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Former Cable CEO on Competition and Wireless as Complement to Wired

Thu, January 24, 2013 | Posted by christopher

Given the frequent claims of lobbyists for the cable companies regarding how incredibly competitive the broadband market is in the United States, I thought we might want to hear what John Malone, one of the most aggressive cable CEOs ever (TCI) has to say on the subject. He is now with Liberty, a media company among other things. Last year, in an investor call, he said,

Really, I think the cable business in the U.S. looks very attractive. It looks like the telcos are not going to aggressively overbuild cable with fiber and so, cable has a definite advantage when comes to high speed broadband, which seems to be something the public is totally in love with.

...

But no, I think cable is very strong on the broadband side and I think the threat of wireless broadband taking away high speed connectivity is way overblown. There just is not enough bandwidth on the wireless side to substantially damage cable's unique ability to delivery very high speed connectivity. So I think everybody is going to do well in this mix.

I excised some middle comments that were also interesting - suggesting that cable may lose video customers but will do very well by continuing to grow broadband subscribers (a much higher profit margin service).

For years, we have been saying that wireless is not a competitor to wired (specifically cable) and that there is no danger of competition when it comes to cable. Nice to see the insiders agree. Now if the we could just get the FCC to listen to those comments rather than the those of lobbyists...

Credit to Susan Crawford's new book, Captive Audience, where I read it first.

Photo courtesy of JSquish via Wikipedia Commons

Wall Street: Lack of Competition Allows Comcast to Raise Prices Whenever It Wants

Wed, August 08, 2012 | Posted by lgonzalez

A major difference between Main Street and Wall Street is that we view Comcast's lack of competition as a major problem. The prospect of Comcast increasing our rates year after year makes us want to scream. Prepare to scream. Or throw things.

The Lafayette Pro-Fiber Blog alerted us to a piercingly honest analysis from Wall Street. The article on SeekingAlpha.com, titled We-re Big Fans Of Comcast's Cash-Flow Generation captures one of the major policy failures of our time:

Comcast's traditional Cable Communications continues to grow and generate copious cash flow. Video revenue, Xfinity and other cable TV products, grew 2.8% to $5 billion, while High-Speed Internet revenue grew 8.9% to $2.4 billion. We're big fans of the firm's Video and High-Speed Internet businesses because both are either monopolies or duopolies in their respective markets. Further, we believe that both services have become so sticky and important to consumers that Comcast will be able to effectively raise prices year after year without seeing too much volume-related weakness.

Wow.

SeekingAlpha.com, describes itself as "…the premier website for actionable stock market opinion and analysis, and vibrant, intelligent finance discussion."

We want to empower local businesses and communities to control their own destiny. Monopolistic telecommunications companies, with their Goliath market share, Wall Street priorities, and armies of lobbyists continue to attack local control and self-reliance. They are extracting assets from Main Street and shipping it to Wall Street.

Yet we see the FCC, Congress, and many states pretending that the public interest is best served by giving more power to these massive companies. And we will continue to hear industry-funded think tanks claiming that broadband has robust competition and should be subject to less public oversight. Coming soon to an op-ed page near you.

Photo courtesy of JSquish via Wikipedia Commons