Elizabeth Warren Slams Comcast, Wants More Antitrust Enforcement You can add Senator (and possible VP contender) Elizabeth Warren to the list of people who don't really like the nation's biggest cable provider. Warren this week took sharp aim at Comcast in a speech calling for beefed up antitrust enforcement of anti-competitive behavior of giant conglomerates like Comcast NBC Universal. Her comments, given at a forum on entrenched monopolies, focused predominately on how mergers and acquisitions aren't really good for anybody other than giant companies like Comcast (she also singled out Google and Apple).

"Last year was Comcast’s best year in nearly a decade," the Massachusetts Democrat said in prepared remarks for her speech (pdf). "But while big telecom giants have been consuming each other, consumers have been left out in the cold — facing little or no choice in service providers and paying through the nose for cable and internet service." "Strong executive leadership could revive antitrust enforcement in this country and begin, once again, to fight back against dominant market power and overwhelming political power," Warren said in the Capitol Visitor Center. "But we need something else too — and that’s a revival of the movement that created the antitrust laws in the first place." And while the FCC has recently let a number of high-profile deals (like Charter's acquisition of Time Warner Cable and Bright House, or Altice's acquisition of Cablevision and Suddenlink), the Senator was quick to highlight that the conditions attached to the deals often don't mean much. "The other problem with relying on conditions to offset the impact of bad mergers is that regulators who didn’t have the political chops to block the deal in the first place are very unlikely to force the companies to break up after the fact, even if the companies blow off the conditions," Warren said. "Even when companies meet conditions, like selling off some assets, they sometimes just turn around and buy back the same assets they originally sold off," she added. As we've noted previously, conditions attached to many mergers are often just volunteered by the companies themselves. Even in those instances (as with Comcast's acquisition of NBC), the companies often laugh off the conditions. Other times, telecom operators make promises to regulators that have no basis in reality, like AT&T's fiber deployment pledges tied to its recent DirecTV acquisition. If you're a regular reader, you're also pretty familiar by now with how most of the promises given before a merger tend to never actually materialize. Altice's acquisition of Suddenlink, for example, is already resulting in a loss of jobs and a shuttering of Cable's "Freewheel" Wi-Fi calling service. Charter's acquisition of Time Warner Cable and Bright House has already resulted in a freeze of broadband upgrades (for now) and the shuttering of Time Warner Cable's home security service.







News Jump California Defends Its Net Neutrality Law; AT&T's Traffic Up 20% Despite Data Traffic Actually Being Down; + more news Are The Comcast-Charter X1 Talks Dead In The Water?; AT&T May Offer Phone Plans With Ads For Discounts; + more news Europe's Top Court: Net Neutrality Rules Bar Zero Rating; ViacomCBS To Rebrand CBS All Access As Paramount+; + more news Verizon To Buy Reseller TracFone For $7B; 5G Not The Competitive Threat To Cable Many Thought It Would Be; + more news MS.Wants Records From AT&T On $300M Project; Google Fiber Outages In Austin, Houston, Other Texan Cities; + more news States With The Biggest Decreases In Speed; AT&T Hopes You'll Forget Its Fight Against Accurate Maps; + more news AT&T's CEO Has A Familiar $olution To US Broadband Woes; EarthLink Files Suit Against Charter; + more news 5G Doesn't Live Up To Hype, AT&T's 5G Slower Than Its 4G; Cord-Cutting Now In 37% of Broadband Households; + more news FCC Cited False Broadband Data Despite Warnings; ZTE, Huawei Replacement Cost Is $1.87B, But Only $1B Allocated; + more Cogeco Rejects Altice USA's Atlantic Broadband Bid; AT&T Is Astroturfing The FCC In Support Of Trump Attack; + more news ---------------------- this week last week most discussed

Most recommended from 105 comments



Zenit

The system is the solution

Premium Member

join:2012-05-07

Purcellville, VA 20 recommendations Zenit Premium Member Silly Elizabeth Elizabeth Warren is now a Hillary disciple. Hillary is literally "Comcast for President" - she is 100% in Comcast's pocket. It is a FACT that Comcast has donated large sums of money into her campaign.



She is right about the regional monopoly problem, and how antitrust has been under-used in recent years. Yet she becomes buddy-buddy with someone whom is 100% establishment. Explain to me how she makes any sense, when her actions contradict themselves.



Politicians everyone. All talk, zero action, unless the action means getting political dollars from some big conglomerate. They all talk a great game.

DaveDude

No Fear

join:1999-09-01

New Jersey 18 recommendations DaveDude Member break it up Comcast should be broken up .



1. East Coast and west coast.

2. NBC Universal must become separate unit.

3. Must have a wire line competitor (att/ googlle, etc) in its Territory.



Also



They should not charge for customer service issues. Cablecards should be free, and not - chargable.

tshirt

Premium Member

join:2004-07-11

Snohomish, WA 5 recommendations tshirt Premium Member Positioning for first term AG but she's more valuable in the senate, perhaps even Majority Leader, at some point.



as the GOP death spiral begins to flatten out

P Ness

You'Ve Forgotten 9-11 Already

Premium Member

join:2001-08-29

way way out 4 recommendations P Ness Premium Member The real problem is collusion in the market place. Secret wink wink, we won't compete against you, and you won't compete against us. tegelad

join:2002-09-18

Whitesboro, TX 4 recommendations tegelad Member Instead of divestiture ... lets take a play from the financial playbook All the primary providers cable and wireline should be left alone as is; however, they should be forced to expand to cover all user markets and not be allowed to cherry pick. Only once there are three unique broadband providers that offer FCC regulated speed, uncapped, and without poor QoS in each area, will they be able to cherry pick. If they want to do it via 5G, sure, but realize that they need to offer the equivalent access three (3) UHD streams concurrently running to each household without degradation (think in line with ABC, CBS, NBC ... or Ford, Chyrsler, GM) ... and if there are "caps" based on usage, it should be equivalent to running at FCC mandated minimums for 24x7 for one of those UHD streams ... Conversely, they should also treat it like gas mileage per gallon .... only when the entire zipcode average bandwidth is about 25Mbps could they say they are compliant



It could be handled in the same way it is in Europe with the wireless carriers. If you buy a license you are required to cover 99.99% of all and mass and people, and not in some wierd I can get to one person in a zipcode.



My point is ... they are too big to fail, and should be forced to cover the people in the country in a similar way. mxyztplk

join:2003-07-24

San Jose, CA 3 recommendations mxyztplk Member Princess Leans-Left-With-A-Fist vs. the Blob Certainly, unresponsive oligopolies, such as Comcast, are very hateful indeed.



On the other hand, demagogues within government who usually wind up wasting our money while harming our economy and depriving us of our liberties are very hateful as well.



Which is more hateful? Decisions, decisions...

HaloFans

join:2006-12-18 2 recommendations HaloFans Member Conflict of Interests Login to Comcast, and you are sometimes greeted with this picture in the background.