What's up
So I have internet with time warner cable and was wondering how badly fucked I'm going to get when it gets absorbed by comcast? Is Comcast going to instill data caps on my internet usage? Will I have to pay more? And when will they go through with the merger? Me and my brother are heavy internet users.
Yes they announced they are going to roll out reasonable data caps, I believe it was something like 200GB and increase prices, this is just one of many ways which everyone will be better off by the improved competition! You should write to your local representatives and thank them on behalf of everyone else who is to ignorant to know about this.
200g a month is not even enough for light internet users who watch anime or use netflix half the time
Don't worry, they say it won't effect most people.
Wanted to also add something about Comcast and Time Warner merging.
Comcast is already a monopoly in the areas they cover (and even in the rare area with a second broadband provider, it is often satellite or very slow DSL). By further expanding their coverage area by buying up other ISP's, they will have even less of a reason to improve their service, as customers will not be able to vote with their wallets by moving to an equivalent competitor. This will also significantly heart the internet as a whole. What keeps at least some level of fairness in peering port arrangements and also various content deals, is the presence of other ISP's and cable providers. Since the internet is a series of interconnected networks, fair deals must be made in order to preserve access to the entire internet, but as soon as an ISP gains a market share at the level that a Comcast and Time Warner merger would provide, they suddenly have a lot of leverage to create a massive number of unfair deals because there will no longer be a risk of mutually assured destruction; Comcast will have the ability to essentially make incredibly unfair deals with content creators (for TV), and peering arrangements for content providers, and use their large consumer base as leverage. For example, Comcast will have the ability to make unfair demands to a vast array of other companies, and using their ability to instantly cut them off from the majority of their customers which will ensure their market failure, while simultaneously having little to no harm for Comcast because of their monopoly. (Suppose you own a streaming service that caters to the US market, with an even bigger monopoly, Comcast will have the ability to make almost any demand they want, or threaten you with cutting you off or significantly scaling back the peering ports in order to make your service unusable for the majority of your target market). Or suppose run a TV channel, and with their new massive market share, Comcast decides to impose a more 1 sided deal that will severely undervalue the service your channel provides. In this situation, Comcast will have the ability to essentially cut your channel off from the vast majority of the market, thus leaving you with a choice of agree to their unfair demands, or go out of business.
All in all, allowing this merger will be even less motivation to invest in their infrastructure (better service requires better infrastructure; buying another ISP does not magically upgrade the infrastructure of both networks). It will give them such a large market share that they will essentially have the ability to extort, or at the very least, never have to give a fair deal, as they will have the ability to essentially put any other TV station or internet content producer out of business (if they primarily cater to the US market, as they are the gate keeper to the majority of the consumers). A merger of this magnitude will allow Comcast to force bad deals at the expense of everyone else. e.g., forcing a content deal where they pay far less than what the content is worth, thus forcing that content network to strong arm the smaller service providers with bad deals.