The DOJ had tried to stop the deal[1] but it appears that the court ruled it could carry on [2].
Assistant Attorney General Makan Delrahim said in a statement the DOJ was "disappointed
with the Court's decision today. We continue to believe that the pay-TV market will be
less competitive and less innovative as a result of the proposed merger between AT&T and
Time Warner. We will closely review the Court's opinion and consider next steps in light
of our commitment to preserving competition for the benefit of American consumers."
And don't forget this is the entertainment time warner, not the internet service. So I'm curious what intentional timing you found, and how it relates to net neutrality.
One of the biggest issues is when companies that should focus on shipping bits for their customers also have incentive to care about what the bits represent. So this being the entertainment Time Warner is what makes this bad. Got slow service with Netflix or worse a tiny player like Mubi? Why not watch magically super fast Time Warner content that doesn't count against your data cap either?
Do you not know about the context? The admin threatened to block the deal because Trump didn't like CNN's coverage of himself. Neither side is all that great here. Even if the DOJ lawyers wanted to pursue it for the right reasons, Trump and by extension Sessions let it go through because of his animosity towards CNN.
This was probably the most frustrating part of this entire process- they had so many other arguments they could have pulled out of a bag and instead CNN was the one issue that the executive branch had?
It sounds like this issue rallied AT&T / Time Warner's legal team as well. Per the article, it sounded like AT&T / Time Warner used this "issue" to demonstration that the DOJ was opposing the merger not due to any logical reason, but out of spite.
I think the judge is saying they bungled the case so bad that an appeal will be a waste of the courts time. Sounds like the warning is more of an admonishment to the DOJ for wasting the courts time with confusing and unconvincing case.
Well, this judge would decide that motion, so it seems like he's told them they would be wasting their time. The realistic options are (1) file for a say ASAP with an eye toward asking the court of appeals to grant the stay after this judge denies it, (2) keep litigating after the deal goes through, or (3) admit defeat. I'm no expert in #1 but I assume it is also very unlikely to work in time to stop the merger (otherwise I think the DOJ would have gone that route).
That leaves litigating after the merger goes through, or just giving up. Often the FTC or DOJ will chose not to keep litigating mergers if they lose in district court because even if they win later, they don't think they will be able to get a very effective remedy--the deal will have gone through and it won't be possible to put everything back to the way it was. (If you are an antitrust lawyer, you for some reason have to talk about this using the phrase "you can't unscramble the eggs.") But it does happen sometimes--Whole Foods/Wild Oats was a good example where, if I remember correctly, Whole Foods had to sell of some of the stores they purchased from Wild Oats years later after winning their merger case in district court but losing the appeal.
That is a good question. Anyone with knowledge on the topic care to pitch in and elaborate? It seems to me it is within the rights (and "obligation") of DOJ to appeal and pursue this further.
The burden to prove impact on competition is on the plaintiff. The article does not elaborate on the judge's argument about how they failed. I am curious about the other side's argument also.
Two statements to ponder:
>>"The bulk of the third-party competitor testimony proffered by the government was speculative, based on unproven assumptions, or unsupported -- or even contradicted -- by the government’s own evidence," Leon wrote.
>> "I couldn’t help but notice that the more and more questions were raised during trial about the reliability of Professor Shapiro’s theory and model, the more the government appeared to be minimizing the importance of his analysis," the judge wrote.
I can only infer from this the judge felt DOJ did not have a consistent and non-speculative case (see above). I am not sure what they can bring up during appeals as new evidence. They can appeal the speculation argumentation I guess.
In general, I am not sure what else one can bring to the table regarding mergers. Yes, whatever you bring to the table is going to be some form of speculation. That in itself should not be enough for dismissal, in my opinion of course. The law says differently (substantial). The defendant can always claim they are not going to raise prices. If 5 years from now, the consumer is <place word of choice here with negative connotation>, nobody is going to recall this merge as the root.
People just find it too hard to understand the impact of financial actions (one of the reasons you do not see SEC filing more often).
I am awaiting for the written ruling, but having checked previous cases, and inaction from DOJ, I don't expect much.
P.S. I am not sure this is really a vertical merger. It doesn't seem this clear cut to me. Thoughts on this?
I hope we see some lawsuits fighting this precedent all the way to the scotus. It’s that or an amendment, but who knows whether we’ll ever see that level of outrage.
This pull quote is pretty convincing evidence that the DOJ doesn’t comprehend the stakes at all. “Pay TV” is way too small a lens to be thinking about this through. Internet access has a much much bigger impact on people’s lives than mere TV (or the streaming equivalent).
Time Warner doesn't have much to do with internet access though, they sold their cable business to Charter a couple years ago.
That's why analysts are talking about this as a vertical merger, AT&T doesn't have the massive presence in content production that they have in various communication businesses.
I don't think the folks who ended net neutrality then go on twitter tirades against Amazon for the public good. Especially since each tweet drives down the value of tech companies.
