Questions for Comcast as It Looks to Grow

[Commentary] It is hard to say how rugged the questions will be when Comcast goes before the Senate Judiciary Committee to defend its proposed megamerger with Time Warner Cable.

We do know that Comcast is feeling pretty confident about its chances. In a recent interview with C-Span, David Cohen, an executive vice president at Comcast and the man who will represent the company, said, “ I have been struck by the absence of rational, knowledgeable voices in this space coming out in opposition or even raising serious questions about the transaction.” Really? How can the largest cable company in the country bid to buy the second-largest and gain control over 19 of the country’s top 20 markets -- corralling a 30 percent market share in cable and a 40 percent share in broadband -- and there be no serious questions? Well, I’ll chime in:

1. Is the merger good for the American consumer?
2. Why isn’t there more competition in the cable business?
3. Should one company own a lot of the pipes and much of what goes through them?
4. Is the cable merger about cable? Cable is a declining legacy business, shrinking even as the merger works its way through the regulatory process. “We want to be a tech company, not a wire company,” Roberts told my colleague James Stewart. In that context, the fact that Comcast is willing to divest about three million cable customers to remain below the threshold of 30 million is far less important than the fact that post-merger, it will own 40 percent of the high-speed broadband in the country.
5. Is the deal really good for innovation?
6. Will a bigger Comcast allow other broadband options to flourish? In 20 states, there are significant obstacles and in some cases, outright prohibitions, for municipal broadband efforts and much of that was engineered by the cable industry. In Colorado, North Carolina and elsewhere, well-funded lobbying efforts and public information campaigns supported by companies like Comcast and Time Warner Cable have fought back homegrown alternatives for cheap, reliable broadband.