Baseball season is only days away, and the L.A. Dodgers are fresh off a 94-win division title season. Yet a large number of Dodgers fans can’t watch the games on TV because the cable sports channel owned by the team and Time Warner Cable has yet to reach deals that would let other pay-TV operators in the region carry the station. And TWC’s answer to these fans is mind-bogglingly idiotic. [More]
charter
Time Warner Cable Hates Dodgers Fans, Tells Them To Switch To Cable Companies They Can’t Get
By 3.31.15
Charter Digs This Whole Cable Merger Thing, Plans To Buy Bright House For $10.4B
By 3.31.15
In cable, merger mania isn’t just for the biggest players. The next tier down wants to play, too. And so we have the announcement this morning that Charter is planning to buy regional operator Bright House Networks for a cool $10.4 billion. [More]
Analyst Downgrades Odds Of Comcast, Time Warner Cable Merger
By 2.17.15
An important industry analyst who had previously placed decent odds on Comcast being allowed to spend $45 billion to acquire Time Warner Cable is now looking at the deal in a less-sunny light, downgrading the likelihood of the merger succeeding. [More]
Despite Threats Of Disaster, Investors In Comcast, Verizon, Etc. All Seem Totally Fine With FCC’s Plan To Reclassify Broadband
By 2.4.15
For a year now, the big ISPs have been having a series of public freakouts that stronger net neutrality rules would make for an uncertain regulatory future, leave them exposed, drive investment down, and hurt their businesses. And yet earlier today the chairman of the FCC dropped his bombshell that the agency is going to aim for the strongest possible regulation anyway. So how’d the market respond?
The stocks all went up. [More]
Comcast, Time Warner Cable Merger Review Delayed Again
By 12.23.14
Even with bought-and-paid-for Senators urging the FCC to hurry up its review of the pending merger of Comcast and Time Warner Cable, there is only so much the regulators can do when they don’t have the documents they need to complete that review. That’s why the FCC has once again hit the pause button on the time clock for this mega-merger. [More]
Comcast, Charter, TWC All Admit That Strong Net Neutrality Rules Won’t Actually Be The End Of The World
By 12.16.14
Every single one of the big ISPs has been spending the better part of a year telling both the government and the public that using Title II to regulate net neutrality would be so counterproductive, ineffective, and unlawful that it would ruin the whole internet for everyone forever. Their main threat has been that with tighter regulation, they will stop spending money investing in networks. But to their investors, company executives are telling a different tale entirely: Comcast, Charter, and Time Warner Cable have now joined Verizon in admitting that from an investment standpoint, Title II won’t really harm them or change much of anything at all. [More]
HBO Go Now On Amazon Fire TV Boxes (Not So Fast, Comcast Customers)
By 12.15.14
The Amazon Fire TV set-top box just got a lot more worthwhile for people wanting to add HBO to TVs without getting additional cable boxes. That is, unless you’re a Comcast customer. [More]
Charter Ready To Woo Time Warner Cable Again If Comcast Fails
By 11.20.14
Not even a year ago, Time Warner Cable was spurning the romantic advances of Charter Communications and its $37.3 billion offer of wedded bliss, all because it knew that Comcast was waiting in the wings with a more expensive proposal. But in case the Comcast/TWC marriage fails to get the blessing of federal regulators, Charter’s billionaire backer says he’s ready to be Time Warner Cable’s rebound relationship. [More]
Yet Another City Moves To Block Comcast From Taking Over Their TWC Service
By 10.30.14
Comcast’s plans to buy Time Warner Cable are obviously heavily under review at the federal level, and states are reviewing the merger plans with a gimlet eye as well. But thanks to the quirks of the way cable agreements developed, the cities that cable companies serve have the power to allow or block new companies from coming in and taking over. And a city in Kentucky this week became the latest potentially to throw a wrench in the grand Comcast/Time Warner Cable/Charter plan by doing just that. [More]
Another City Wants To Stop Comcast From Taking Over Cable Service
By 10.16.14
