Comcast - NBC U Merger, Need To Be Guarded By Proper Conditions

Comcast - NBC U Merger http://snapvoip.blogspot.com/
Even though they have even aligned with the Tea-Party,they are not in it for public interest notes scrippsnews;

By opting for corporate control of the Internet rather than government regulation, Tea Party activists may be acting against their own best interests, say people knowledgeable about the fight.
Last month, many of the groups represented at Glenn Beck's rally at the Lincoln Memorial, including Tea Party activists and Americans for Prosperity members, wrote to the Federal Communications Commission asking it to abandon attempts to regulate the Internet.

GigaOm has a nice article on the subject as well.

"The Comcast/NBCU merger is aimed right at competition — avoiding any series of steps that might result in having dumb (but big) pipes serving the areas where Comcast now has dominion, and avoiding having Comcast’s pipe itself made dumb. If the merger goes through as Comcast proposes, the new NBCU will have the power in Comcast’s market areas (where it routinely has a 60 percent-plus share of local pay-TV customers) to raise other pay-TV providers’ (satellite, small cable, telephone, nascent online distributors) costs of doing business substantially.

Imagine a big pipe coming into everyone’s house in a given market area controlled by one actor. Now imagine that you want to aim an online business – particularly an online video business – at that area. You’ll be subject to the whims of the carrier, and there will be no countervailing force to protect your ability to reach your customers. Maybe a small portion of that pipe will be reserved for traditional Internet access, but maybe not, and what’s reserved won’t be very fast or very standardized. Comcast wants to build a moat around its business so that it can avoid being treated like a commodity transport provider, and the addition of NBCU content will make it far easier for Comcast to make this possible."

If not regulated with conditions properly, Comcast-NBCU's post-merger market share and pricing power certainly will let COMCAST/NBCU decide what people can view, What the quality is, how fast the pipe that serve it and lastly but not least how that market need to pay for the privilege.
Guarantee of a competitive and fair market for Internet and cable television content could only be achieved by placing proper conditions on the merger.
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