Only 30% of Americans Out of Comcast Reach After Deal | Hacker News Reader

Only 30% of Americans Out of Comcast Reach After Deal

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62 pointssharkweek96 comments

Awesome. So glad that deregulation works to open the free market. I mean, if you don't like it the. You can just get service from another provider, right? What's that, you say? There aren't any other viable providers in my market? Go on. Oh my. You mean, my local municipality has a binding, perpetual contract with Comcast. That doesn't feel very free or open.

There is nothing free about the market for cable & internet access in the US.

Nothing free about any market, since the bounds of said market is inevitably dictated by whatever social coordination mechanisms are available (the most wide-spread being some form of government).

If you can make something of your own volition without any violent coercion, and I can voluntarily exchange with you for it, then that is a pretty free transaction.

I guess that means there aren't any free markets, since you are at least being violently taxed, and are probably violently forced to comply with regulation unless your implicit production process doesn't violate any such laws, which is unlikely.

Taxes aren't violence, they're dues for engaging in the external economy.

No anarchist here, but try not paying your taxes for long enough and the violence will come.

If you try to walk into a baseball game or a movie without paying, it's called theft. If you try to participate in the economy without paying your dues, likewise it's theft and you will suffer the punishment.

Taxes have very little to do with the economy.

They're the gradient in the system that drives economic activity. If you must acquire a particular currency to pay taxes to avoid jail, then you will offer your output in that currency.

That's a tiny fraction of the tax you pay.

There are kinds of taxes that don't have penalties for non-payment?

So, we are in agreement then? Taxes are enforced with violence.

Being enforced with violence and being violence aren't quite the same thing.

There is a clear owner of a ballpark or a movie theater. Nobody owns the economy in a similar way (not even the government), so your analogy doesn't hold up.

The economy is owned by its participants.

An economy is not a scarce resource, which means it cannot be owned in any meaningful way. An economy is an abstract concept referring (roughly) to a collection of actors that exchange goods in some geographic location.

This points to weaknesses in the concept of ownership.

Not at all. Ownership as a concept is useful specifically for non-violent resolution of conflict over scarce resources. If something is neither scarce nor a resource, then some other construct needs to be used. (For example, in intellectual property law, the term "copyright infringement" is used instead of theft.)

> Ownership as a concept is useful specifically for non-violent resolution of conflict over scarce resources.

But you outlined precisely when it breaks down: when 'ownership' cannot be determined because the thing in question is a communal resource.

The economy is not a communal resource. It's an abstract concept referring to a collection of actors exchanging goods in a geographic region.

It's not the concept of ownership that breaks down; it's your analogy that breaks down.

The money system is provided by the government. It is not abstract, is a very real arrangement of actors and conventions.

You didn't say money system. You said economy. Currency is certainly a scarce resource.

No, real resources are scarce. Money is anything but -- it is issued by fiat.

That's an obtuse remark. Money is a tangible object. That people give money value based on whatever reason is not relevant to whether it's scarce or not.

> Money is a tangible object

Money is an entry in a ledger. It can or cannot have a tangible manifestation (coins, bills), but it is not always the case (reserves are purely electronic).

Violent coercion is one of the most basic sorts of free action common to all animals. Why arbitrarily take it off the table?

"You mean, my local municipality has a binding, perpetual contract with Comcast"

I don't disagree with your sentiment, but just to note:

Municipalities can't have exclusive franchise agreements anymore (since 1992).

They can and do have franchise agreements where one provider gets the vast majority of the region, leaving only the less desirable scraps for someone else.

As an example, see the cable franchise map link (in bold) here https://www.seattle.gov/cable/franchises.htm --thankfully it's not a perpetual contract.

>my local municipality has a binding, perpetual contract with Comcast. That doesn't feel very free or open.

Think about those sentences compared to your second sentence.

>So glad that deregulation works to open the free market.

You set up a strawman about the free market in the beginning and then contradict it at the end. The reason it doesn't feel free is because by definition, it isn't.