I certainly can't defend the AT&T-Warner merger nor Amazon's near monopoly. But the enforcement is totally selective and for an insidious reason.
>f you thought music streaming exclusives were bad, just wait until Comcast starts windowing SNL sketches to keep people on its pipes while AT&T only streams CNN to AT&T phones, while Verizon keeps wielding mobile access to NFL games like a club against the American consumer.
Such an anti-consumer dystopia :( It is truly sad to see these markets devolve into such terribleness when there is so much possibility to be had with such incredible technology.
I'm optimistic about it. The more onerous and costly it becomes, hopefully the more people will become disinterested with the mass produced garbage and start unplugging themselves.
I know about Bell Labs and their contributions. They were the one positive thing from Ma Bell, but there were a LOT of other bad things in Ma Bell that I'd rather not see come about again. I bet we can have a Bell Labs-like thing exist without all the other crap.
I'd love to see it. Where is this fabled research giant that doesn't need a bunch of funding from a giant corporation?
I mean, I guess you could look at DARPA or other government agencies as some sort of equivalent, but you're not exactly escaping controversy by getting your funding from the DoD...
Netflix isn't your ISP. Netflix doesn't control the means of delivery/distribution. They rely on Verizon, Comcast, AT&T, etc to deliver their data.
Netflix can't just decide that they don't want to compete with Hulu and therefore throttle or block Hulu from their customers.
We know that controlling the means of production and the means of distribution is highly anti-competitive. All you have to do is look at rockefeller and standard oil in the 1800s. Rockefeller bought or threatened his way into controlling the railroads which allowed him to put most of his competitors out of business or forced them to sell to Standard Oil. Controlling the means of delivery allowed rockefeller to monopolize the oil industry in the US.
With the repeal of net neutrality, we are getting to the point where verizon, comcast, at&t, etc can be their own little "internet". And this really hampers future entrepreneurs. If you wanted to start a netflix, youtube or twitch today, but you can't rely on verizon, comcast, at&t, etc to give you fair access to their network, then why bother and who will invest in your company?
But this is the overall direction of the internet and social media the past few years. Less freedom, less openness and a move towards more of a corporate tv/news format.
> But this is the overall direction of the internet and social media the past few years. Less freedom, less openness and a move towards more of a corporate tv/news format.
So when are we nerds getting together to make a new internet?
Yes, and there are conflicts of interest, as Netflix will push their own stuff over their competitors'. The major difference is that ISPs have a much stronger control of their distribution market, which they can use to gain an advantage on the production market (what's usually called "abuse of monopoly power").
Time Warner is definitely still an ISP where I live (NYC)
EDIT: Never mind, I was unaware of the split between the cable and internet businesses. (I still agree with the sibling comments that this isn't hugely important given that AT&T is still an ISP)
The difference is that I have one choice of ISP and many choices of over-the-top content, none of which can e.g. restrict my ability to access things unrelated to their service as an ISP can. It's apples v oranges.
> The judge indicated during the trial that he wasn’t buying Shapiro’s projection. After his testimony, Leon said he was "confused." Further explanation from Shapiro didn’t help.
"I’m not sure I got it, but it’s too late and too hot to belabor the point any further," the judge said.
Amazing on so many different levels.
(Shapiro is the economist whose model the DOJ based their case off of).
I'm sure if this was a thread discussing Judge Leon's 2013 opinion that NSA metadata collection violated the 4th amendment, HN would be singing his praises. But in this case he's approved a merger we don't like so he must be a total idiot or (as is being suggested further down in the thread) was bribed and has family members that will be getting board AT&T seats pretty soon. Such is HN's fickle heart.
Unsurprisingly, the case involved more nuance than could be contained in a Bloomberg article, so if you really want to understand the arguments involved, you'll have to slog through the 200 page opinion: http://www.dcd.uscourts.gov/sites/dcd/files/17-2511opinion.p...
I'm generally depressed by the state of broadband competition in the US, but that doesn't automatically mean that Shapiro's "increased leverage harm" theory that vertical content-programmer-distributor integration will raise prices is correct. And even if it is intuitively correct or turns out to be right, it doesn't mean that we currently have sufficient supporting data for it to be a convincing argument to the courts.
I should point out that this doesn't really change the broadband ISP landscape. Time Warner Cable is not apart of Time Warner anymore. All this does is give AT&T a better chance at entering the "original content" space and to take advantage of the fact that streaming providers like Youtube TV and Netflix would need to now pay AT&T for their content.
Honestly I don't think this is all that bad of a move. I'd rather AT&T absorb Time Warner than Comcast.
It's catastrophic. Companies should be allowed to either own the pipe or what flows through the pipe. Any attempts to own both need to be stopped and punished. The pipes must remain neutral so that small competitors can come up and disrupt and slay the big players once they get moribund.
> It's catastrophic. Companies should be allowed to either own the pipe or what flows through the pipe. Any attempts to own both need to be stopped and punished.
