What they do reflect is the critical position that the cable companies occupy as the principal pathways to the Internet in America — a fundamental role that makes them uniquely valuable as well as extremely vulnerable to regulation and political pressure. Oddly, the value of the cable companies’ landlines has been substantiated by the soaring auction prices being offered for the rights to airwaves used to feed data to smartphones, tablets — and gadgets and services yet to be invented.

First, consider the prices of Comcast and Time Warner Cable shares. Recall that the two companies announced their intention to merge almost a year ago, a combination that would create a colossus with unparalleled power, not only in cable TV but perhaps more significantly in the delivery of the Internet to the nation’s households. Appealing as that prospect initially seemed to many investors, the stock market has been signaling that the merger isn’t a slam-dunk. That’s because the prices of the two companies still aren’t converging as they would be if investors now believed that the two companies were virtually certain to become one.

The divergence could mean that market participants are convinced that regulators will block the merger on the grounds that it is essentially anticompetitive, or that they will impose onerous conditions, making the deal unattractive. While those concerns have been mounting, they are not new. As I’ve reported, market prices have been signaling for months that the deal is troubled.

Then consider that despite the merger’s evident problems, the share prices of both companies have actually risen since early November. That was when President Obama made a speech calling for much tighter regulation of cable and telecommunications companies because they dominate the most important infrastructure for content distribution and communications in the 21st century, a.k.a. the Internet.

You might have expected the opposite to have taken place, but, in essence, those increasing prices are saying that both Comcast and Time Warner Cable are more valuable today than they were before the Obama administration toughened its stance on regulation of Internet carriers — including big cable and telephone companies.