It's entirely possible for the same situation to happen in a free market, and it does in some states. Replace "municipality" with "private corporation that owns the common areas of the subdivision" (sometimes called "homeowners' associations" or similar names). As long as there's a landowner that owns land that's necessary to transit to run cable to a neighborhood, they can reach exclusive deals with providers, because you can't dig up stuff without permission of the landowner. And having lived in both "traditional municipalities" and the new private-style non-municipalities in Texas, it's not clear to me the latter result in markets that are freer in any meaningful sense: in both cases the only real freedom you have against the organization is to either try to change their policies through internal democracy (municipal elections, board elections, etc.), or "vote with your feet" and move to a different organization's territory.

Our HOA fees cover providing internet access for every resident. I've found the end-user "tech support" to be totally incompetent. (A call back 3 DAYS after I submitting traceroutes showing my traffic was stuck in a routing loop in their network, wherein the "tech support professional" asked me to try rebooting my computer before even asking me if I was still having issues. I hung up mid-script.)

However, when we had consistent outages and horrible service, I eventually gathered enough evidence to give to the HOA of what the problem was, and when the HOA contacted the ISP, they looped me into an email chain with their account rep and we got immediate service. If we all had to choose Comcast or ATT individually, neither would really care about individuals. But the HOA is in a much larger bargaining position and our ISP cares about losing the whole building.

From my experience and friends in the area, those in condo buildings with the exclusive ISP arrangement tend to get better/faster service than those in condos with the standard cable/telco choice. Since condo buildings are managed by the residents who mostly use internet, usually enough percentage care about the quality of internet access to hold the exclusive ISP accountable or replace them. Of course in Apt buildings, mgmt just views internet as an expense and it's a different scenario.

I thought he was being sarcastic?

The point of the strawman was, I believe, to mock those who claim to want a free market, but support politicians who legislate such local monopolies.

Yes. Thank you.

An actual monopoly still isn't free without a city contract

Municipal exclusivity is only the tip of the iceberg. Here in NYC FiOS is everywhere and nowhere at the same time. Verizon dug up the streets, and Time Warner gave kickbacks to landlords and supers to deny Verizon access to the buildings themselves.

Monopolists can and do arise with or without the assistance of government. As long as someone has authority over a resource and is amenable to being bought.

> You mean, my local municipality has a binding, perpetual contract with Comcast.

In other words, if you or anyone else attempted to compete with Comcast in your municipality, the government would use violence (or the threat thereof) to prevent them from doing so. If that doesn't count as "regulation" then I don't know what does.

Wait a second. So everyone is free to make bargains in "the market" except for a city? How do they buy toilet paper for city hall then?

The cable industry was substantially deregulated in the 1990's. For example, municipalities were prohibited from granting exclusive franchises in 1992: https://www.mackinac.org/10118. Most areas continue to have only one cable company for the simple reason that it's not profitable to compete with the incumbents.

That is not the case for fiber.

We -Norway, a country of 6 million people spread out- have multiple companies competing in all parts of the country. Fiber companies compete in the larger cities, and even in the smaller towns we are starting to see more and more fiber competition.

I have a hard time believing the U.S. offers less grounds for competition, that's a ridiculous proposal at best. When we can do it, you can.

Your problem is rampant corruption. I wish I could, as a foreigner, ignore it, but what happens across the Atlantic has a tendency of spreading here.

I wonder how those competing fiber ISPs recoup the costs of running fiber past buildings that aren't their customers. Is this "competition" government-subsidized by any chance?

Most of your population lives along the coasts, and is also quite wealthy relative to much of our population. If you look at our densely populated east coast states, which are also quite wealthy, you'll see that in terms of average internet speeds, many would rank between #3 and #4 on the worldwide chart if they were countries: http://www.akamai.com/dl/akamai/akamai_soti_q113.pdf?WT.mc_i... (compare pages 14 with 17). They also have pretty widespread fiber options between Verizon and Comcast.

>They also have pretty widespread fiber options between Verizon and Comcast.

This isn't really true. Verizon stopped its FiOS rollout several years ago, and was never interested in dense urban areas. Comcast only offers residential internet over coax, which is not a "fiber option."

Population density is a red herring. The dense cities of the US have nothing like the connectivity of cities abroad.