Not producing content doesn't magically make an ISP a neutral provider and I don't see how vertical integration (owning the pipe and some of what's going through it) gives ISPs more leverage than they already have.
For example, take an ISP that is just the pipe with no content production arm. That ISP could charge premiums to content providers to be put in a "fast lane" and then slow down the content of everyone else. This would be to the advantage of big players at the expense of small competitors, just like you say, and doesn't involve vertical integration in any way. AT&T doesn't need Time Warner to do this.
What's catastrophic is that we don't have net neutrality. There are plenty of good arguments against this merger, but preventing vertical integration doesn't get us any closer to net neutrality.
Not having a direct interest doesn’t guarantee they are neutral, true. That’s what net neutrality rules are for. But giving them interest in the content guarantees they _arent_ neutral, and will always have conflicting interests, regardless of regulation.
If there was regulation, it doesn’t matter if they have a conflict of interest, because it would be illegal to prefer their own traffic.
If there is no regulation, AT&T has the exact same incentive to abuse their market position to make more money whether or not they own Time Warner. Whether they own Time Warner or not, they can make more money by being a non-neutral provider. Will they suddenly have a greater interest in money after they acquire Time Warner?
The same is true for Google and Apple, who make hardware, the operating system running on the hardware, the software running on the operating system, and the app store on which the software is sold. They compete directly with the software makers on their platform. (And the market concentration in the mobile OS space is even higher than with ISPs. There is basically no choice left but iOS and Android.) Yet, the results in the mobile space have not been "catastrophic."
AT&T owns DirecTV and has a strong incentive to make it very expensive to stream things that aren't from DirectTV and very cheap to stream things that are.
I didn't find the exchange particularly extraordinary. The judge is expressing his opinion that he doesn't buy what Shapiro is selling. The judge will have already studied Shapiro's written arguments before the trial. During the oral arguments, the judge has a chance to clarify things from the written arguments. I haven't read the full transcript, but I imagine Leon didn't feel fully convinced by the written arguments, asked Shapiro to address some of his concerns, continued to feel unsatisfied and decided to move on. That's how it goes sometimes. Time is not unlimited and there are always too many things to cover.
At the very least, Shapiro's argument is complicated and novel (it has never been used as a part of an anti-trust case before). Tellingly, the Bloomberg article doesn't not even attempt to explain or summarize the economic theory. It's not like Leon is pigheadedly refusing to accept some widely accepted, basic economic principle.
If we are going to criticize the ruling, let's do so by discussing the substance of the judge's opinion, not courtroom banter.
Oral argument is usually just for clarifications/questions over the written briefs. Judge Leon likely later read the written briefs on his own time (that is his job, after all).
How is it that the executive branch is acting in a more principled and competent manner than the judicial, in this case?
I suppose it could be good for the economy and general welfare of the nation that the price of good TV will go up, if it means people will be watching less of it.
Decisions aren't assessed by page count. The comment I was responding to shows that the decision was based on an incomplete understanding of the complaint.
Such evaluations are useless as a training set because they inherit the biases of whoever wrote the evaluations. Of course, if fairness isn’t a desired property, feel free to carry on.
Does that really matter? Just because it isn't becoming an Internet monopoly, it's still a content+distribution mega-corp that can squeeze its competitors and limit options for consumers.
AT&T can, under the present legal regime, perfectly legitimately say, "Here's all this 'free' content for you. You'll have to subscribe to the 'Not Our Content' package to access those other services..."
But, sure. Let's run with your example: imagine you had an ISP who let you read Fox News for free, but charged you to visit CNN.
> On top of all that, with the end of NN, AT&T can preferentially shove TWX content in your face, and force you to pay extra to consume someone else's.
Will they though? I don’t recall such a thing happening prior to NN. It always seems that people’s fantasies about what can happen without NN are worse than what will (or did).
AT&T blocked FaceTime because they were afraid that thier crappy overburdened network couldn’t handle the load. [1]
But for some reason, they weren’t worried about other video chatting apps - for instance you could use Yahoo Messenger at the time. What competing app did AT&T have?
Great if you like the provider's content. Quite bad if you like any content not owned by one of the few Internet providers, who can't offer such freebies.
Everyone agrees we are moving towards a world of platforms. Each big platform holder will buy or ally with an isp and smaller content owners will pay 30% rev to use those platforms, just like today with google play store, app store, steam (for games), etc. thats reality, why be a luddite about it?
Monopolies on content don't really matter because media properties aren't fungible. It's not like you can shop around for the best Avengers movie or that Justice League is a substitute.
I agree with you about distribution but it's hard to argue that there aren't lots of competing distribution channels for content.
NB this is "Time Warner the media company", not Time Warner Cable (which is now Spectrum.) This isn't broadband consolidation but rather media/entertainment consolidation.
The deal is most closely comparable to Comcast's acquisition of NBCUniversal in 2011.
