Projected merger of TimeWarner Cable and Comcast

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Washington Post

Again, this is what my professors in graduate school were warning about in the early 1980'a: The control of content and conduit by the megaconglomerates like Comcast/NBC/Universal, CBS/Paramount/Viacom, Fox, AOLTimeWarner, Cox, Hearst, Disney, etc. With Net neutrality in danger of becoming a thing of the past, This merger could bring about the same banality that has made commercial television a wasteland. Besides, do we really need another shill for Autism Speaks?

Should it?
I'd rather it not but what's to stop it?

An excessively expensive wasteland at that.

We don't have TimeWarner or Comcast in Canada, but I can imagine how this will negatively impact the telecommunications industry in the US, and potentially Canada as well. The big corporations here (Bell, Shaw, Rogers, Telus) will get this idea that it's OK to merge into one or two big corporations, and provide even crappier service for even higher prices. The main players in our telecommunications industry have very few competitors, and they tend to follow trends set in the US (albeit, we're usually a few years behind when it comes to things like cellphone data networks).

This all makes me wonder what happened to all those wonderful anti-trust laws we used to have to prevent this sort of thing.

Anyone know?

If you don't like it, don't subscribe.

The problem here is that this will cause a virtual monopoly in many markets. Sure, Time Warner used to have a lock on the market in an area that I used to live in, but at least they provided decent, reliable internet service. Everything that I've seen with Comcast leaves much to be desired, and AFAIK they were one of the companies known for bandwidth throttling. Comcast can eat a dead f***ing donkey d**k.

I hope the merger does NOT go through.

I wouldn't except 1) Cable and internet are included in the rent, 2) Hellsarizon (Verizon) refuses to introduce FIOS in my area (even though, when this area was still under the Great Telephone Experiment, AKA GTE, it was the most profitable market for GTE of PA (other GTE markets in PA were Erie, Johnstown, Somerset, part of Indiana County, and portions of PA's northern tier counties), and 3) the PA PUC now is like the Illinois Commerce Commission: a shill for the public utilities, rubber-stamping every rate hike that comes along.

They went the way of the dinosaur, circa 1980, when Ronald Reagan (mammals, don't let your cowboys grow up to be Presidents) took office as POTUS.

We used to have Comcast, but we switched to AT&T after getting piss poor Internet connectivity with Comcast.

I would dump timewarner at the first opportunity but they have a monopoly over the area
I get constant packet loss and far less speed than I pay for, I pay for a 50mbs connection and I only get 20mbs on a good day

Scheisse, I would KILL (not literally, of course ) to have a constant 20mbps connection. Here in Canada, the best connection speed I've seen is maybe just around 7.5mbps, and that's on a good day. Most ISPs here tend to manage 3-6mbps.

Really?
I seem to remember the Justice Department (too late, pathetically and unfortunately unsuccessfully) pursuing an anti-trust case against Microsoft in the '90s, long after St. Raygun the Moronic left office.
Laws must have still been on the books to do that at the time.

the laws only go into effect when certain people are not brought to strip clubs to have their pockets stuffed with money
timewarner and comcast are very good at greasing pockets

I find this situation somewhat disturbing. Both Comcast and Time Warner have localized monopolies across huge swaths of many cities. My current apartment has 1 choice for internet: Time Warner. The only other option is to go with something like a Verizon hotspot where my data is limited and overages can cost more than my rent.