Time Warner Cable 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

As previously mentioned, the acquisition of AT&T and DirecTV was recently approved by the boards of both companies. The deal implied that the AT&T would have to pay the shareholders of DirecTV $95 per share as well as the company’s debt that would make the total transaction value to amount to $67.1 billion. The acquisition or merger between these two companies was fueled by various factors that were geared towards creating one company that will be strategically positioned to accomplish significant incremental growth. The growth would be achieved through providing customers competitive and innovative services

In Derek Thompson’s article “Prisoners of Cable” (Thompson, 2012), Thompson wrote why consumers in the US were the prisoners of the cable bundle. In this essay, I will provide a brief analysis of the article written by Derek Thomson and discuss about how the proposed merger of Comcast and Time Warner Cable and AT&T and Time Warner apply.

Comcast CEO Brian L. Roberts described the deal as a "perfect fit" for the company, as Comcast would be able to bolster its role as a creator and distributor of content, with a particular emphasis on " multiplatform anytime, anywhere media that American consumers are demanding"; increasing access to NBC-owned content through various platforms. The deal would also add Comcast's own cable channels to NBCU's existing suite of cable networks, contributing to 82% of the merged company's total revenue. Despite the focus

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.

Mergers. Acquisitions. Mega-mergers. Recent years in healthcare have witnessed some of the biggest companies acquiring one another at alarming rates. However, the Wall Street Journal released an article at the end of October that has everyone talking - one of the largest owners of drugstores in the United States is considering buying one of the largest health insurers in the United States. That is right, CVS Health might be purchasing Aetna for approximately $66 billion.

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.

Threats from outside of the company have forced Comcast to start evaluating what they need to do to adapt, change and grow their company in the future. Comcast now has increased

Since AT&T would be able to lower prices this would take out the “mom and pop shop” since they won’t have the same capital that AT&T has had which would cause them to go out of business creating an unfair monetary advantage which would ultimately affect us the consumer. Thus, AT&T would be beating out most of its competition. Since there is no competition they would then be able to control the price we pay for media content or company providers. The consumer would then have a higher price to pay for internet, as well as television services while giving the control over the whole industry to AT&T. If AT&T Cable is allowed to acquire with the company Time Warner Cable this would cause a type of partnership which would be catastrophic for the industry since currently there is millions of customers which currently use the provider Time Warner Cable for internet and cable needs.

From 1984 until 1996 AT&T was an integrated telecommunications services and equipment company, succeeding in a newly competitive environment. In 1995 On September 20, AT&T announces that it is restructuring into three separate companies: a services company, retaining the AT&T name; a products and systems company (later named Lucent Technologies) and a computer company (which reassumed the NCR name). Lucent is spun off in October 1996, and NCR in December, 1996. Three years later AT&T announces general availability of its local residential telephone service in New York with a bundled plan called "AT&T Local One Rate New York." This is AT&T's first general reentry into the consumer local telephone business since the breakup of the Bell System. It occurs under the provisions of the Telecommunications Act of 1996. The Telecommunications Act triggered dramatic changes in the competitive landscape. SBC Communications Inc. established itself as a global communications provider by acquiring Pacific Telesis Group (1997), Southern New England Telecommunications (1998) and Ameritech Corp. (1999). In 2005, SBC Communications Inc. acquired AT&T Corp., creating the new AT&T. With the merger of AT&T and BellSouth in 2006, and the consolidated ownership of Cingular Wireless and YELLOWPAGES.COM, AT&T is positioned to lead our industry in one of its most significant transformations since the first

"A Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll confirms that as the audience splinters, television's powerful grip on the nation's collective psyche is weakening," reported The Journal on June 27, 1997. "To a large extent, the network's loss has been cable TV's gain -- although some established cable channels are losing viewers, too."

Kathryn, you make an interesting point that some mergers of technology companies fail due to incompatible systems, and clearly the AOL and Time Warner merger is an excellent example, but I believe the problem extends well beyond the these types of companies (Bradt, 2015). One of the key take-aways from that disastrous experiment was that in order to meet proposed synergies, organizations must become fully integrated. This level of integration involves IT and requires that IT management be “at the table” during key decision points.

According to a press release published by AT&T, the deal will combine "Time Warner's vast library of content and ability to create premium new content that connects with audiences around the world, with AT&T's extensive customer relationships, world's largest pay TV subscriber base and leading scale in TV, mobile and broadband distribution."

Share holders suffered even more, as stock prices plummeted from the time the merger was first announced. A major part of the failure of this merger was the fact that developing a “learning culture” was never considered, and no strategic vision was created for the newly merged organizations. For example Time Warner Cable’s high speed Internet services, Road Runner, as part of its profitable cable operations was never integrated with AOL as Case explained in his 2005 article in the Washington Post (6/ 11/05: B01). The first AOL Time Warner Annual Report (2000) claimed that it was fostering “… a nimble, entrepreneurial culture that recognizes that it can only succeed if everyone supports the new organization based on a shared set of values and common goals.” Unfortunately, the team-work necessary to integrate the two companies never happened, because there was no shared strategic vision of what the merger should be, and where it would be going. Merger Failure and the Need for a Culture of Learning According to some estimates, 85% of merger failures are related to the mismanagement of cultural issues. Awareness of cultural differences is then seen as an issue of primary concern when organizations merge. According to Miller (2000:8): “Once you develop an understanding of the current culture, and have compared that with the goals of the merged

Time Warner is also taking part in joint ventures which bring it more opportunities to advertise and sell its products. For example, in 1993 Time Warner and US West worked together to improve U.S. cable systems to an interactive fiber-optic data highway that could lead to such direct services to the home as music on demand and video on demand. This deal was based on U.S. West investing $2.5 billion in Time Warner Inc. which gave them a big stake (25.5%)in