Which is what a lot of ex telecoms monopolies are doing as they cant really grow organically anymore another example is BT sport funny how Murdoch's press started bashing BT after they started competing with Sky
The acquisition target is 'Time Warner Inc.', primarily a television and film company, whose products and subvisions include HBO and Cinemax, the TV networks CNN, TBS, Turner Classic Movies, TNT, and various joint ventures with US sports leagues, and Warner Bros, which now includes DC Comics/DC Entertainment. Meanwhile, AT&T is largely a telecom and satellite broadcast company, which under its various subsidiaries offers bulk telecom interconnect, and satellite television, and is a wired and wireless ISP.
Therefore, this sounds more like vertical integration of an infrastructure-and-ISP company buying a media company in much the same vein as Comcast acquiring full ownership of NBCUniversal in 2013, or Verizon acquiring AOL -- which in 2001 bought Time Warner, then AOL got spun out in 2009 -- and Yahoo.
The part that bothers me about each of those acquisitions is that none of those utility companies are well-liked by their customers (instead being the most hated companies). The fact that they all have the ability to acquire these other large entities which aren't reviled shows that they really are scalping their customers. And it isn't just Comcast or AT&T or Verizon, it's all of them. That is highly irregular for them to all be so despised and successful.
Cognitive dissonance is interesting. For example, tech folks generally love Japan and Hong Kong's railroads. But those systems work so well because of the exact sort of vertical integration techies get apoplectic about when it comes to the Internet: https://www.mckinsey.com/industries/capital-projects-and-inf.... JR and MTR not only are private companies that own and operate the railroads, they own a ton of the land around the rail stations. They thus can capture value from both sides of a two-sided market--the customers going to a business near a rail station, and the business that benefits from having a rail station near it. That greatly increases incentive to invest in rail compared to a system where value can only be captured from the rider.
Interestingly, vertical integration also increases competition, as is the case in urban areas of Japan. If you can leverage your low-margin transit product to sell your high-margin real estate product, you have vastly more incentive to compete with other firms on the transit product.
Indeed, the vastly lower deployment costs enabled by 5G suggest an alternative vision of the future. We may end up with a system where you subscribe to "Google 5G" or "Facebook 5G" or even "Netflix 5G" service. It will be abhorrent to those who visualize a platonic model of infrastructure separated from content, but may in practice work a lot better than heavy government involvement in the infrastructure layer.
I think the analogy does not hold. The reason these railroads are so well developed is because they lead to land the operator owns. If I apply the analogy, ISPs will develop infrastructure only if it leads to content they own. In other words, they have a strong incentive to throttle access to others' content, which is not an option available to railroad operators.
Lots of trolly transportation systems were built in the US with the same model. Build a line out to the cheep farmland you own near a city/town, charge low fairs (not nearly enough to cover your capital costs and running costs), but now you can sell lots for housing at 10x or 20x the price you bought the land for. Once all the lots are sold, having the trolly pay for itself is difficult, especially after people can buy cars(hello model T) and not pay your monopoly trolly ride price. Almost all those trolly lines were shut down.
That's more an issue of trollies becoming obsolete--government-run trolly lines or purely private ones that did not own the surrounding land also did not survive.
That's a pretty simplistic conclusion that ignores one of the biggest technological and cultural life-altering inventions in human history: the automobile.
>Judge Leon limited how DOJ lawyers questioned certain witnesses and expressed visible skepticism of testimony by the government’s chief economic witness, who presented an empirical model that predicted the deal would lead to small but significant price increases in monthly cable bills. AT&T countered with its own academic economist who said it wouldn’t.
Yeah, I’m sure this won’t lead to _small_ price increases for consumers.
Judges are subject to many checks on their power. First, they only can rule on cases brought before their court, which requires two other parties to want a trial (including, in this case, the Justice Department). Also, unless they are in the Supreme Court, judges generally do not choose which cases they hear. Finally, and most significantly, they also are restricted by laws made by the legislature, precedent made by other judges and higher courts, the facts, juries (if the litigants wish to use them), principles of law, and appeals.
>Well, the judge has to base the decision on a whole bunch of laws. It's not like judges get to decide this on their own.
This is a weird opinion to hold when you take the fact that two judges can come to two completely separate conclusions on a single issue, while drawing from the same laws.
Judging is the act of applying law (general) to a particular case (specific). Since laws can't anticipate every future situation at their time of writing, no matter what there will _always_ be some disconnect between these two -- i.e. vagueness/generality in law, leading to edge cases.
Which is why two judges can come to two completely separate conclusions on a single issue, while drawing from the same laws, based on their own personal methods of interpretation and biases.
Judges in the lower circuits are also held accountable to higher circuit judges if they don't interpret the law while taking past case judgement into consideration.
A lower district judge can't overrule a higher judge's opinions.
