Posted on 02/13/2014 2:48:31 PM PST by lbryce
Earlier today, Comcast Cable announced that it agreed to acquire Time Warner Cable in a $45 billion mega-deal.
What's in it for Comcast Cable shareholders?
"This combination creates a company that delivers maximum value for our shareholders," said Comcast CEO Brian Roberts.
How are they going to do that?
The company explains in one sentence that probably has every Comcast and Time Warner Cable employee nervous.
"The transaction will generate approximately $1.5 billion in operating efficiencies and will be accretive to Comcast’s free cash flow per share while preserving balance sheet strength."
"Operating efficiencies" usually means the closing and combining offices, which also often comes with job cuts.
For now, management is doing and saying what they can to keep everyone calm.
(Excerpt) Read more at businessinsider.com ...
Some how the Dems/Unions/Libs will blame it on Rush Limbaugh.
My comcast internet dominates. Im on their blast program and I get 53Mbps down and 12 up. That is insanely fast, damn near business class. My WAN Address hasnt changed in two years either, despite it technically being on DHCP.
As far as the caps go, there is a 300 gig cap but it is not enforced in Texas. With netflix running daily, we use about 200gigs a month.
BTW, comcast routers are total garbage. Same with their modems. Purchase your own and save money. Most of the shows I watch come on Fox so I record them through my tuner in Mediacenter and dump them on the server for later watching. Windows media streaming also works over the net so I can watch everything on my server from any windows computer.
A little tip for comcast users having outages. Record them and call customer service every time it goes out. While we havent had many outages, I have a year free of premium channels due to outages. Some routers can even track and record WAN outages.
One of my sisters has cable TV and Internet with Time Warner Cable.
Almost four years ago I set up the Firefox browser and the Thunderbird client Email app on her PC (TBird, so she could do her Email in and out of Tbird via POP or IMAP instead of and without ever going to the Email web pages).
Sometime between Thanksgiving and Christmas Tbird quit working, though not a single change had recently happened with or on her PC.
After some investigation, I learned (found some complaint blogs that referenced the situation) that TWC had been migrating a lot of their Email servers, and totally ignoring any customers who were using Email POP/IMAP client apps like Tbird, they notified no one that some server nameas and addresses had changed, which meant some customers “account settings” in their desk top Email program no longer had all the right information.
It turned out that the total migration of the Email servers had started before it affected my sister’s Email and continued after that, with no warnings or notification to any customers like her.
After the 1st of the year I finally got a human being at TWC to discuss the issue, and I got some information from that person (what they said was the right settings). They were different than the settings we had used on my sisters PC (which we got back them from TWC) that had been working since we installed Tbird and up till B4 Thanksgiving 2013.
But, not only was there not any admission that anything had changed, she INSISTED that nothing had changed, that the settings she gave me had always been those she was giving me. Of course if that had been true then those would have always been the settings we had for their Email service on my sisters PC - which is not true, and there never would have been any cause for us to contact them about any problem. Her answer which she kept repeating was that she “did not know where you got your information from”.
I have Verizon - TV/Phone/Internet, but I am no giant Verizon fan, but I have never got any really bad support from them. It has always been competent and honest whenever I needed it.
Once you're established and big enough, you have incentive to disincentivize entry into your field — this is often accomplished via regulatory/licensing schemes.
(This is the essence of crony capitalism.)
Cool! We just bought a Roku 3. Mr S LOVES,LOVES,LOVES it!
We had Time Warner years and years ago before Comcast bought them out in our area. They were fine in our area. Then when Comcast came in we went to Direct TV. Direct TV keeps adding costs a little at a time and it’s just gotten too expensive for the few channels that we do watch so we got rid of them and got an antenna. Now have 67 FREE channels, 57 in Spanish, one in Chinese, one in Japanese, 4 in English and the rest are religious. Until we can get a Roku set up going I put a note on my wall which says “Just think about all the money you are saving!”.
Where I live here in Michigan, there is only ONE Comcast office within at least a 20 mile radius........
All they’re doing is bringing their monopoly out in the open. Where are the politicians? Where are the states attorneys general? Bottom line is if you want cable, and that usually means internet, too, there’s only one place to buy it.
This will now help get a lot of people out of “job lock”.
Yep. My service went out 2 weeks ago and a truck was in the neighborhood within the hour.
Live Customer service was on the phone in 2 minutes.
We love Roku and are thrilled to have cut loose of the Cable Mafia.
I have had both dishnetwork and directTV in the past and both have had issues during weather events or thereafter. At this point I only use the cable for broadband so I pay for only that ala carte. Still too expensive at ~$60/month but no other choice than TW in my area for the bandwidth...so not looking forward to the price hike. Seriously considering running a T line of my own into the neighborhood and charging for access.
What sort of bandwidth speed do you need to have to use ROKU service?? Is 12 mbps enough??
Is 12 mbps enough?? definately.
BTW Chromcast is a less expensive alternative to Roku.
Google just released a developer kit so more apps will be coming.
I’m not sure I want Google tracking my TV surfing, even if it is cheaper.
(Yeah, I recognize they all do it, but I don’t use Google for searching unless I can’t get what I need with another search engine.)
Thanks, BTW.
12 mbps?? Dude, I have 6 mbps and that gives me more than enough speed. It's much better if you hard-wire Roku. I'm not a fan of Wi-Fi, and besides I live in an efficiency apt.
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