Comcast has fiber services as does AT&T. Verizon doesn't avoid dense urban areas, but tends to avoid the municipal politics of inner cities. For example, there has been a big issue wiring up Baltimore for FIOS. The problem is that municipal governments make demands like "wiring up everyone" even though vast swaths of the city are too poor to afford fiber service. European cities tend not to have similarly dysfunctional municipal governments because European states don't use their cities as their dumping ground for their poor people.[1] A good example is Delaware. The state has the fastest average connection speeds in the U.S. Quite comparable to European countries like the Netherlands. However, there are very few options in the capital city of Wilmington.[2] The city proper is too poor to be a good market for fiber. But the wealthy suburbs just outside the city have great service options. The dense inner suburbs of American cities have quite competitive internet service, and if you look at the Akamai study, coastal U.S. states have comparable service speeds overall to European countries.

[1] 10% of Oslo is below Norway's very generous poverty line ($25k). 25% of Baltimore is below the much less generous federal poverty line ($25k for a family of 4!).

[2] Talks to get FIOS in Wilmington broke down because the government demanded "even coverage": http://www.dslreports.com/shownews/Dont-Actually-Demand-Anyt.... This is a city where half of kids live below the poverty line, and the median income is about 65% of the national average. Basically Verizon would have to spend a bunch of money running fiber to poor areas that could never afford it. It makes no sense. But that's the kind of ridiculous demands that leave urban markets in the U.S. without cable competition.

No doubt you're right, fiber is universally affordable relative to our income. I'm paying $80, or ~3 hours of work for a minimum wage worker, for my fiber connection.

Realistically we were already in that situation before the merger.

Whatever.

Before deregulation all I had in my metro area was dial up, ISDN, or a T1. Then came the various providers riding on the dial up wave when the phone company was forced to allow them.

Guess what I was stuck with even more dial up. Eventually DSL showed up but was the same price by all of them. Then Comcast (I forget who they were before the name changed) came in and suddenly my DSL came down in price but was still slower.

So, yeah it worked. The key takeaway is when we look for bad its easy to forget worse. I am no fan of Comcast in general but they have been many times faster than my phone company for the same price or less. Would it be nice to have a third or more option? Certainly and I damn well want someone to one day think they can do it, but if you common carrier it we will be stuck with whatever some damn government guy thinks is good for my area.

You know that means, tell me who has their streets plowed first in the storms, well lets just say the right people don't live here.

The concerning part of this deal isn't ad reach or who has "access" to certain markets.

TV is a luxury, and simply functions as entertainment for the vast majority of Americans. More and more people are "cutting cable" than ever, deciding that they'll find their entertainment somewhere else.

The concerning part is high-speed internet, which is coming close to a necessity for many people to live and work, and it will only progressively become more-so. Comcast is my only option for high-speed internet, and they charge me too much for speeds that are too slow, but I have to pay it.

I honestly can't see how someone could function without the internet in this day and age. Even for minimum wage jobs you typically have to apply online. Not to mention just finding those potential employers would be pretty arduous without a connection . Asking someone making $7 an hour to pay $50 - $70 a month for internet is unreasonable.

I don't know why it isn't treated as a utility at this point, since to have any shot of upward monetary mobility it's essentially required. The answer of course is to make providers common carriers, but money and political will make that extremely challenging.

You would be surprised about how many people live just fine without the internet. Radio, the paper, and TV are their sources of information. Job fairs, government handouts, and more, are covered in many ways through those three mediums.

Then add in the personal networks, friends and family, and ever present cell phones. If anything their cell phones are far more important than the internet.

Upward mobility is primarily an effect of self discipline and will power. Internet and related are simply tools that help one get there but by no means are not the limiting factor.

And you would be surprised how much of a shrinking segment that represents. The trend is toward a more connected society and not having access to the technology is quickly becoming a non-option.

Data is quickly becoming just another utility, along with power, water, and climate control, and just as necessary.

"since to have any shot of upward monetary mobility it's essentially required"

Uh, yeah, they know, and since the policy goal is to eliminate upward mobility, this is not exactly supportive for internet access.

Exactly. While TV is certainly a luxury, internet access is not.

Many jobs require some sort of internet access when applying. More and more services are becoming internet-only.

This is actually one of the strongest arguments against all that "three strikes" progressive-enforcement the copyright cartels keep trying to propose; is sharing a movie 3 times worth taking away someone's ability to find a job, or participate in all those profit-making interactions with modern businesses?

A simple solution - if they want to act like a utility, treat them as such, and nationalize the monopoly.