'Activist judge' is indeed a term in the English language, but what does it have to do with this case? There are 'drunk airplane pilots', but does that make the pilot of the plane I'm going to board a suspect?
I think of it in an engineery sense - if the edge case is possible, it will happen.
Maybe that works for software engineering, where it's a good idea to pause a release in case someone uses scripts to send a shitload of bad requests to our API and crashes a server because of our bug or whatever, but I understand that that doesn't work 1:1 with the real world, where it doesn't make sense to not have the aviation industry until we perfect self-flying planes.
So, assuming all those eventualities, why shouldn't we just put you to death now?
To spare you the rhetorical exercise, the answer is because we don't punish you for the things you might do, but only punish you for a) the things that you have done, b) that we can prove, c) beyond a reasonable doubt, d) in a court of law, e) before a jury of your peers.
No, not at all. This is closer to what the parent was saying
By that argument, someone will:
* beat his wife - true
* murder an enemy - true
* shoot up a school full of children - true
* commit arson - true
* jump bail - true
* evade arrest - true
* die in a hail of bullets - true
You see, all these things do happen. The parent is not arguing that because something is possible any one individual will do it. You're arguing a very different thing.
I think we're getting a little sidetracked here. What the grandparent wanted to say was just that the corset of laws that binds a judge might not be as tight as you think; hence e.g. activist judges.
I think my point stands, which is that not every possibility is an eventuality, and we shouldn't assume that to be true without a willingness to accept a very bad panoply of preventative measures masquerading as corrective measures.
That said, whether or not an activist judge allows a presumptively lawful merger to occur is hardly a hill worth dying on. We have remedies for activist judges through an appeal process. Where an appeals process is not available after the merger, we have remedy for anti-competitive companies through regulatory influence, regulatory agency, rule of law, and a court system to back that up.
I think it would not necessarily be insane to envision a system which hands off non-obvious regulatory cases to the legislature, to amend the law such that this and future cases could be trivially decided.
For those who cut the cord, some things that may come out of this:
1. AT&T announced they were launching an entertainment only live streaming service for $15 (or free to AT&T subscribers) which will compete with Philo.
2. They will continue to give away free or cheap HBO to AT&T or DIRECTV NOW customers
3. Comcast will more aggressively bid for FOX which means either Disney or Comcast will become the majority stakeholder for Hulu
HBO is currently $5/mo for DirecTV Now customers, which is well below the regular price. Also FWIW, it was free for the first year to early subscribers of DirecTV Now.
Also have bad internet in LA. I grew up in North Dakota though, and back there my family is getting 1 gigabit internet for $100/mo from Midcontinent.
Absolutely bizarre and ridiculous that North Dakota, a state that has far less developed infrastructure than either coast, has better internet than Los Angeles.
Is it? I’ve got two fiber lines into my house in a Maryland county where most people are on septic and well. Unsurprisingly, Big California cities have Big California impediments to broadband deployment.
The biggest impediment is corrupt corporate capital not investing in their infrastructure. Some have taken government subsidies and threw elaborate parties and went on luxury cruises while not building anything. There's court cases about it, such as https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20151022/09232532594/fcc-h...
The companies take that money and do things like buy multi-billion dollar companies with it instead.
The market in this sense is free from competition, free to block municipal broadband (illegal in 20 states), free from the consequences of providing terrible service, free from the risk of losing customers, and free from the social obligations of providing a civic service.
It's classic profiteering, capital extraction, dodging responsibility, and engineering the marketplace that leads to California's and the US's subpar system.
And it stays that way because hoards of people either apologize for it or just refuse to see what it is regardless of the evidence, because they have a larger commitment to their ideas of how things are supposed to be then there reality of how things actually are.
Until people break their mythical love affair with the idea that there is no sustained abuse or corruption in a manufactured free market, we will forever be shackled by reading to address its glaring and obvious issues.
> The biggest impediment is corrupt corporate capital not investing in their infrastructure.
This is easily disprovable. Broadband providers invest tens of billions a year in infrastructure. The fastest cable or wireless connection available to you is probably 10x faster than it was a decade ago. By comparison, your Intel laptop is maybe 3-4 times faster, maybe less. That cost gobs of money--building cell towers, pushing fiber deeper into the cable network, reducing users per HFC node by a factor of 10, etc. This is all incredibly labor intensive and expensive; it's not just a matter of downloading "DOCSIS 3.1" onto some head ends and calling it a day.
> Some have taken government subsidies and threw elaborate parties and went on luxury cruises while not building anything.
Note also that the "government subsidies" are anything but. The article you link to is talking about Universal Service Fund money, which is actually taken from ISPs and given to other ISPs. It doesn't come out of general tax dollars.
> leads to California's and the US's subpar system.
According to Akamai, U.S. broadband is among the fastest in the world, faster than all the large EU countries: https://www.akamai.com/fr/fr/multimedia/documents/state-of-t.... We're in the top 10, right after Denmark, and ahead of the U.K., France, Germany, Spain, Italy, etc. (the countries comprising 70% of the EU population).
