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Comment by tomelders | Hacker News Reader

I would be flabbergasted if the regulators looked at the rest of the world and decided to allow this sale. If anything, the whole debacle should prompt immediate action to drastically increase the competitiveness of that market.

Anything less, and people need to start talking about jail time because someone is on the take.

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I would never imagine that happened in Europe. Free market works if there is competition, but monopolies either natural or artificial need regulations to prevent from abusing their powers.

Personal story: I live in SF Bay Area and got Comcast. Net was working really slow and got outages few times each week. To get any support I had to wait 40m to hear basic advice like restarting router.

Switched to smaller provider Sonic.net. Everything works, just once got some problem (in last 3 months). My call was immediately connected to competent human which diagnosed the problem in less than 3m. Next day they proactively call to improve one more thing.

Contenders usually got so much more will to do things right than monopolies.

As a frequent employee in the past (I've worked there multiple times and in multiple positions), I'll second that it's a really great company (and frequently gets press for being on the forefront of privacy rights for it's users).

Unfortunately, when I bought my house, it was a new development and while it was pre-wired for Comcast and AT&T, those are the only options.

You just pushed me to hop over to Sonic.net, thank you.

Living in the east bay (Berkeley) means your options are pretty limited in terms of service, but we have a local company (www.lmi.net) which has incredible service. When there was an outage, they sent the technician 2 hours after I called and I've never had any trouble with them.

When I moved out to the Bay Area I wanted to go with Sonic, especially over Comcast. However their speeds were just SO SLOW, especially for the price, compared to Comcast.

In the consumer class connections, they simply did not offer fast enough speeds, and Comcast just blew them out of the water. Really wish they'd get their speeds up as I would definitely consider switching.

> I would be flabbergasted if the regulators looked at the rest of the world and decided to allow this sale.

I'd love for you to be right, but if I were you, I'd prepare to be flabbergasted.

i suspect it will be allowed to go-ahead, the government at all levels seems to like to support the telecommunication monopolies. Municipal and community internet alternatives, or competition, seem to be inhibited by regulation and bureaucracy. There is such a barrier of entry and regulation on cable provisioning that it's hard to see how anyone can compete, and if they do, it's got to be someone the size of Google who have their own agenda.

http://consumerist.com/2014/05/10/why-starting-a-competitor-...

http://www.wired.com/2013/07/we-need-to-stop-focusing-on-jus...

if I join the dots myself, I see a clear benefit to the U.S. government and the NSA in monopolies like this.

A couple of years back, this would have been tin foil hat territory. But not today.

This deal is sadly going to go through. It's all based on anchoring and based on the industry's first "offer" to the FCC and other regulators: 1. Let us create a "fast" lane and a "slow" lane. This allows Telcos and ISPs to raise rates and gain even more power than we already had. 2. Let us, as the #1/2 player in an oligopoly, merge with the #3/4 "competitor". This allows us to provide better service, etc, etc, etc.

#1 is ridiculous and the public push-back has been strong that it likely won't happen (let's pray to God it doesn't). However, in the context of asking for industry-wide de-regulation (that still might go through), a merger between industry leaders, which happens all the time, doesn't seem that ridiculous. Plus, having an FCC chairman who used to be your head lobbyist helps the merger even more[1].

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

If it's approved then it may actually spur some action to fix the market. TWC and Comcast are the two most hated companies in the U.S. Once they merge it won't take long before some politician or attorney general figures out they can score serious popular approval by going after what will be the most evil company in the country.

Hopefully all of the negative publicity that Comcast is getting will have an impact on some of the regulators and they decide this will not benefit any of the current users for either company.

I can only hope at this point.

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