Comcast Merger

If they are able to maintain the loyalty of most of their current customers, the companies will then have a shared amount of about 100 million customers. This potential customer volume for the merging companies would greatly outnumber the customer volume of the industry leaders, AT&T and Verizon. This kind of turnout would create greater competition between the two merging companies and the two leading companies (Sprint Wireless News, 2014). Although the outcomes seem promising for Sprint and T-Mobile, there are also potential negative effects of a merger that the companies should take into consideration. Current Sprint and T-Mobile customers have expressed their fear of the possible merger for multiple reasons. The two biggest worries for telecommunication services consumers is the potential for rising costs and a reduction in provider options (John, 2016). In making a final decision, the companies, as well as the Federal Communications Commission, should weigh the advantages and disadvantages of a

Comcast’s acquisition of NBCUniversal has proved to be a great strength for the company’s operations. Comcast initially acquired a 51 percent stake of NBCUniversal in 2009. In addition to paying GE over $6.5 billion in cash, Comcast contributed about $7.25 billion worth of assets to the joint venture. Falling under its former business called Comcast Content, these assets included several regional sports networks, as well as popular cable channels such as E!, Versus, and the Golf Channel. In 2013, Comcast purchased the remaining 49 percent stake from General Electric for $16.7 billion. A separate deal also allowed Comcast to gain control of NBCU’s New York City headquarters at 30 Rockefeller Center, as well as CNBC’s headquarters in New Jersey (“How Comcast Stole,” 2013). Throughout the process of this large acquisition, Comcast prudently followed many regulatory conditions and promised that it would not abuse its power and position.

According to the theory of the 'invisible hand' of the marketplace, as advocated by Adam Smith, the marketplace naturally determines the optimal price of a good or service. But even Adam Smith viewed the development of monopolies with some trepidation and believed that government intervention was required to cease their proliferation. During the 1980s to the 1990s, it seemed fairly clear to most industry analysts that cable television functioned as a monopoly in a manner that was deleterious to consumers. Cable television had few competitors, except in the form of analog 'rabbit ears' which did not provide the full range of channels or quality that cable provided. In many areas, only a single cable company dominated the market and subscribers had few alternative options.

This merger was expected to be scrutinized by both the Department of Justice and the FCC. Many believed this merger would decrease competition and increase prices which will harm consumers, the Department of Justice agreed and so did the FCC. The Department of Justice believed if the two companies if combined would be in an extremely powerful position, providing high-capacity data services to almost half of American households and limiting the choice of those customers. Almost a year after the announcement the deal fell apart, Comcast decided to walk away from the 45.5 billion dollar deal. The attorney General at the time Eric Holder tipped his hat to companies like Netflix who raise concerns about such a merger.

The Australian competition and consumer commission commenced an inquiry looking into Telstra’s rural monopoly in September 2016(4). They concluded that giving service providers roaming capabilities off the Telstra network may have an adverse effect on price levels and there was no evidence that there would be a decrease in Telstra’s pricing through more competition. Currently rural and regional customers benefit from the high competition in metropolitan areas because the industry has consistent Australia wide pricing schedules for their consumer services (5).

This giant is still not satisfied with the profitable margin that it receives each year. Comcast merged with Time Warner Cable in 2005 to purchase the competition, Adelphia Communications. In purchasing the fifth largest cable company comes all of their subscribers making Comcast a colossal company. Now that it has majority control over the market, Comcast is selling the idea to the public that the services they will provide will benefit the consumer. The large cable company’s know that as a consumer we have no choice but to pay for the entertainment that they provide, which leaves the consumer with no choice at all.

Allowing ISPs the opportunity to favor their data or broadband with as desired would also enable smaller business owners or even start up entrepreneurs an unfair advantage to create a market or even properly launch the business due to the anti-competitiveness.

Our case study titled, The AT&T and McCaw merger negotiation, provides us with an opportunity to negotiate the terms of the merger between McCaw cellular and AT&T. McCaw was the largest competitor in the rapidly growing cellular telephone communications industry. AT&T was the dominant competitor in long-distance telephone communications in the United States, and one of the largest corporations. Prior to the negotiations, it had no position in cellular communications.

Internet/cable companies are a great example on an oligopoly, as there is little to no choice in choosing which company you can receive internet/cable service from and therefore can get away with cheating their customers. One specific corporation that comes to mind is Comcast. Due to my home's location, I can only receive internet service from three companies, Centurylink, Integra Telecom, and Comcast. Integra Telecom is a small insignificant company that has inferior service compared to Comcast and Centurylink. Centurylink is extremely expensive, and all three have equally horrible customer service. So I opted to purchase internet/cable service from Comcast due to their affordable package options and low promotional discounted rates. For the first five months of my service, I was denied the promotional price I signed up for and was overcharged with additional hidden fees. Each of those five months I had to call, wait on hold for over an hour and sometimes “accidentally” hung up on, before getting the issue resolved. Not surprisingly, an “unfair billing practices” class action lawsuit was eventually filed against Comcast for fraudulently misleading their customers with overcharges and hidden fees. (https://www.bigclassaction.com/lawsuit/comcast-unfair-billing-practices-class-action.php). The class-action lawsuit was later thrown out, but it served as a great example of an oligopoly that is continuously involved in white-collar crime with little to no

Comcast has to balance all of these factors in their macroenvironment while making their internal business decisions and deciding how to price their advertisement slots and subscription charges.

The House of Representatives has defeated a provision to require U.S. broadband providers to offer the same speed of service to competitors that's available to partners, a major defeat to a coalition of online companies and consumer groups.

Being direct competitors in the fields of television and film production, the recent proposal from Fox to buy Time Warner created concern between the spectators for the social and economic impact it would have in the industry. “Combining 21st Century Fox and Time Warner

Looking at the media giant that is Comcast, the first thing that often comes into mind is the realization of how massive and intricate of a corporation it is. Comcast, as a business, defines itself as a “global media and technology company with two primary businesses: Comcast Cable and NBCUniversal” (Comcast Corporation). In the industry, Comcast provides the most residential and business telephone, Internet, and video services nation wide (Reese and Anderson, "Comcast - Broadband Service”). Coupled with this, Comcast’s subsidiary, NBCUniversal is the producer of NBC and Telemundo networks, all Universal Motion Pictures (which totaled 26 films released since Comcast’s acquisition of its assets in 2013) (“Universal Pictures,” Internet Movie Database) and its theme park and resorts, and cable channels, including channels like the Golf Network and E!.

The company core competences are: for AOL is the Internet. For Time Warner is video broadcasting. Together, the best core competence could be communication. With the VRIO model we can analyze this core competence, Value: the firm can exploit the opportunity of the merger to mix their core competences, their capacity and resources to neutralize the threats. Rarity: is a problem because there is a lot of competition so the service is not rare. Imitability: same problem with the rarity a lot of companies are like AOLTW but the merger can be the leverage to differentiate the company. Organization: is the main issue of the merger Is the firm organized, ready, and able to exploit the resource/capability

In order to strengthen its position within the industry, the managers at Time Warner had to complement some of its usual generic strategy with a new strategy by using product differentiating. They need to provide customers with a service or product that will attract them to TW and away from the competition. There was a strategy within the strategy which, is why Time Warner took an only a minute stake in the Hulu company. This was because Hulu’s governance structure is unsteady and TW did not want to add to it by becoming an equal partner with the three other major