> And it stays that way because hoards of people either apologize for it or just refuse to see what it is regardless of the evidence
Exactly the opposite is true. The actual evidence shows that the 1996 deregulation has been a monumental success in terms of amount of money invested and actual broadband speeds achieved. Proponents of heavy regulation have to deny the actual evidence (dollars spent, speeds achieved) because it suggests a shocking result: even deregulation that resulted in much less competition than anticipated is still better than the prior, heavily-regulated system. (I'm writing this as my awesome government-funded train system is stuck between Annapolis and D.C. for no apparent reason.)
What's holding us back from being even better (and which is why I have fiber but much of Silicon Valley does not) is state & local broadband regulation. Red tape that makes it hard to string up fiber (or forces you to bury it, at much higher cost), hard to create an "minimal viable ISP," etc. When I lived in Baltimore, for example, Verizon wanted to come in and compete with Comcast. The city literally wouldn't let them do it, and pleaded with Google to come build Fiber instead. Which Google wouldn't do, because, quite reasonably, Google only builds Fiber in places where cities are willing to waive requirements municipalities uniformly require for other providers: https://crosscut.com/2014/12/google-fiber-never-come-seattle....
Your example is a 2011 instance of a citizen's group in a single CA city opposing AT&T's indiscriminate installation of unsightly 4-6 foot boxes on sidewalks and other public property? The group asked that they instead be installed on private property or underground.
And it's an issue that was also raised in other non-California cities, including places like NC, CT, IL, DC, etc. See your article, links from it, and [0].
Come on man, you know this does not support your initial assertion.
The SF battle was particularly protracted and terrible. But the point about "unsightly" boxes gets to the heart of the problem. Burying this infrastructure costs money, and tanks the economics of fiber deployment. If you don't believe that coming from "big evil AT&T," just look at Google: they categorically refused to build Fiber to cities that imposed those sorts of requirements: https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2012/09/how-kansas-city-....
Places like Louisville and Kansas City got Fiber and San Francisco or LA didn't because: 1) they didn't impose build out requirements (the obligation to pass all households regardless of neighborhood demand); 2) they didn't require burying utilities; 3) they fast-tracked permitting processes; 4) they permitted hanging rather than burying the fiber; and 5) they made space available for Fiber huts.
>But the point about "unsightly" boxes gets to the heart of the problem
The issue is hardly unique to "Big California cities" though, is it? Many localities across the country, including those I cited, have taken similar exception to fiber huts, "lawn refrigerators" and similar infrastructure components; so much so, that it's cliche by now. And, at it's core, it's the same old issue that has manifested in different ways since the phrase "property values" came into existence: everyone wants cell service, but no one wants a cell tower in their backyard.
You citing examples of cities that took a different approach is just the good-ol' association fallacy at its best. "Why, these places aren't California and look at what they did!"
But, it's funny that you mentioned Louisville and build-out requirements. Rather than imposing requirements, the city itself had a plan to expand fiber in an extremely cost-effective way (a third of the usual cost) and in a manner that would serve even lower income neighborhoods. Then, in stepped "tax-payer advocates" backed by the Koch brothers to block the plan, supposedly to protect taxpayers from such tyranny. [0]
The point is that broadband expansion has been an overwrought, complex fight that has impacted various municipalities across the country in different ways. Thus, it's disingenuous to suggest that broadband expansion challenges can be summed up as "Big California cities" and their "Big California impediments". In fact, it's so intellectually dishonest that it leaves a whiff of ideologizing lingering in the air.
> Big California cities have Big California impediments to broadband deployment
What is that exactly?
"First released in October 2013, and updated several times since, the DOCSIS 3.1 suite of specifications support capacities of up to 10 Gbit/s downstream and 1 Gbit/s upstream"
Both are fiber (gigabit pro is a 10-gig metro-e connection rate-limited to 2-gig at the switch). It's ironically easier to get it out here than in many places, because the county is easy-going about permitting and all the utilities are overhead.
What does that have to do with AT&T buying HBO, some cable channels and a movie studio? This is to compete with Netflix, not about providing broadband.
AT&T is supposed to provide a conduit between their customers and Netflix not compete with them! It's already catastrophic that ISPs have a monopoly in many markets, using that monopoly to compete with content providers leaves me furious.
I had forgotten of this until I read this article on the Atlantic, but there is an organization dedicated to breaking up the new form of monopolies like AT&T+Time Warner, Google, Amazon, Facebook, originally funded by Google, the Open Markets Institute
The courts seem to be letting telecoms consolidate to a degree that is unprecedented (Bell, at least, had a fairly narrow scope), because they think the internet means these companies have competition. I think they're severely under-estimating the power these companies have and the risk that these mergers create to both consumers and our democracy.
That or they don't care. I'd be very interested to know what kind of positions the friends & families of these judges hold related to the mergers they approve.