(clarification: nationalize the ISP portion of the business that is utility-like; the content-production and other aspects of the business can be preserved as they currently exist)

What happens after that has several options. It can be a publicly-owned utility, or spun off as a heavily-regulated independent (private) corporation under the PUC, to name a few possibilities. Such minutia is a secondary issue, and open for debate.

Now that internet access has become a requirements for even basic things such as applying for a job, declaring the ISPs a "public utility" is long overdue.

Calling something essential then regulating it as a utility is a sure way to disaster. Look at our other utilities: I don't know what about water with lead in it, rolling brownouts, or crumbling bridges make you think treating internet as a utility would be a good idea. It's a sure way to freeze capital investment into improving the infrastructure.

Is this about making sure that poor people have access to the internet, or subsidizing Netflix's business model? If it's the former, then Comcast is irrelevant. Let's address the problem directly and subsidize cell phones with HSPA+ level data access.

Weren't the cable companies initially treated sort of like utility, due to the cost of laying the last mile cables? Isn't that why they were able to gain virtual monopoly on different regions?

Yes, they were, though I think it had more to do with people not wanting the streets to be dug up every week by a different company.

I think most places will support more than one ISP, but it takes time and the right economic environment to shell out the big bucks you need to challenge an incumbent.

> rolling brownouts

Did you forget the whole "Enron" mess - and the deregulation of the utilities to allow it?

Rolling blackouts were the fault of a private business, trying to extort more profits.

Also...

> Calling something essential

Are you disputing that activities such as "Applying for a job" are not essential? If so, there are quite a few business out there trying to hire people that might take issue with such an opinion.

> Are you disputing that activities such as "Applying for a job" are not essential?

No, just that you have to be precise about what is essential and what isn't, and tailor the solution to the actual problem. It's essential to be able to apply for jobs online. It's not essential to be able to watch the latest episodes of Sherlock on Netflix. If the concern is really about making sure the poor have adequate access to the internet for things like job applications, the way to go is to subsidize wireless service with data access. Alternatively, cheap, broadly available broadband already exists in the form of DSL service.

From my original post:

> nationalize the ISP portion of the business that is utility-like; the content-production ... business can be preserved

I believe I was rather precise in my original post. Access to the internet is the utility; any other part of the business - such as the production and selling of TV shows - can be left as-is.

And while they are an important consideration, of course, the concern is NOT about "the poor". An ISP should not be an artificial roadblock to necessary personal, business, or governmental communication regardless of class.

Also, "jobs" - while important - are not the only essential activity. More and more human interaction requires the internet. These various activities (many of which have not even been invented yet!) should not be contingent upon some local monopoly's whim.

As for the "concern" about watching some stupid TV episode (despite Netflix being a 3rd-party and off-topic), who are you to say what is and is not "essential" for other people? What is "essential" can vary wildly:

    http://tressiemc.com/2013/10/29/the-logic-of-stupid-poor-people/

My point is that basic internet access is essential, but speeds above what are provided by basic DSL are a luxury. Its insane to regulate all cable providers when all you need is to subsidize DSL or wireless.

Unlike Norway, the U.S. is not an oil rich nation that has a culture of throwing money at infrastructure. It also has extremely pernicious rural versus urban politics. You regulate the cable companies as a utility, you'd kill capital investment in the networks.

Who said anything about providing anything for free? Who said anything about subsidizing access? Do you not get an electric bill, water bill, and possibly other utility bills?

"Public Utility" != "free"

While some sort of subsidized access for the poor is going to be necessary, of course, that is another discussion entirely.

The issue here is how to deal with a monopoly. More specifically, how to deal with a "natural monopoly"[1] that forced out all other competition. Such behavior is expected from natural monopolies, and the usual way of dealing with such businesses is to make them utilities.

As for the DSL diversion - you seem to be under the impression that you get a choice[2].

> kill capital investment in the networks

LOL - We paid massive amounts in the 90s-00s[3] to pay for the necessary infrastructure, and I still don't have a fiber connection. That song and dance has been used to swindle voters, politicians, and businesses for several decades. If they had any intention to actually put that money towards infrastructure, we would have seen it by now.

Note: upgrading the modems and such on the edge of the network (i.e. DOCSIS 2 -> 3) is merely using existing infrastructure in better ways. They were paid for "last-mile" deployment of fiber, and so far we've only seen tiny bit of FIOS (and similar).

