Comcast buying Time Warner Cable

[Jack 1000]

That would be approximately six dual layer Blu-rays or six 4K movies assuming you didn't use your Internet connection for anything else that month.

I hope you don't like PC gaming either as games like Max Payne 3 from Steam require a 30 GB download or Call of Duty: Ghosts is 50 GB.

Also, if you subscribe to a porn site, I hope you like only being able to download 100 movies instead of being able to subscribe to a porn site for one month, download the entire site, and then cancel your membership to that site. Under Comcast's stifling caps you can no longer cost effectively save entire porn sites whereas with a Time Warner connection you can subscribe to a site like Brazzers for $20, download their entire site, and be set with a massive catalog of 1080p porn for life.

Also, I hope you guys don't care about actually being able to back your data up to a offsite cloud storage provider so that you're not one of the legions of people crying when their hard drive fails or they get robbed/their house burns down/floods/gets hit by a tornado, etc.

I have over 50 TB of data I have to keep backed up to the cloud and Comcast would expect me to pay them $10,000 in overage fees or spend 14 years spacing out my uploading to use under 300 GB of data each month for 167 months in order to do that. To put that into perspective, you can buy EIGHTY 4 terabyte hard drives (yes, PHYSICAL products), for a total amount of 320 TB of storage space, and then rent a safety deposit box at a bank and store some of your data in there, for the same amount of money that Comcast wants to charge you in 'overage fees' to send 50 TB of data via the Internet.

Something ain't right with this picture. Remember in the 1990's when it was more cost effective to physically buy hard drives and pay for shipping to move data around than it was to just use your Internet connection? Comcast wants to take us all back to those days. Comcast wants to introduce us to an Internet dark age.

I upload next to nothing and watch You Tube Videos, backing up my storage to Google Docs and Windows Sky Drive.  I also have a Flash Drive for my computer.  Just pictures, documents, and bookmarks, no movies or TV shows.

Jack

[Jack 1000]

I also read that Comcast is adding TWC Start Over and Look Back to all systems if the deal is approved.  The deal may not close for AT LEAST A YEAR, if even approved by the Department of Justice and the FCC.  Intelligent Home from TWC will stay.  Have no word on Signature Home.  It could take another three years to get all systems and nodes Comcast ready, so we are looking at 2016-2018, I would say before huge changes come about.  You won't see any changes to the line-up or equipment changes for a couple of years.

Not happy with the proposed buy-out.  I would rather see TWC/Comcast work to improve it's customer relationship skills across  the footprint to get the public speaking about cable TV in a more positive way.  That's what is needed.  Better training, more modern equipment for the DVR's and Set Tops, and better quality control testing.  It would be better if each company TWC, Charter, Comcast, Cablevision, and Cox were all in close proximity to each other to encourage competition.  That way, subs get better service and deals.


Jack

[ArgMeMatey]

You guys are literally debating over which pile of crap emits the least amount of odor.

Well, not literally, but your other points are right on.  

I agree that there are two piles:
1.  The local duopoly / monopoly.  They blame price increases on increased maintenance costs and increased programming costs from the big cable content providers and local stations trying to replace lost local ad and network revenue-sharing, not on their own desire for profits "because we can."  

2.  Vertical integration.  They claim everything will flow like honey when they own everything from the pole in the backyard to the actor's botoxed lips.  For some reason they don't mention the lack of pricing pressure.

[gparris]

I just received my on line billing, mind you, I have a promotion that covers me (hopefully) until the end of the year, but the pricing is going up.
To start with, there is the $10.00 per STB or STB-DVR box fees are going from $10.00 to $11.25 each, for example, then the Standard TV (includes "Starter TV) is going from $75.99 to $77.99, Variety Pass goes from $10.95 to $12.00 and get this- $2.50 extra a month for "Broadcast TV fee". What a joke!:bang:

[OlsonNet]

http://consumerist.com/2014/04/28/comcasttwc-reveal-plan-to-hand-over-4-million-customers-to-charter/

Looks like Comcast will sell our market to Charter should this deal go down.

[RLJSlick]

I just read that also. Man this is really the perfect time to cut the cord with Cable TV. Looking forward to it.

[Bebop]

http://www.jsonline.com/business/comcast-to-sell-milwaukee-area-time-warner-cable-system-to-charter-b99257618z1-257005711.html

What will that do to us? Which is the lesser of two evils?

[mrschimpf]

As a Charter customer I'm praying all this shuffling of systems includes a licensing of Comcast's X1 system. Anything to kill the last strings to Rovi's garbage guide I will take (though Charter is developing their own guide).

The other good things are that channel lineups might be the same everywhere, and Charter has copy-free for all BYO DVR's except for the premium channels, and they'll probably kill TWC 32, as all their rights can easily be taken comfortably by Fox Sports Wisconsin's alternate channel and their local programming creation efforts have been limited to basic billboard channels (though an interest in FSW now looks more likely).

Otherwise, this isn't really good; Charter was already an uneasy cable partner in the outstate areas and this doesn't help with rates at all. I expect rates to continue to rise with nothing to compete with Charter except for U-verse.

[Steve Mann]

I only use TW at home for Internet. I use D* for programming.

I'm fearful of less speed, data caps and who knows what else.

[budda]

Time Warner going by by! Comcast giving it up to Charter. If you are a TW costumer soon you will belong to Charter. Heard that today. Was called Divesting there TW interest. Comcast that is. No box no TV.

http://www.cnbc.com/id/101614448

[ArgMeMatey]

What's good about this deal for customers?  Nothing.  

What's good about this for local Time Warner employees?  Nothing.  

What's good about this for Time Warner, Comcast and Charter stockholders and managers?  Who cares!

At least when Ma Bell was the only game in town, she had regulators (sort of) watching.  Now, this is all just wild west.  They've all got their thumbs on the scale, and what choice do we have?  "Well, you can always wait for the DVD or go to the library!"

[mrschimpf]

I only use TW at home for Internet. I use D* for programming.

I'm fearful of less speed, data caps and who knows what else.

Charter is upping their mid-tier to 60 Mbps once their digital-only transition to "Spectrum" is over, with the higher tier at 100 Mbps. And though they do have technical data caps, they don't seem to enforce them for all but the worst data gobblers.

Of course, that was the old Charter with the 'look the other way' attitude on data caps. The Charter now under this Cablevision exec hasn't been real good, and I'm really, really loathing that the premium tier has been soaked into 'Bronze' 'Silver' and 'Gold' tiers; getting rid of Starz and Epix last year meant I had to spend an hour on the phone getting a custom re-price, and I wasn't able to get rid of Showtime either without losing the other channels I did want to retain. And their new 'Instant Upgrade' channel screwed up auto-tuning and guarantees plenty of drunken/kid/technophobic screw-ups when you suddenly discover your bill rose $40 when you played with that channel.

[Jack 1000]

I heard out of both political parties in Washington there is MAJOR opposition to the deal.  Remember, even if it passes, it will take about five years for full implementation.  There won't be that much that will be changed.  Just new names on the trucks, probably promo rates for the first two years of the deal, and than rate increases across the board.

Nothing good comes out of this merger!

Jack

[techguy1975]

Looks like Comcast will be spinning off their Wisconsin subs to Charter:

http://www.jsonline.com/business/comcast-to-sell-milwaukee-area-time-warner-cable-system-to-charter-b99257618z1-257005711.html


Not surprising, with a deal this large, they would have to divest some areas