Comcast and Time Warner Cable Merger is Officially Dead

[dgstorm]

A few days ago we shared that Comcast was frantically grasping at straws to try and save their Time Warner Cable merger from the wise skepticism of government regulators. US consumers can breath a sigh of relief now. The Comcast and Time Warner Cable merger has been officially cancelled. Comcast's $45.2 billion bid for Time Warner Cable came to an abrupt end this morning when both companies announced they would drop the deal in the face of opposition from regulators.

This deal incidentally kills off a few other areas of consolidation in the cable industry. The most notable example is a transaction with Charter Communications Inc. aimed to smoothing the way for regulatory approval was also scrapped. Additionally, Charter's bid for Bright House Networks, announced in March, could also be ended.

Despite this, it actually leaves the table open for other mergers within the industry to push forward. It's also possible that Charter will now renew their failed bid to buyout Time Warner Cable. Here's a quote with a few more details,

"Other cable deals that don't involve Comcast might be allowed to go through," McDowell said. There "seems to be an antipathy towards Comcast at the FCC" because the agency thinks Comcast didn't stick to the conditions of its acquisition of NBCUniversal, he said.

A combined Charter and Time Warner Cable would have had 15 million video customers and 16.5 million Internet customers. That's still smaller than Comcast alone, which has 22.4 million video subscribers and 22 million Internet customers.

Ultimately, the cable industry is still a bunch of bigger sharks gobbling up smaller ones. Still, consumers are arguably lucky the two Megalodons didn't team-up to dominate the ocean.

Source: Yahoo

 

[thunderbolt_nick]

Additionally, Charter's bid for Bright House Networks, announced in March, could also be ended.

That's interesting. I thought that was already set in stone! Being in Florida, it's either BH or Comcast and you choose the lesser of two evils. Of course, I can't complain. The only thing BH ever did to me one time was throttle me for no reason, but they immediately fixed it and apologized. I've had no dealings with Charter so I have no idea how this would affect BH in our area.

 

[cybertec69]

Did they seriously think this merger was going to pass, this just goes to show you these monopolies have their heads stuck deep inside their rear ends, they are just not in touch with the real world.