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_monopoly

[2] http://www.broadbandmap.gov/summarize/nationwide#wirelinePro... http://www.broadbandmap.gov/number-of-providers/wireline/ser... (compare: min:1/max:1 vs min:2/max:whatever)

[3] http://www.pbs.org/cringely/pulpit/2007/pulpit_20070810_0026... (to name one example; there are several)

> More specifically, how to deal with a "natural monopoly"[1] that forced out all other competition. Such behavior is expected from natural monopolies, and the usual way of dealing with such businesses is to make them utilities.

I understand the theoretical justification. However, in practice, regulating businesses as utilities is associated, in America, with all sorts of things that don't go directly to addressing the monopoly, and can effectively kill industries. For example a common issue is cross-subsidization, particularly geographic cross-subsidization. Rural votes carry about 2x the weight in the U.S. as urban votes, which means there is a huge pressure on public utilities to waste capital building out to rural areas at the expense of urban areas. This isn't a theoretical issue, it's a feature of our political system that causes problems with everything it touches. For example, regulation as a public utility effectively killed passenger rail here in the U.S. It continues to hamper the remnant of passenger rail, in Amtrak, because the company is forced to carry unprofitable lines that run through mostly rural states instead of focusing on the profitable, high-density northeast corridor. In another example, about $4.5 billion a year is transferred from users of long distance service to subsidize phone service in rural areas.

There must be something to deal with the natural monopoly issue, but the public utility regime in U.S. municipalities is simply too dysfunctional to be appropriate for a rapidly-changing area like telecom.

> They were paid for "last-mile" deployment of fiber, and so far we've only seen tiny bit of FIOS (and similar).

The $200 billion figure often bandied about is a total fabrication, achieved by comparing telecom profit rates to that of rate-regulated utilities and calling the delta "excess profits." It's highly disingenuous. Time Warner and Comcast have a net margin of 10-11%. Apple and Google are around 20-21%. Saying that the cable companies are making "excess profits" and calling that a "$200 billion payment to upgrade infrastructure" is utterly ridiculous.

Not that it adds much, but the maps must not take into account Comcast's other holdings. The Upper Midwest is missing from that map which includes Midcontinent Communications which is a jointly owned by Comcast.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Midcontinent_Communications

All in all this article seems to defend the deal more than anything. Regardless of your beliefs on monopolies/regulation/whatever, it seems particularly silly and irrelevant to use potential reach as a marker of anything. 0% of Americans are "out of Apple's Reach", so what? That has nothing to do with monopolies. You can have 99% of Americans outside your reach and still be a monopoly in your area. You can have 0% of Americans Out of your reach and be in a highly competitive space. The article seems to kind of point this out by showing that its still the case that only 9% of Americans "wouldn't have a choice". The actual interesting question is how that compares to today. From what I've read there wasn't much overlap so its theoretically not much different.

Also brings up the question why they are so big and not competing? Maybe the deal should be rejected and investigated why they aren't competing for customers. They should be at each other's throats and not making nice nice!

I think the "within reach" angle makes more sense here because there is often a lack of choice for most Americans when they look at who offers cable/internet in their area (e.g., only Cox, Comcast, Time Warner, etc.). I think this will get better as things like FiOS and uVerse expand (hopefully), but for right now many of us are "stuck" with a provider.

Yes, but this is specifically separately covered is my point. If you take two disjoint areas and combine them, you have not changed the "choice" landscape at all. If anything the arguments that should be made is that this makes Comcast/TimeWarner more powerful in the net-neutrality debates (which I think is actually a very strong and much more meaningful potential result), not that it is somehow affecting actual monopolistic realities for most Americans (or at the very least, this should be conclusively shown as opposed to listing verifiably unrelated statistics). I guess my position is that this is setting up this debate for failure. If you make the unsubstantiated claim that less Americans will have choice, and they can actually prove that its not practically different from today, it makes this argument not very effective.

>I think the "within reach" angle makes more sense here because there is often a lack of choice for most Americans when they look at who offers cable/internet in their area (e.g., only Cox, Comcast, Time Warner, etc.).

Then let's measure what really matters - the number (or percentage) of people who are served by Comcast only. My guess is between competing cable companies, FIOS, and DSL it's a pretty small number and wouldn't generate any clicks.

EDIT: Other people are saying 9% don't have other choices. But even then I'll bet they're not include mobile phone companies, and everybody has access to satellite.

