The FCC Stops Time Regarding Time Warner

There was a period in my “Bell Head” life when I was friendly with the folks in charge of “Coin”, which is what a normal person would call payphones.  For the next generation, a payphone was a precursor to “Square” except all you could do were make phone calls with metal money.

Anyway, the regulators would cite us for violations based on the competitor’s complaints, but when we would go out to the field, we would see the competitor’s phones next to ours with more code violations.   The point was that it was clear the regulators were turning a blind eye to the competition, because they wanted more competition.  I will avoid the Ayn Rand opportunity to say ... and look at it now, since cellular killed the need for payphones.

However, I am finding it interesting that the FCC has stopped the clock on the Comcast / Time Warner merger.

This thing is well underway with other cable operators getting ready to own new MSO territories based on previous discussions with the FCC.

So what has changed?

The answer is the political pressure, and it probably points out the Comcast is now at the point where it is no longer able to think of itself as one of the gang.  Friends refer to the cable industry as Comcast and the seven dwarfs and with this merger, Comcast is probably going to be in a realm of its own.  When you combine the MSO of Time Warner and Comcast you get a vision of a company that in relation to others is huge, but in telco reality is probably smaller than the top five cellular operators.

In fact Netflix and Comcast have about the same user base.  

So the question that should be asked is, what criteria should mergers and acquisitions be based on?  Is there one industry of media and one of telecom?  Should it all be considered “the Internet?”  As Wi-Fi continues to expand its abilities, should we look to have it compete with LTE?

As the forces gather to block the merger, I think the plurality of voices will throw all these questions into the mix for the FCC to consider.

However, for me it comes down to, what does the FCC want competition to look like when they turn the PSTN off in 2018?

I think a larger Comcast is part of the answer.