Back in February, Ann chose to keep her business with Time Warner Cable when the company dangled a free $300 prepaid gift card in her face. Fast forward to November and she’s still waiting for the card, like hundreds of other customers who stuck with the company or switched to the pay-TV provider. So what’s the deal? [More]
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Time Warner Cable’s Cable-Free Cable Is Still Basically Cable, Just On A Roku
By 11.10.15
Reports dropped a couple of weeks ago that Time Warner Cable was planning to roll out a cable-free streaming option to bring in more TV subscribers. The company has now confirmed that they’re definitely doing that… but not in as flexible a way as consumers had hoped. [More]
Charter/Time Warner Cable Merger Plan Great For Everyone, According To Charter
By 11.3.15
A couple of weeks ago, the FCC collected everyone’s comments about why Charter should or should not be allowed to go through with buying Time Warner Cable and Bright House Networks in one massive merger. The next step in the process is for Charter to get to respond as to why they think the yea-sayers are right and the nay-sayers are wrong, and they submitted that response this week. [More]
Time Warner Cable Launching Pilot Program To Sell Cable-Free Cable To Cord-Cutters
By 10.29.15
As it has often been foretold, so it is coming to pass: another major cable company is planning to sell cable-free, internet-based cable to its cord-cutting customers, starting with a pilot program in New York City. [More]
Cable Company CEOs Now Say Net Neutrality Is Not A Threat To Their Business
By 5.8.15
In the months leading up to the FCC’s vote on new net neutrality rules, the cable industry claimed that reclassifying broadband service to treat it more like a utility would harm investment and innovation (not to mention the outright lie that it would give control of the Internet to the government). Now that Neutrality is on the books (but still a few weeks away from being implemented), some of the biggest names in the cable industry are now shrugging their shoulders and saying it’s really not a big deal. [More]
Report: Justice Dept. May Recommend Blocking Comcast, Time Warner Cable Merger
By 4.17.15
It’s been well over a year since Comcast announced its $45.2 billion plan to buy Time Warner Cable and regulators at the FCC and Justice Dept. have yet to indicate publicly whether they plan to approve the deal or sue to block it. However, a new report claims that antitrust lawyers at the DOJ are leaning toward putting the kibosh on this marriage of the nation’s two largest cable operators. [More]
Time Warner Cable Promises Free Internet Speed Boost To Charlotte Customers Before Google Moves In
By 4.10.15
The new rule of the internet might well be: where Google goes, competition flows to follow. And so, Time Warner Cable customers in Charlotte are about to see a big boost in internet speeds long before a Fiber rollout comes to their town. [More]
Politicians’ Letters In Support Of Comcast Merger Were Actually Written By Comcast
By 1.26.15
In the eleven months since Comcast announced that it would acquire Time Warner Cable, numerous local and national politicians have written to the FCC in support of the merger, claiming it will create jobs (in spite of the fact that thousands of employees will inevitably be made redundant), spark investment (even though Comcast could just invest the $40 billion instead of using it to buy TWC), and provide broadband access for the poor (a program that’s been criticized as window dressing), without hurting competition (because there isn’t any to begin with). Many of the letters hit the same points… almost as if they were ghostwritten and the politicians just signed their names to them. [More]
Time Warner Wants $20,000 To Connect Rural Customer To Broadband
By 11.6.14
Ten years ago, a man in central New York decided to build a house in a rural area. This seemed like a pretty good idea at the time, but broadband Internet wasn’t as crucial to modern life then as it is now. There are Time Warner Cable lines in the small town of Pompey, southeast of Syracuse, a third of a mile from his house, but Time Warner says that it would cost more than $20,000 to connect him. [More]
Comcast Keeps Claiming Competition Abounds, Despite Mountains Of Evidence From Planet Reality
By 9.23.14
In August, as part of the merger oversight process, the FCC asked Comcast and Time Warner Cable for more information about their operations and their plans. In answer, Comcast has submitted 735 pages of documentation. That’s a lot of information, but Comcast’s responses have one key theme: the Comcast/TWC merger will not harm competition, because broadband competition is plentiful… no matter what the rest of us, including the FCC, seem to think. [More]
Why Is Verizon Misleading Consumers With The Charts In These FiOS Ads?
By 8.1.14
If you live near one of the few areas in the country in which Verizon actually operates its FiOS network, you might have seen one of the ads where a Verizon FiOS shill asks “America” to look at a charts claiming to show customer satisfaction results for the nation’s largest Internet and pay-TV providers. Looking at those chart, it appears that Verizon is blowing the competition smithereens. The reality is not as dramatic, graphically speaking. [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]
Time Warner Cable’s Newest Bundle: Unexplained Rate Increases And Pro-Merger Mail
By 4.25.14
Last month, the CEO of Time Warner Cable called his company’s upcoming merger with Comcast a “dream combination” — and in the same speech, he delivered some decidedly less-dreamy news. There would indeed be rate increases coming for TWC customers in 2014, he confirmed. Now, those increases are starting to appear. [More]
Now That Netflix Is Paying Comcast, Users Finally Get Decent Speeds… But At What Cost?
By 4.14.14
The good news: Netflix’s deal to pay Comcast for better access to its network is working. The bad news: This will now set a precedent that Internet service providers can hold content companies hostage with complete disregard to net neutrality. [More]
Comcast To Senate: “Bigger Is A Good Thing”
By 4.9.14
This morning, executives from Comcast and Time Warner Cable attempted to make a case to the Senate Judiciary Committee for the proposed $45 billion merger of the two companies, and the skeptical panel of lawmakers wanted to know what benefits this combination of the country’s two largest cable/Internet providers would bring to anyone other than the companies’ shareholders and the TWC execs who will be given huge paychecks to leave the merged company. [More]
EA’s Worst Company In America Reign Comes To An End With Loss To Time Warner Cable
March 24, 2014
Video game giant Electronic Arts stepped into the Worst Company In America nonagon of unpleasantness this morning crowned with two Golden Poos and with the confidence that the tournament’s only two-time winner deserves. But in the end, it wasn’t EA that was carried out of the arena in victory — it was Time Warner Cable. [More]
Here’s What Netflix, Dish & Others Said To The FCC About The Comcast/TWC Merger
The period for leaving a comment about the Comcast/TWC merger with the FCC closed on Monday. Roughly a zillion members of the public — individuals, nonprofits, state and federal politicians, telecom companies, tech trade groups, and consumer advocates — have weighed in, including several big names in pay TV who are staunchly against the deal. [More]