Analysts Think America’s Two Biggest And Shittiest Cable Giants (Comcast, Charter) Could Merge Under Trump 2.0

Broadband

from the merge-ALL-the-things! dept

Despite a lot of bullshit about how Trump is super “populist,” “supports antitrust reform,” and will “carry on the legacy of monopoly busters like Lina Khan,” none of that has ever been true. Trump’s first administration was jam packed with the rubber stamping of plenty of terrible mergers. Streaming, media, and telecom companies are very excited about what Trump 2.0 has in store.

Fail upward media brunchlords like David Zaslav are extremely excited about the potential for more terrible mergers (like the Time Warner Discovery disaster) in the streaming space. CBS is already busy kissing Trump’s ass in exchange for what it hopes will be Trump approval of its Skydance merger.

And analysts in telecom land are licking their chops at the idea of all manner of senseless consolidation in broadband land, including a merger between two of the most hated companies in America: Comcast (Xfinity) and Charter (Spectrum):

“We believe a Comcast/Charter merger could make industrial logical sense given the scale and subsequent massive synergies,” wrote the financial analysts at TD Cowen.”

“It is an obvious transaction,” said analyst Walter Piecyk with LightShed Partners in a video posted on social media.”

These guys aren’t really interested in whether the union creates a better company, or a better product, or happier consumers, or a stronger overall market. They’re interested in watching stock valuations (temporarily) go up. The last Trump administration was quick to rubber stamp the T-Mobile and Sprint merger, which immediately caused most U.S. wireless price competition to grind to a halt.

Comcast and Charter (usually) don’t directly compete. But as any academic that studies corporate power (especially telecom corporate power) will tell you, that doesn’t really matter.

The consolidation still strengthens the power of the underlying monopoly, and that scale always (especially in the broken, uncompetitive telecom market) routinely results in a company that’s increasingly hostile to remaining competitors, labor, and healthy supply chains. And increasingly influential in DC circles, where they lobby relentlessly to ensure competitive alternatives can’t take root.

It’s not really subtle or debatable, you can look directly at the history of the highly consolidated U.S. telecom market (coddled by decades of corruption and regulatory capture) to see precisely what this looks like in practice. Comcast and Charter are genuinely terrible, uninnovative companies because they’ve crushed all remaining competitors and largely defanged competent government oversight.

The deregulation, undermining of antitrust enforcement, and broad defanging of oversight is always framed by telecom monopolies (and their vast assorted consultants, think tanks, and mouthpieces) as the path toward true “free marketing competition” and “innovation.” But as Comcast, AT&T, Verizon, and Charter routinely make clear, that promised future simply never arrives.

I enjoy reading trade magazine and business press coverage of this sort of thing, because it’s amusing how consumer welfare, market health, the public interest, labor rights, or even basic historical context, simply don’t exist. All the well documented and potential harms of mindless telecom consolidation are simply not mentioned. At all. Despite being rather integral to both the story and public understanding.

In its place, generally, is the most superficial of rhetoric about “synergies” and “innovation” that aren’t based on much of anything beyond vibes.

I suspect the Trump administration could approve a merger between Comcast and Charter. More immediately they’ll approve the already-proposed merger between the equally terrible Frontier and Verizon. And they’ll most certainly approve more terrible streaming mergers, resulting in higher prices, layoffs, and lower quality services. Assuming these companies adequately kiss the ring.

The press will unquestioningly parrot the mythological benefits of mindless consolidation and deregulation. And when the consolidative telecom market harms manifest, as they always do, everybody involved will simply pretend they had nothing to do with it as they stumble onward to the next big, pointless, stock-fluffing deal.

Filed Under: broadband, consolidation, consumer, fcc, high speed internet, mergers, telecom, trump
Companies: charter, comcast