[opendtv] Re: B&C: AT&T's Stephenson: DOJ Took Meat Ax to Rule of Law
- From: Craig Birkmaier <brewmastercraig@xxxxxxxxxx>
- To: opendtv@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Thu, 30 Nov 2017 07:29:40 -0500
On Nov 29, 2017, at 3:56 PM, Manfredi, Albert E
<albert.e.manfredi@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
"But Stephenson said the law has been interpreted, implemented and executed
in that way, then 'to suddenly wake up on a merger that is less complicated
than one that was already approved, NBC/Comcast, one that is less complicated
and has less market power issues, and to go from very targeted structural
remedies to a meat ax approach of just blocking the thing, just strikes at
the heart of rule of law.'"
Could be a valid point, except that before this paragraph, the article had
already pointed out:
It is a valid point Bert.
However, as you seem to comprehend later in this post, there are circumstances
where a previous merger may be called into question, as is the case here with
Comcast/NBC Universal.
I still believe that the DOJ is just shaking AT&T down to gain some
concessions; for example, it would not be surprising if they agree to all of
the transparency provisions under the new Net Neutrality guidelines. By this I
mean continued commitments to no blocking, and the current ways in which AT&T
throttles subscribers for specific plans or when they reach data caps.
So that tells me, things aren't quite so simple. Even the NBCU/Comcast merger
is causing heartburn, and may not last? Vertical mergers can be problematic,
especially in cases where one of the entities is a local monopoly for many
households.
It caused plenty of heartburn when the deal was approved but he Obama DOJ.
Unless that deal is undone, which would be unprecedented, it will be difficult
for the DOJ to block the AT&T TW deal.
I would point out that in NO CASE does AT&T have a local monopoly on ISP
service.
Even in the upcoming era of fixed 5G wireless broadband, it's yet to be seen
if "market forces" are enough to permit these broadband providers to
self-regulate, through competition.
Market forces are already working in your neighborhood Bert. More than 35% of
U.S. homes have two providers of at least 25/3 service. With wireless broadband
we are likely to see competition in almost every market in the U.S., and not
only from the legacy telcos, but Google and many others.
I would point out again, that nobody is planning to change their policies with
respect to net neutrality. But it is important to note that bundling of content
and ISP service is already widespread and is likely to grow. But this is a form
of competition too, and one of the primary reasons behind the AT&T/TW merger.
The problem is ROI, coupled with the high capital costs of building and
maintaining the required backhaul.
THANK YOU!
It is interesting that many of the Net neutrality zealots believe that backhaul
is FREE, or should be, as we learned with the tactics Netflix used to try and
gain low cost or free carriage deals in 2014.]
I am posting a separate article from the NY Times, which tries to build the
case that the open Internet is already dead (or dying), because big corporate
interests can outspend the “little guys.”
There is a world of difference between the cost to provision a basic HTML5
website, versus building a large e-commerce site or a new OTT video service.
Yes, the world of the Internet was much more egalitarian in the early years
when we had to get by with dial-up speeds and downloading .jpg images took
forever.
But that’s the point. With broadband, new applications became possible that
quickly gobbled up the available bandwidth, and these bandwidth intensive
applications can involve huge hosting and backhaul charges.
The other side of the coin being, broadband providers have a pretty critical
role to play, which should promote job security. Every bit as much job
security as the telcos had, in the dialup ISP era. Conversely, in the dialup
ISP era, there was no job security for the ISPs. They came and went, even
before the broadband era began.
The telcos had job security for nearly a century. Federal and state regulators
set rates that assured profitability. Even this did not ensure that they would
control the evolution to broadband; in fact it can be argued that Title II
regulation -specifically the unbundling of data lines - prevented the Telcos
from investing in broadband.
It’s also worth noting that in the past year we discussed the fact that the
labor costs for Verizon to deploy FTTH in the NE corridor, made new deployments
too expensive to pursue.
As for the Mom & Pop ISPs, this kind of economic disintermediation is
commonplace in the early years of any developing business. Downtown merchants
were crushed by the malls. Small retailers were crushed by the big box
merchants. Now Amazon is crushing retail...
Regards
Craig
----------------------------------------------------------------------
You can UNSUBSCRIBE from the OpenDTV list in two ways:
- Using the UNSUBSCRIBE command in your user configuration settings at
FreeLists.org
- By sending a message to: opendtv-request@xxxxxxxxxxxxx with the word
unsubscribe in the subject line.
Other related posts:
