ALERT: FCC Set to approve disastrous Time Warner cable merger.

[Armstead]

http://www.freepress.net/blog/2016/03/16/fcc-chairman-wheeler-set-approve-disastrous-cable-merger-heres-why-we-need-stop-him


The following is from Free Press Net. It is public domain so including in full. Please call FCC and circulate this.

FCC Chairman Wheeler Set to Approve Disastrous Cable Merger --- Here's Why We Need to Stop Him
Mary Alice Crim
March 16, 2016
BroadbandCableComcast-Time Warner Cable MergerThe FCC and Media Policy

Late last night the Wall Street Journal reported that FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler is moving toward approving Charter’s $90 billion takeover of Time Warner Cable and Bright House Networks.

He’ll still need to put the deal to a vote — which means there’s time to influence the outcome if you act fast.

Here are the reasons you should pick up the phone now and tell the FCC to block the merger.

Already steep prices will go through the roof, forcing families around the country to make hard choices about basic necessities. Charter is taking on huge debt just to make this deal happen. The additional burden works out to about $1,142 for the average customer, just in new debt. It would saddle the post-merger Charter with an incredible $66 billion in debt, including $27 billion created just to close this deal. To repay that, and to satisfy its investors, Charter would have to raise its prices substantially — squeezing captive customers and forcing some offline.

To make matters worse, Charter’s entry-level broadband prices are already much higher than Time Warner Cable’s entry-level $15 tier. The closest thing that Charter has to this price is a higher-speed package that starts at $40 per month as a promotional rate, then increases to $50 per month in year two, and to $60 after year two. And this merger means higher prices for everyone: Charter’s expanded market power would lead to price hikes on top of these already steep rates. Price increases would hit low-income people the hardest, including those in communities of color who are on the wrong side of the digital divide and who make up a large percentage of the population in places like New York City, Los Angeles and other big cities these cable companies serve.

These price increases would make getting online impossible for way too many people. In a world where Internet access is essential, that’s unconscionable. A recent Pew Research Center report found that home broadband adoption rates dropped from 70 percent of U.S. adults in 2013 to 67 percent in 2015. The numbers are even more dismal for communities of color: Adoption plummeted from 62 percent to 54 percent for Black households and from 56 percent to 50 percent for Latino homes. Pew found that price was the primary reason for this decline.

Broadband is too expensive yet it’s undeniable that people need it. If this merger goes through, more people will be forced to the wrong side of the digital divide. This chasm affects people’s day-to-day lives and increases inequity in a society in which every gap between the haves and have-nots is growing wider.

Together Charter and Comcast would have unprecedented control over our cable and Internet connections, erasing competition and choice for most homes in the country. If the merger goes through, just two Internet service providers, Charter and Comcast, would control nearly two-thirds of the nation’s high-speed Internet subscribers. In 90 percent of its expanded territory, Charter would face no fiber-to-the-home broadband competition from companies like Verizon FiOS or Google Fiber. In more than half of Charter’s territory, Charter customers would have no other option at all for bundled broadband and video services. That means Charter would have unfettered ability to increase prices in its broadband monopoly territories. This lack of competition and choice would leave homes across the country at the mercy of two cable companies known for high prices and terrible customer service.

Charter would rather burn money to pay for this deal than help more people get online at affordable rates. For the amount of new debt Charter is taking on to close this deal, it could literally rebuild the entire Time Warner Cable network from the ground up with money to spare. Better yet, it could bring future-proof fiber-optic broadband to 40 million new homes.

Put another way, for the amount of new debt that Charter is taking on for this transaction, it could cover an area three times larger than its existing footprint, and 1.25 times as large as Time Warner Cable’s. Building new networks in more cities would increase competition and lower prices so that families with kids, people looking for work, and others struggling to make ends meet could get online. But this $27 billion in new debt — taken out of captive Charter customers’ wallets — isn’t going to be used to build anything; it’s merely a payoff to Time Warner Cable’s shareholders and its CEO Rob Marcus, who gets a $100 million golden parachute as his reward.

