The Consumer Benefit of Mega-Mergers

“You may recall that AT&T justified their $69 billion acquisition of DirecTV by claiming their combined market power would result in more leverage in programming negotiations and lower costs. Cost savings that pretty clearly won’t be getting passed on to consumers. Rate hikes for both AT&T U-Verse and DirecTV customers will take effect January 28.” [DSLR]

AT&T saw a direct benefit of $15 per U-Verse subscriber with the DirecTV content contracts. And despite that, they are raising rates. Cord cutting will commence.

Every time there is a merger — like AT&T-BellSouth, CenturyLink-Qwest-Embarq — we are told how it is for the consumer benefit. Even when there are merger conditions, the entity finds a way to skirt delivering on its promises.

With all of the rate hikes and merger promises we should have Gigabit internet to every home in America. How is that working out?

The cablecos are looking to form one large entity – Charter-TWC-BrightHouse. For the consumer benefit. It is a big decision for the FCC.

The DOJ and the FCC have just one mandate: protect the consumer. Both have fallen on that mandate for most of my time in this industry. The DOJ hasn’t done anything since 1982.

In Canada, Shaw is making moves after completing the $1.2B acquisition of data center company ViaWest. “Canadian broadband giant Shaw Communications has announced that it’s buying Canadian wireless operator Wind Mobile in a deal worth around $1.6 billion.” [press release here].

Interesting to note that Shaw used to own US cable interests that today Bright House Networks owns [according to wikipedia].

There is a report that Freshdesk, a SaaS customer support firm, buys mobile engagement startup Konotor in an acquisition that will help Freshdesk’s mission to deliver omni-channel customer service.

Tags: att, FCC, mergers, saas
Related tags: consumer benefit, benefit, consumer, directv, merger, acquisition