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Comcast Chair & CEO Brian Roberts and NBC Universal President & CEO Jeff Zucker today defended their proposal to merge the two companies at a hearing held by the Senate Judiciary committee. Senate members questioned the deal’s potential impact on the media marketplace, including program availability and consumer costs. (2 hours, 3 minutes)
House Committee Energy & Commerce | Communications, Technology, and the Internet
The subcommittee on Communications, Technology, and the Internet held a hearing today titled, “An Examination of the Proposed Combination of Comcast and NBC Universal.” The hearing explored the potential impact on the media marketplace of the proposed joint venture agreement between Comcast and NBC Universal. This portion contains committee members’ opening statements and no witness statements.
House Committee Energy & Commerce | Communications, Technology, and the Internet
Witnesses testified about the potential impact on the media marketplace of the proposed joint venture agreement between Comcast and NBC Universal. Among the issues they addressed were competition in the media marketplace, possible innovations which could result from the merger, the impact on local affiliates, and the affect on consumers.
Comcast loves its new name for TV Everywhere so much, it’s expanding it across all of its products and services in the coming months.
XFinity, originally Comcast’s online video on demand service, will now share its name with Comcast’s cable-TV, telephone, and broadband product lines.
The effort to rebrand itself comes at a time when consumers increasingly find blurring lines between services delivering video, telephone and broadband service. You can watch cable TV programming on your mobile phone, make and receive phone calls over your broadband connection, and watch TV shows online as well. XFinity could symbolize the convergence of technology, where content is ultimately more important than the way it reaches you.
Comcast’s blog gushed about the ‘exciting proposition’ of an industry game-change:
The folks at Gizmodo are lampooning Comcast's brand change
Today on Comcast’s earnings call Brian Roberts and Steve Burke talked about XFINITY, the new brand for our technology platform and products. Simply put, XFINITY is about offering our customers more — more HD, more speed, more choice and more control over their services. XFINITY is the culmination of years of work to transition Comcast’s network and products to a platform that will now offer 100+ HD channels, 50 to 70 foreign-language channels, approaching 20,000+ VOD choices, incredibly fast Internet speeds (50 Mbps growing to 100+ Mbps) and thousands of TV shows and movies online for our customers to watch whenever and wherever they want.
XFINITY represents the future of our company and it’s a promise to customers that we’ll keep innovating. When we launch XFINITY in a market, we’ll rebrand our products: XFINITY TV, XFINITY Voice and XFINITY Internet (our company, of course, remains Comcast). This transition is already well underway across the country. Next week, XFINITY will roll out in 11 markets including: Boston, Philadelphia, Baltimore, Washington D.C., Chicago, Portland, Seattle, Hartford, Augusta, Chattanooga, parts of the Bay Area and San Francisco, with more markets to come later this year.
Of course, consumers don’t have a choice about Comcast’s 250GB monthly usage allowance.
As far as new names go, reaction is decidedly mixed. The folks at Gizmodo promptly began ridiculing the thin coat of paint applied to an often despised cable provider landscape. XFinity likely targets a younger audience. I suspect older subscribers will be perplexed as to its meaning, if not its pronunciation.
This isn’t the first time the industry has tried name-changes. Cable modem service has long since been rebranded “High Speed Online” by some, “High Speed Internet” by others. Time Warner Cable calls its bundled services “All the Best.” Many others call it a “Triple Play.”
For consumers, the name is less important than the quality and price of the service.
Karl Bode of Broadband Reports and I are both glad that Comcast at least avoided the now-cliché “Extreme” in the new name. I hope they also registered the predictable xxxfinity.com before some porn merchant grabs it.
Denver residents are discovering that when Comcast says they’re getting a “free speed upgrade,” what they really mean is that upgrade is going to cost you an additional $2 more per month.
Comcast recently increased broadband speeds in Denver “for free,” but now Mile-High City residents are discovering free comes at a price with Comcast.
The price of renting your cable modem is increasing by $2 a month, which means the majority of Comcast customers locally will now spend $5 per month just for the modem.
Denver, Colorado (Courtesy: Yassie)
Comcast blamed the increase on costs associated with upgrading their network facilities to support DOCSIS 3, the latest cable modem standard which supports vastly faster Internet speeds.
Comcast spokeswoman Cindy Parsons said in a statement that the company continually invests in providing customers with next-generation equipment and technology that delivers advanced Internet services with enhanced capabilities.
“Our costs for this new equipment will increase by 167 percent over the next two years,” Parsons said.
Comcast has been increasing the modem rental price on a city-by-city basis across the country, often after speed upgrades like that completed in Denver which doubled speeds from 6 to 12Mbps late last year.
If just two-thirds of Comcast customers nationwide continue to simply pay the monthly rental fee, the company will earn more than $250 million in annual revenue just on the two dollar rate hike. Is that enough to pay for service upgrades so we can dispense with talk about Internet Overcharging schemes like usage caps and consumption billing?
Stop the Cap! reminds readers Comcast subscribers can purchase their own cable modem from electronics retailers, often for $100 or less, and never pay a rental fee again.
At $60 a year, customers will more than pay for their modem purchase after less than two years.
The subcommittee on Communications, Technology, and the Internet is holding a hearing titled, “An Examination of the Proposed Combination of Comcast and NBC Universal.”
The hearing explores the potential impact on the media marketplace of the proposed joint venture agreement between Comcast and NBC Universal. It begins at 9:30am EST and is expected to run for several hours.
Participants:
To watch, click the C-SPAN logo below. A video player will pop up in a separate window. Be sure to disable any pop-up blockers in your browser. If the player does not appear, or you are unsure how to disable your pop-up blocker, you can launch the C-SPAN 3 stream using Flash, Windows Media, or RealVideo format from this direct link.
If you miss any part of the hearing, we anticipate having an archived edition up later today.
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[Update 10:23am — The members of the Subcommittee are still making opening statements. Generally, Democratic members are expressing concerns about the transaction, Republicans are either neutral or favorable towards the merger. The ranking member, Rep. Stearns (R) from Florida read a statement that could have been drafted by Comcast and NBC. Net Neutrality and copyright enforcement issues are also coming up. Members from California, the home base for a lot in the entertainment industry, are the ones usually mentioning copyright. Republicans who have brought up Net Neutrality are universally hostile to the policy, one warning the Committee the very concept may be overturned by the DC Court of Appeals. Democrats are in favor. Both Reps. Markey and Eshoo are on the panel — they co-introduced the Net Neutrality bill in Congress.
Based on the opening statements, it appears the question and answer session will likely bring hardball questions from most of the Democrats, softball questions from most of the Republicans. But expect a handful of members to occasionally break the trend. There will also be the usual grandstanding on both sides of the aisle from time to time.]
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