likely stipulation from the Federal government that Comcast must spin off NBC Universal to get the merger completed. Given how hard Comcast worked just to purchase NBC Universal in 2010, that was something they would not accept.

  • Personally, what I would have liked to see is allowing the merge of the retail arms and wholesale/infrastructure arms merged, but into separate respective entities, with a stipulation that the wholesale/infrastructure arm was explicitly not allowed to sell services to end users (ever); only to retail ISPs, at a regulated but fair rate and requirement to upgrade the network to FTTx as demand arises. It's a common model in a lot of other countries and for the most part, works pretty well.

    That way, other ISPs

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