As you probably know Comcast is trying desperately to buy Time Warner Cable. In Comcast’s world this is a deal from heaven. To customers, not so much.
Both companies are prime examples of what happens when you let a company dominate a market with nearly no competition. As TheVerge.com so succinctly said in its December 30, 2014 headline,
Time Warner Cable and Comcast rank as worst companies for customer satisfaction
All of this exists because cable companies were originally granted one-to-a-market licenses. Over time the bigger companies swallowed the smaller ones. Dozens of little local operators became tiny pieces of the cable behemoths. Each city and town received less and less personal attention.
With no, or little, competition these companies look upon customer satisfaction as a cost with little upside. After all, where were there customers going to go?
Now it looks like the FCC is going to put its foot down. Re/Code.com, among others, is reporting:
Report Suggests FCC About to Kill Comcast’s Time Warner Cable Deal
Imagine how bad you have to be to not get what Comcast expected would be a rubber stamp!
I saw the first signs of this being a bad deal when, early on, Comcast Executive VP David Cohen said they’re,
“not promising that customer bills are going to go down or even increase less rapidly.”
That’s among the most ballsy pre-merger statements I’ve ever heard. They really expected this to be a cakewalk.
I will not cry when this deal officially tanks. There are other industries needing some of this new found tough love from the federal government. It’s long overdue.