Weeks after city leaders in Lexington, KY, made it clear that they are not pleased about the promise of being passed around like a hot potato from Time Warner Cable to Comcast to Charter, the City Council of Worcester, MA, is also laying out the unwelcome mat for Comcast. [More]
Blaming TWC’s Poor Service, City May Deny Transfer Of Cable To Comcast
By 10.9.14
Two years ago, the people of Lexington, KY, became Time Warner Cable customers when the company acquired Insight Communications. Now TWC is being bought by Comcast, meaning Lexington residents would be switched again. But it gets more complicated, as Lexington is one of the markets that Comcast would then hand over to Charter. Four different cable companies in fewer than five years has members of the Lexington city council saying “no more.” [More]
The Bastard Child Of Comcast/TWC Merger Gets A Name: GreatLand Connections
By 9.3.14
While plenty of us are still banging on the church window, trying to break up the impending nuptials of Comcast and Time Warner Cable, the couple, along with their “close friend” (ahem) Charter Communications, have already given a name to the company that will be spun off and left to fend for itself in the wild because there just isn’t enough room for everyone’s kids. That company, which will instantly become the fifth-largest cable operator in the U.S., will have the craptastic name of GreatLand Connections Inc. [More]
How ISPs “Compete” With Municipal Networks: Lobbying and Campaign Donations That Block Them
By 8.28.14
Say you’re mayor of a small city. Your city is small enough and far enough away from other cities that the big cable companies don’t want to spend what it would cost to run wires through your town, because the amount they will make in return isn’t worth it. That’s reasonable, from a business perspective. So you and the residents of your city get together and come up with a plan to make a public broadband utility instead. Makes sense, right? You’d happily pay someone else to do it for you, but since they don’t want to take your money you’ll do it yourself. Only — surprise! In come those self-same cable companies to block you from doing that, too, and they get your state’s legislature and governor to pass a law against you for good measure, so you can never try again. [More]
Charter Users In St. Louis Get Sudden Speed Boost For Some Reason
By 6.13.14
A magical and wonderful thing has happened to some customers who have Charter Internet service After restarting their cable modems for some reason or another, they found that their home internet connections had received a speed boost. It was a big one, boosting real-life speeds from about 30 mbps to 100 mbps. [More]
Latest Data Says TWC-Comcast Merger Bringing Broadband Caps To Nearly 80% Of Users
By 5.21.14
The future just keeps looking brighter for those who make money from data caps, and more limited for everyone else. The latest data out on home broadband caps now shows that if the Comcast and TWC merger goes through, 79% of internet subscribers — four in every five Americans with a broadband connection — will face a monthly data cap on their plans. [More]
Americans Dissatisfied With Their Cable Companies, Especially Comcast And Time Warner
By 5.20.14
In news that will not surprise Consumerist readers, a massive annual survey of American consumers shows that we are all generally dissatisfied with our cable and Internet service providers, and that we find Time Warner Cable, Comcast, Charter, and Cox just a little bit less satisfying than average. [More]
Comcast Deal With Charter Isn’t About Improving Competition; It’s About Carving Up Marketplace
By 4.28.14
Earlier today, Comcast, Time Warner Cable and Charter Communications finally confirmed reports that the three would be playing swap-the-subscribers in an effort to make the unappetizing Comcast/TWC merger slightly less sickening. But while Comcast wants consumers and regulators to believe this sacrificial offering is about keeping the marketplace competitive, it’s really just an easy way for the players to rearrange their customers for better regional monopolies. [More]
Comcast/TWC Reveal Plan To Hand Over 4 Million Customers To Charter
By 4.28.14
As expected, Comcast and Time Warner Cable confirmed this morning that, through a combination of customer swaps and spin-off, shed themselves of around 4 million customers who will land, at least in part, in the lap of Charter Communications. [More]
