Comcast and Time Warner join forces to kill the Internet as we know it

It seems that Comcast and Time Warner Cable have finally reached a merger deal. Well, not really a merger: Comcast will be acquiring Time Warner Cable for $45 billion in stock. Seems like a steal, doesn’t it? I mean, what could possibly go wrong?

Think about it — why wouldn’t the United States want the two largest ISPs to merge? Remember that Comcast also owns NBC Universal, so it would own the largest cable and Internet footprint in the country, along with movie studios, broadcast channels, and cable channels. It seems like just the thing we need to inspire that all-powerful invisible hand of the free market. I can smell the competition emerging from this deal. Also, no harm can come from combining two of the most hated companies in the country, right?

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It’s clear that we’re watching clueless legislators, judges, and political appointees grant carte blanche to regional monopolies and nationwide oilgopolies, and Comcast seriously believes that the acquisition of Time Warner Cable will cause no problems with federal regulations on monopolies. Given some of the more abhorrent stances taken by the FCC and others, it might be right.

We’re putting Ma Bell back together again, but this time Ma Bell will own a bunch of television channels and movie studios as well. One can only imagine how this will impact a country that is already enduring lackluster broadband speeds and buildouts. Further consolidation of the big ISPs and cable providers will only accelerate that trend — downward. For reference, here’s a list of companies Comcast will own if this merger succeeds.

This merger, along with the recent setback for Net neutrality, is a big deal. This may not be the whole enchilada, but it’s a vast burrito of damage to the Internet, at least in the United States.

We’re already watching the rest of the world recoil from the many attacks on the Internet coming from the U.S. government and U.S.-based corporations. Brazil is talking about walling off all traffic to and from the United States. The Europeans are pushing to reduce the U.S. influence over the Internet, and if the U.S. government approves this appalling deal, right on the heels of the NSA scandal and the blow to Net neutrality, it’s hard to argue with them. We may have invented the Internet, but it sure seems like we’re now hell-bent on destroying it.

One of the reasons cited by the D.C. court that struck down the FCC’s already weak Net neutrality rules was that the market was competitive, and regulation was not necessary. Of course that’s complete nonsense, but that was the court’s reasoning.

The new FCC chairman himself has vowed to protect competiton in the ISP and cable markets. Keep in mind he’s a former cable company lobbyist, and those statements were likely made to offset the lack of actual Net neutrality regulations coming from his desk. It could be argued that because Time Warner and Comcast serve different markets (there’s that oligopoly again), combining them doesn’t really reduce competition.

However, that ignores the rest of what’s included in the deal, and it ignores the fact that Comcast would be able to control pricing and force whatever restrictions it wants on the television and Internet services in a vast number of homes in the United States without any real threat of competition. Comcast will become an even more powerful lobbying juggernaut, convincing legislators that because there’s a small ISP in Des Moines, Iowa, its own stranglehold on the state of Maine is A-OK.

That’s the pinch: You can’t let Comcast and Time Warner merge and claim to be a champion of competition, and you can’t block the merger and claim that we don’t need Net neutrality, because that will be a major casualty of this merger.

These companies think they can eat their cake and have it too. Unfortunately their substantial lobbying dollars are flowing through Washington at feverish rates, greasing the skids for exactly this kind of unconscionable outcome. It would be bad fiction if it weren’t all too real.

We have been down this road before with AT&T, though with less at stake as it turns out. Any reasonable person would see that this deal should be scuttled as anticonsumer, anticompetitive, and bad for the country as a whole. In addition, any reasonable person would see that ISPs should be classified as common carriers and regulated as such. Unfortunately, when it comes to public policy and Internet service providers in this country, it seems that a modicum of reason is too much to expect.

This story, “Comcast and Time Warner join forces to kill the Internet as we know it,” was originally published at InfoWorld.com. Read more of Paul Venezia’s The Deep End blog at InfoWorld.com. For the latest business technology news, follow InfoWorld.com on Twitter.