Can't we have a system where the bigger the merger, the more compelling the arguments for it should be?
Like a $10M merger should have 1 strong argument in favor of the consumer, a $100M merger should have 2 strong arguments, and a $100B merger should have 5 strong arguments in favor of the consumer (and I'm being forgiving by using a logarithmic scale here).
This is a distribution company -- internet, cable TV, satellite -- acquiring a content company (the communications portion of Time Warner was spun off as Spectrum). Isn't this just a vertical integration?
Definitely. There are a lot of valid debates you can have about whether or not this is a good thing, but it's very arguably the 'correct' decision in the sense of precedent, and as you are implying, the less surprising one.
Time Warner's cable business was spun off as Time Warner Cable, which Charter Communications later acquired. Charter's cable/internet/tv brand is Spectrum.
through the rise of original content production from Amazon and Netflix and the overall shift to internet delivery (including Youtube and Podcasts) I'd argue we're in a less concentrated situation today.
Yes and no. I agree 100% for podcasts. However, while Youtube and Netflix are encouraging more producers they retain veto power on their platforms. This is key.
In the case of Netflix, it's obvious they only host what they want on their platform. In the case of Youtube, they are increasingly banning videos.
This isn't my particular hobbyhorse issue, but it was the first result for "youtube ban political videos" and it has a huge constituency.
On a decentralized platform (i.e. the real web) this would be impossible or nearly so.
You might disagree with or laugh at the people losing money or literally being censored on one of the biggest public squares in the world, but it's not democratic and media consolidation will never ever result in something compatible with the free and open exchange of ideas.
Got some sharp legal minds at work in this discussion. Really digging into the relevant parts of vertical vs horizontal anti-trust enforcement in a free market for media and a regulated one for content delivery. I especially love the nuanced extrapolation into healthcare and social media. Super work, just super.
That's when it was originally published, it was just approved... and is still AT&Ts "go to" page for the information. Additionally, you can see their "applauding of the courts" here:
... and now excuse me while I try to figure out what the remaining horcruxes are so I can destroy them, and stop it (MA Bell) from coming back to power /s
Anything related to ATT is doomed. I've dealt with that company both professionally and personally and it's a mess. How it's managed to get this big and survive is beyond me. Their services are horrible, expensive, and you spend more time fixing their billing errors and getting a rep on the phone than you do anything else.
In the context of net neutrality ending, this looks like AT&T acquiring the means to exploit discriminatory traffic routing. It seems like there will be a gold rush of sorts, towards building walled gardens, segmenting the Internet into fiefs.
Does ending NN allow an ISP to completely block a website? I.e. to what extent does this also open up the door to overt political censorship?
Perfect time to rename the company to "usher in a new era of innovation". How about calling the new AT&T Bell? Because this merged company will be way worse an anticompetitive monopoly than the exploitative operator of the US switched phone network ever could have been.
It seems like every commercial actor wants to be the platform (add "value" as an integrator/provider), and avoid being abstracted out under the platform.
"Internet is just a dumb pipe"
"Why dont all PCs ship with just a vanilla Windows install" OR "Why don't all smartphones just install vanilla Android"
"The programmer is irrelevant"
"The OS is irrelevant"
"The browser used is irrelevant"
"Cable providers are irrelevant"
Neither of these companies really affects me as a non-American. But it feels like it just paves the way for mergers of companies that do.
I started thinking of international examples, which got me thinking about Google and Apple. Who in a way feel like they're post-colossal-merger companies already. And I mean... It kind of sucks but it's not nearly as awful as I feared it might look like.
The only good that can come of this all is that the Time Warner name will finally go away. (yes i know this is the media company vs. the cable company but this is the end of it!) the rest of the deal, is not so great.
edit: not vs.* but 2 different entities with similar names.
I want to give an unconventional view that supports this decision.
The two companies merging are walking into a trap.
Their size makes them an attractive target for nationalization. ATT started off as a private company. It’s size however lead to it being effectively taken over by the government. The resulting monopoly came to employ 1 million people at its height. Adjusted for population growth, that’s be like the entirety of all the military branches today.
Before anyone mentions anything about automation though, let me say, there are plenty of jobs. If any of you have had the pleasure of a company giving you a secretary, you know that many jobs that have supposedly been automated, we are just doing without.
Also as cyber security becomes more of a concern, none of these jobs can be outsourced. Can you imagine whatever company builds our 5G network having their NOC in say Costa Rica (assuming world relations continue to deteriorate), or customer support outsourcing to the Philippines?
I know my views are wrong in some areas, but
I hope they open a few new ways of viewing things.
"Also as cyber security becomes more of a concern, none of these jobs can be outsourced."
I wish you were correct, but this doesn't actually seem to be the case. You have people outsourcing directly, or going with MSSP that are themselves outsourcing. I'd say a good 70% of the customers I deal with in the space are in this boat, most of which are in Financials and High Tech (engineering) spaces.
