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Video: Verizon/Cable Deals: Harmless Collaboration or Threat to Competition

[flv width=”640″ height=”380″]http://www.phillipdampier.com/video/Senate Hearing on Verizon-Comcast Deal 3-21-12.flv[/flv]

This afternoon, the U.S. Senate’s Subcommittee on Antitrust, Competition Policy and Consumer Rights held a hearing on the potential antitrust implications of a deal between Verizon and some of the nation’s largest cable companies that would deliver Verizon warehoused, unused wireless spectrum owned by four of the nation’s largest cable operators and open the door to Verizon Wireless pitching cable television subscriptions.  The hearing: “The Verizon/Cable Deals: Harmless Collaboration or a Threat to Competition and Consumers?” lasts 2 hours, 23 minutes.

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Scott
Scott
12 years ago

This is definitely a threat to competition, the playing field isn’t fair and the players are just dividing up the territories and services amongst themselves. Both AT&T Verizon knows that 4g service is the future as long as they pay politicians to keep the FCC’s hands off it, keep it unregulated, and charge through the nose with per-Gig fee’s and any other metered or tacked on charges they can think of. If that means giving up their landline broadband, even their fiber, so be-it.. the upside on their unregulated market vs a regulated one is so much greater for the… Read more »

Tony
Tony
12 years ago

C- Beneficial collaboration. 3 new MVNO’s enter the market that previously weren’t there and whom had no intention of launching their own networks before now. FiOS rollout is over. Verizon is actively selling arms of it. They’re done in that space. As an entire corporate entity (VZ Communications + VZ Wireless), their focus is very clearly on enterprise services with their hardline services (corporate) and wireless for retail. MVNO’s are often cheaper than the parent network, the caveat being you supply the device… easy to do with it being Verizon. So how isn’t this good? There’s going to be more… Read more »

Scott
Scott
12 years ago

The other thing I hate with the MVNO’s is because they’re bound with their agreements to AT&T, Sprint, Verizon, etc.. while they may announce a great innovative service plans with low pricing, or unlimited data.. at any point when it gets popular their provider simply changes terms on them requiring them to raise pricing, or drop unlimited and go with a metered per Gb at the same or higher price than the provider. We;ve got several new Cellular companies announcing service now too that are piggybacking on Sprint and their WiMax network for cellular.. and I totally agree that’s a… Read more »

Duffin
Duffin
12 years ago

I wanted to toss my monitor out of the window every single time Cohen claimed that they’d offered the spectrum to every other carrier. That’s such bull. You don’t think there would be a feeding frenzy for that spectrum? He really expects us to believe that only Verizon, the carrier with the most spectrum, was the only one who was interested in it? This is AT&T/T-Mobile all over again! Do they think we’re stupid or something? Yeah, of course it’s very convenient that there’s no public proof of these “offers” to other carriers. They should not be able to sell… Read more »

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Stop the Cap!