The FCC says it wants competition — and key leaders have spoken out about the need for more choices — so why would the agency approve this takeover? In 2014, FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler said, “meaningful competition for high-speed wired broadband is lacking and Americans need more competitive choices for faster and better Internet connections.” In 2016, Wheeler admitted that he “has not done enough” to encourage competition between cable giants. Moreover, President Obama has noted that “In too many places across America, some big companies are doing everything they can to keep out competitors.”

There is no real support from Congress for this merger — and senators from both parties, including Senate Democratic Leader Harry Reid, are expressing concerns about it and speaking out against it.

This deal is all about Charter controlling and cutting off your online video options to protect its pay-TV cash cow. People are tired of paying for cable. They want and need their broadband access, with all of the opportunities and choices the Internet brings them. But millions of people have cut the cord on cable TV, giving up bloated lineups full of channels they don’t watch and don’t want to pay for anymore.

This makes cable companies like Charter angry. And when they get angry, they have ways to make you pay. Don’t listen to Charter’s promises that it won’t violate some of the Net Neutrality rules or stick you with data caps — for now. Charter would have all kinds of tools to keep you paying for its own cable TV and online video packages, making it harder for you to switch and watch Netflix, Amazon and all the other online video options that are out there.

No conditions can mitigate this deal’s many harms. It isn’t in the public interest. Despite Charter’s promises that it’ll improve diverse programming and offer low-cost broadband to some families, such merger conditions have historically been difficult to implement and impossible to enforce. Even if they were enforceable, these limited commitments would fail to off-set this merger’s serious harms. And none of these benefits depend on this merger. Charter pretends it can offer good service and obey the law only if it gets the merger, but that’s simply not true. In short, no conditions can make this deal OK.

Monopoly power is crushing people: It means fewer choices, higher prices, no accountability and no competition.That’s why we’re fighting this deal.

We’re fighting because we need an Internet that’s open, affordable and competitive. We need a platform that supports independent journalism; provides space for everyone to speak, listen and share; and puts people at the center instead of big corporations. Time and time again hated companies like Charter and Comcast have proven that they can’t be trusted — and they have every incentive to clamp down on our digital future. All these big companies care about is their bottom line — they don’t care about regular people who depend on the Internet.

Free Press and our allies have already delivered more than 300,000 petitions to the FCC, and thousands of people have bombarded the commissioners with phone calls. We’ve made formal legal filings at the FCC opposing the merger, we’ve met with members of Congress — and senators from both parties are speaking out.

The case against this terrible merger is clear. It should be blocked, plain and simple. But if these news reports are true, that’s not what Chairman Wheeler is getting ready to do.

A decision on this takeover could come any day now. Call FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler and the other commissioners. Tell them to stand again with the people who use the Internet, not the cable companies that want to control it. Tell them to promote choice, protect competition and block this deal.

[PADemD]

1. Phone Numbers

FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler: [phone]
FCC Commissioner Mignon Clyburn: [phone]
FCC Commissioner Jessica Rosenworcel: 202-418-2400

[Armstead]

2. Thanks

[PADemD]

4. You're welcome.

[Le Taz Hot]

3. Well, that's what they're paid to do.

It's why pro-corporate lackeys were put there in the first place. Same with the FDA and so many other agencies.

[Armstead]

5. It is discouraging

[Le Taz Hot]

6. It's oligarchy.

I gotta say, Democracy was fun while it lasted, wasn't it?

[Armstead]

7. kick

[KamaAina]

8. "Charter is taking on huge debt just to make this deal happen."

I detect the sleazy hand of Mittwit and Bain Capital or one of its clones behind this.

[Armstead]

9. More

http://www.stopmegacable.com/meet-mega-cable/

Together, Charter Communications, Time Warner Cable and Bright House Networks would be Mega Cable – a national giant that will dominate some of the country’s largest local markets, own its own pay-TV services, and control valuable programming. Sound familiar? Yup, Mega Cable will look an awful lot like Comcast.
Mega Cable would:
Serve more than one-of-three cable pay-TV homes and almost one-third of high-speed broadband homes

Dominate many of the country’s largest and most important metropolitan areas including New York City, Los Angeles, Dallas-Ft. Worth, Charlotte, Raleigh-Durham, Orlando, Tampa, and others

Serve as the only option for high-speed broadband of 25 Mbps or above for two-thirds of subscribers in its footprint

Own Regional Sports Networks (RSNs) in key markets such as Southern California, North and South Carolina, Wisconsin, Ohio, upstate New York, and Kansas City

And if all that isn’t bad enough, this deal gives Mega Cable even greater incentive to use its existing OTT service to undermine competing streaming services like Sling TV and Sony’s PlayStation Vue, among others.