So is anyone actually trying to write legislation to bar ISPs from co-owning content creation companies? Is there a basis for this? Or is there some other type of anti-media/connectivity consolidation on the horizon even as a thought experiment?
It's interesting that the Trump administration was eager to block this deal (Trump has made statements in favor of preventing this merger), while enthusiastically repealing net neutrality. Maybe expecting consistency here is reading too much into the tea leaves.
At the same time, AT&T stock is down in after hours trading. Does this mean that investors believe this merger will be bad for AT&T, or at least for short-term profits?
Maybe tomorrow's reaction will be different as the entire market will weigh in on the decision.
The fundamental philosophy at play here, I think - so far as there is one - is that government regulation cannot and should not be used to try and regulate away the negative effects of lack of competition, that instead it should ensure that a competitive marketplace exists and let the market take care of it.
If I recall correctly, there's an explanation of this position from Ajit Pai's FCC, which in particular references the NBC Universal-Comcast merger and explains why the FCC no longer wishes to allow such mergers.
It’s tough to be nimble with financial responsibility this large. It is not obvious to me that this is a good thing for the shareholders.
It’s for this reason that I’d rather see us focus on incentives for local ISP competition rather than regulatory burdens designed to keep elephants this large in check. Net neutrality has to be powerful enough to curb AT&T’s legal teams. Scrappy local ISPs aren’t going to have the same resources for responding to regulatory requests. It entrenches the big players.
I'm so glad the end of Net Neutrality has ushered in an era of unprecedented competition in the broadband market.
EDIT: Yes, this acquisition is of the content division of Time Warner, not the ISP, which was previously acquired — by another broadband provider, mooting my general point how, again?
As noted in other comments this is Time Warner the entertainment assets (not cable co). But it's equally bad at the end of Net Neutrality, as it gives AT&T direct motivation to interfere with competing services trying to offer entertainment over the internet to any customers who happen to get access via AT&T.
This has nothing to do with the broadband market. Time Warner Cable was spun off from Time Warner in 2009 and subsequently bought up by Spectrum in 2016.
It has plenty to do with the broadband market, if you happen to be an AT&T subscriber, and especially if they're your only choice. This, coupled with their no longer being restrained from the kinds of shenanigans that NN barred, positions them to force preferential choices on their subscribers and wring more money out of them for the privilege of accessing competing services.
This is only good for people holding T and TWX, and probably not even most of them.
I would certainly agree with that but your original comment was specifically about competition in the broadband market, which this deal has absolutely zero effect on and your post seemed to be based on the common misunderstanding of TWC still being part of TW.
That's one of my complaints when courts pretend to rule in favor of stock holders rights. In practice there is an inherent conflict of interest between management and the stockholders whose interests are diverse and barely represented.
Cable companies created regional monopolies with municipalities and used that protection to lay their lines. By the time the 1992 Cable Television Consumer Protection and Competition Act rolled around, they'd established natural monopolies based on that infrastructure and they have benefitted from that ever since.
They don't want to be "dumb pipes", but they also won't give access to those dumb pipes, ensuring that no one else can compete with them upstream. Seems they shouldn't be able to have it both ways, but here we are. So, the next-best-thing would be to assign protection through edicts like Net Neutrality and rigorous anti-trust policing.
Yet, these are now being dismantled as well. Not a good place we're heading.
Lenin wrote about the inevitability of monopoly in 1916. He would not have been surprised that the 1911 break up of Standard Oil would be undone in 1999 with the ExxonMobil, nor the slow reconsolidation of the Baby Bells, nor the other monopolies bringing us back to the gilded age.
Funny, at the same time he took money from the Warburg family to fund his revolution that killed millions, the Warburg family went on to be part ownership of Standard Oil during the same period.
Technology will help the citizenry destroy these evil megacorps. It's just a matter of time and some improvements in technology. The world where ABC/CBS/NBC/NYTimes/Time/etc could control what people think is over. In the near future we will have a much more educated populace. They will flex their power in ways that seem unimaginable now. When the information revolution finally arrives, these megacorps will be the first against the wall
Are you trying for irony? Given that this is just one of several recent cases where companies are locking down the technology that informs people - the technology you are counting on to take on these corps.
Most people do not care. They happily give up all privacy to FB and Google. The funny thing is everyone was worried about the world turning into a version of 1984 and it looks like Brave New World and F451 was more on target.
This is sadly my experience too. Both my parents are educators and life long learners.
It still floors me how many conversations they had with my younger siblings friends parents (I was present) were it more or less went. Friend parent makes baseless or incorrect assertion my history buff father retorted and they just said well I don’t care anyways.
This is nuts. This means there is now only one last-mile broadband provider in plenty of big markets. Milwaukee, for example, now no longer has any competition in the broadband space.
[2]: https://www.cbsnews.com/news/judge-rules-on-att-time-warner-...