1. Cable companies do not compete. They serve non-overlapping areas.

2. FiOS has a very small footprint.

3. DSL can barely be considered adequate anymore, and doesn't even meet the FCC's definition of broadband.

4. Wireless broadband has very low data caps, and high latency.

5. Satellite internet (it can't even be considered broadband) has even lower data caps, and even higher latency.

>Cable companies do not compete. They serve non-overlapping areas.

Not true. In my area there are two cable companies that cover the whole city.

>FiOS has a very small footprint.

15 million households isn't a small footprint.

>DSL can barely be considered adequate anymore, and doesn't even meet the FCC's definition of broadband.

Adequate for what? DSL is fine for streaming video.

>Wireless broadband has very low data caps, and high latency.

That's temporary. They're still building out the 4G networks. When they're done they'll have to increase caps substantially to compete. And 4G has very low latency.

>Satellite internet (it can't even be considered broadband) has even lower data caps, and even higher latency.

Granted, satellite wouldn't be my first choice.

Is it just me, or is this headline a little confusing?

70% of Americans now have Comcast as an option, but only 9% have Comcast as their only terrestrial TV option.

> 70% of Americans now have Comcast as an option, but only 9% have Comcast as their only terrestrial TV option.

Thanks for pointing this out. It would be better for that second percentage to be zero, but this isn't that alarming.

>over 90% of Americans will still have other wired choices for their TV service

I live in a Comcast area. Can you explain what my alternative is? I've certainly never known about one.

Not sure on tv, but check http://www.broadband.gov/, since most cable companies are bundling.

Their map correctly shows the DSL and Cable provider in my area, but the speeds are not correct. The impressive looking high speed options (100 Mbps - 1 Gbps) are not actually offered or available.

Where I live we have Comcast and another cable provider, plus at least two DSL companies, plus some kind of wireless company I haven't checked into, plus the mobile phone companies (at least three).

I'm guessing you're rural.

I'm not rural at all, but I still only have one cable provider. I was of the belief that most of the country was in the same situation.

9%. That's how many Comcast customers don't have other options.

In many areas the Telco company also offers TV service.

> Only 30% of Americans Out of Comcast Reach After Deal

This is a weird way to say this. "Only 30%" seems like kind of a large number even in this context. I get the point but maybe it would have been more effective to say that 70% of Americans can now be reached by Comcast.

It's also a little strange to talk about "reach," which is a hypothetical concept, and not actual market share. When the DoJ considers antitrust legislation against a putative monopolist, it usually looks at the market share of the entity in question.

Comcast will exploit this to the hilt, of course. There are a lot of "technical" grounds on which Comcast is not a monopolist, and it will argue those grounds aggressively if investigated.

It's even weirder because the missing 30% are not out of reach because Comcast just didn't get to them yet, they are out of reach because Comcast doesn't actively enter into competition with other providers. They have silently split the market.

So the numbers really don't mean anything.

Now would be a good time for Google to update us on their longterm plans for their fiber rollout.

It's my one hope at this point since Google isn't someone Comcast can just buy and of course Google realizes the importance of not allowing a single entity to control something like our access to the internet.

So when will Google fiber hit Denver and beyond?

> of course Google realizes the importance of not allowing a single entity to control something like our access to the internet

Unless Google is that entity, of course.

Won't antitrust regulators oppose this?

Potentially... but not in isolation. The issue should not be that Comcast can now reach 70% of Americans, the issue is how many Americans will then be left with Comcast as their only option.

Nope. In their ideal world, Comcast will eventually get 100% and then be nationalized. Then, politicians can finally get their "fair elections."

The important figure is I've read online that Comcast will go from (some large number) to (some ridiculous larger number) of DC lobbyists. If the fox is guarding the henhouse...

I believe Comcast can only service 30% of households in the US by FCC mandate. As part of this deal it's likely they are going to have to sell off some regions. Not have access to 70% of the US.

That changed in 2009. http://www.multichannel.com/content/updated-court-throws-out...

I'm in that 30 percent. As much as I hated Time Warner, Windstream is far worse. Its okay during the day, but in the evenings speed and reliability just goes to crap.

Now.

I'm pretty sure "after" means, "after the deal is approved." The FCC and DOJ still have to weigh in.

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