Compounding these competitive concerns, during an Analyst Day event held on Nov. 19, 2014 Charter CEO Tom Rutledge made several public threats to sever ties with programmers that share their content on other OTT platforms:

“Anybody who sells their content over the top and also expects to continue to exist within a bundle sold to cable or satellite providers is really deluding themselves.”

“Anybody who pushes that envelope and sells their content to Netflix is really sowing their own seeds of destruction.”
“If I were a content company, I’d think long and hard about whether I wanted to give up access to 100 million homes and whether I wanted to give up my advertising model, and go to a direct to consumer SVOD, subscription-video-on-demand model without advertising, I think I’d think long and hard about that.”

MEET THE MEN BEHIND MEGA CABLE
The roles of media mogul Dr. John Malone and Charter CEO Tom Rutledge in the proposed merger of Charter and Time Warner Cable are cause for significant concern.

DR. JOHN MALONE: Post-merger, Malone would represent Mega Cable’s largest shareholder, while continuing to own major stakes in various programmers, including Starz, Discovery Communications and Lionsgate. This dual position of power is worrisome particularly considering Malone’s often-stated desire to promote collaboration rather than competition among cable giants.
Remarkably, even with the pending transaction, Malone still made clear his intentions in a panel discussion hosted by the Aspen Institute. First, the mogul describes his approach to managing his various cable-and-broadband assets by saying, “I try to coordinate their behavior, if I can” (found at timestamp 06:25), echoing precisely the widespread concern that the merger would give Charter and other major cable entities the ability and incentive to coordinate efforts to decrease competition and raise prices for consumers.

Then, when asked how he would operate absent the watchful eye of the DOJ/FCC, Malone concedes his instinct would be to “get together with Comcast and have a common random access platform”

Finally, he goes on to outline his ideal vision for the cable marketplace, one in which Charter and Comcast consolidate their content and operate “off of one technical platform,” thus creating a singular, universal cable system that could be used by “all of our brethren in the cable industry” T

That is, Malone’s core vision continues to be a marketplace premised upon collaboration and cooperation among dominant cable providers rather than one of competition that would drive innovation, lower prices and consumer choice.

CHARTER CEO TOM RUTLEDGE: Similarly concerning, Charter CEO Tom Rutledge has made a series of hostile statements over the past two years regarding over-the-top (OTT) services and programming. This stands in direct contrast to Charter’s recent statements of welcoming competition from OTT.

Specifically, on multiple occasions since late 2014, Rutledge has publicly discussed Charter’s perspective on the likely damage that OTT services would cause to the existing economics of the cable industry. Rutledge has also issued broad threats to end carriage of programmers that seek to distribute their content on competing OTT platforms – a particularly concerning proposition for programmers seeking to reach consumers outside of the cable bundle and for consumers seeking alternatives. Instances of

Rutledge’s comments include:

During a conference call with press and financial analysts in March 2015, Rutledge acknowledged programming fee discounts as a key benefit of absorbing other cable entities, stating, “As we go over 10 million subscribers, we sort of assume the Time Warner Cable role, if we negotiate well.” Mega Cable’s increased bargaining power over programming fees would severely undercut smaller and emerging cable entities, thus threatening the vitality of the industry overall.

Compounding this issue, Charter has thus far refused to commit to passing along any cost savings to its customers post-merger, suggesting the company would hoard any savings gleaned from obtaining programming at discounted rates and customers would see their cable bills continue to climb.

These comments, paired with John Malone’s statements around coordination and market control are deeply troubling for the future of the cable industry.

We urge the FCC and DOJ to closely scrutinize the implications of these public statements and to solve for the competitive threats presented by this transaction. Find more information on www.stopmegacable.com.

[nadinbrzezinski]

10. Thanks I missed this one