Can we learn from the last Comcast Merger? I hope we can. This recent NPR interview with Susan Crawford goes into the details.
The big risk here is a larger Comcast can leverage Content to keep new entrants out of the market.
That new entrant has to enter on two levels. It has to build communications infrastructure. But it also has to get access to programming, because 91 percent of Americans have paid TV prescriptions, as well as high-speed Internet access subscriptions. They want both. So Comcast pays much less for programming - because it has so many subscribers, and because it owns one of the big players - than any new entrant would. This is yet another cudgel, another sledgehammer that Comcast can use to keep any potential alternative network competition at bay.