China’s top economic planning agency is assessing a monopoly case involving two large telecom companies and will make a ruling soon as the Beijing government declares uncompetitive broadband against the interests of the people.

The National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC) began to investigate the duopoly of China Telecom and China Unicom in the broadband business two years ago. The two companies, fearing reprisals, promised to end the questionable practices that brought scores of complaints from Chinese citizens over network incompatibilities, rising prices, and slow service.

The two companies together maintain a 90 percent market share of Chinese broadband, and both could face fines up to 10 percent of their annual Internet revenues if the NDRC finds they are acting as an abusive duopoly.

The Chinese government passed strict anti-monopoly laws in 2008 and has enforced them. Beijing has been particularly concerned about price discrimination against other Internet Service Providers and relentless rate hikes, even as costs to offer the service have dropped dramatically.

The NDRC said on Wednesday that the two companies submitted evidence that suggested both had significantly raised network integration, extended the direct-link bandwidth of their backbone networks, raised broadband speeds and lowered prices.

Although the Chinese government’s free market policies have brought investment and economic change to China, the government has grown increasingly concerned about leaving vital sectors of the economy unregulated. In several instances, the result has been bad for consumers and generally reduced innovation, as handfuls of conglomerates found it easier to enforce market power, reduce investment, and raise prices. The Chinese consider the country’s online networks critical to its participation in the global digital economy, with the NDRC acting as a check against uneven playing fields and abusive business practices.

While you wait by the mailbox for your next Time Warner Cable rate hike notice, retired CEO Glenn Britt just deposited another $4.3 million in his personal bank account after selling another 30,000 shares of the Time Warner Cable stock he received as part of his lucrative compensation package. Just last month, he dumped 129,600 shares for a cool $17.3 million.

Remarkably, the more shares he sells, the more stock he seems to accumulate. In January, Britt was left with 158,947 shares in Time Warner Cable. But after Tuesday’s sale, he now directly owns 177,542 shares, thanks to a very generous retirement package.

If Britt sold every remaining share he owns at this week’s stock price, he’d walk away with another $25.8 million.

His replacement Rob Marcus, on the job for less than two months, is also owed a $56 million golden parachute for selling off the company to Comcast.

Sen. Schumer

Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.), who quickly praised Comcast’s $45 billion buyout of Time Warner Cable on speculation it would preserve jobs in New York has now recused himself from any further consideration of the merger after revelations emerged his younger brother is integrally involved in the deal.

The American Lawyer magazine named Robert Schumer, a partner at Paul Weiss, its “Dealmaker of the Week.” Schumer is leading the Paul Weiss law firm’s team advising Time Warner Cable on its sale to Comcast in a $45.2 billion all-stock deal.

“As Senator Schumer and his brother had never discussed the matter before, the piece in American Lawyer was the first Senator Schumer learned that his brother had worked on the deal,” said Max Young, a spokesman for Schumer, in a statement. “Now that he’s aware of his brother’s involvement, Senator Schumer will recuse himself from Congressional consideration of the matter to avoid any appearance of bias.”

Most of Sen. Schumer’s support for the deal surrounded a commitment he obtained from top Comcast lobbyist David Cohen to honor Time Warner Cable’s plan to add jobs to a commercial services call center opening in Buffalo. Schumer was integral in the effort to get Time Warner to locate the new call center at Compass East, the site of the former Sheehan Hospital on Buffalo’s east side. The call center is expected to employ 250-300 workers and add 150 jobs over five years.  With 1,000 Time Warner Cable jobs on the line in western New York and over 10,000 throughout the state, Schumer sought commitments from Cohen that Comcast would not slash jobs as part of more than $1 billion in cost savings expected from the deal. Cohen would only commit to honoring the jobs at the Buffalo call center and other job commitments already in the works.

Analysts expect Comcast will heavily cut middle management positions from Time Warner’s workforce and eliminate several customer care centers as part of the merger. Comcast’s massive “customer care” operation is heavily committed to offshore call centers staffed by low paid, English-challenged operators. Comcast’s poor customer service earned the company fines last summer in Seattle.

Schumer’s recusal is a blow to Comcast’s effort to win the deal’s approval in Washington, where the deal will face intense anti-trust scrutiny.

Robert Schumer told American Lawyer the deal was specifically structured to expect many of the regulatory questions.

“We obviously had to be confident that we believed the deal could get done,” he told the magazine. “There were significant negotiations around the contract terms involving the regulatory approvals, but obviously we were very comfortable with it.”

But family connections mean Sen. Schumer will not be among those championing the merger deal.

Google has proposed expanding its gigabit fiber network to nine metropolitan areas around the United States, but none of them include cities in the Mid-Atlantic and Northeast dominated by Time Warner Cable, Comcast, and Verizon FiOS.

Altogether, the expansion project could bring fiber to the home Internet service to 34 new cities:

• Arizona: Phoenix, Scottsdale, Tempe
• California: San Jose, Santa Clara, Sunnyvale, Mountain View, Palo Alto
• Georgia: Atlanta, Avondale Estates, Brookhaven, College Park, Decatur, East Point, Hapeville, Sandy Springs, Smyrna
• North Carolina: Charlotte, Carrboro, Cary, Chapel Hill, Durham, Garner, Morrisville, Raleigh
• Oregon: Portland, Beaverton, Hillsboro, Gresham, Lake Oswego, Tigard
• Tennessee: Nashville-Davidson
• Texas: San Antonio
• Utah: Salt Lake City

Google’s Fiber Blog:

Now that we’ve learned a lot from our Google Fiber projects in Kansas City, Austin and Provo, we want to help build more ultra-fast networks. So we’ve invited cities in nine metro areas around the U.S.—34 cities altogether—to work with us to explore what it would take to bring them Google Fiber.

We aim to provide updates by the end of the year about which cities will be getting Google Fiber. Between now and then, we’ll work closely with each city’s leaders on a joint planning process that will not only map out a Google Fiber network in detail, but also assess what unique local challenges we might face. These are such big jobs that advance planning goes a long way toward helping us stick to schedules and minimize disruption for residents.

We’re going to work on a detailed study of local factors that could affect construction, like topography (e.g., hills, flood zones), housing density and the condition of local infrastructure. Meanwhile, cities will complete a checklist of items that will help them get ready for a project of this scale and speed. For example, they’ll provide us with maps of existing conduit, water, gas and electricity lines so that we can plan where to place fiber. They’ll also help us find ways to access existing infrastructure—like utility poles—so we don’t unnecessarily dig up streets or have to put up a new pole next to an existing one.

While we do want to bring Fiber to every one of these cities, it might not work out for everyone. But cities who go through this process with us will be more prepared for us or any provider who wants to build a fiber network. In fact, we want to give everyone a boost in their thinking about how to bring fiber to their communities; we plan to share what we learn in these 34 cities, and in the meantime you can check out some tips in a recent guest post on the Google Fiber blog by industry expert Joanne Hovis. Stay tuned for updates, and we hope this news inspires more communities across America to take steps to get to a gig.

Google does not guarantee every community will actually get the service, and a read between the lines makes it clear that a close working relationship between Google and city officials and utilities will be essential for projects to move forward. Bureaucratic red tape could be a fiber-killer in some of these communities, as could an intransigent utility fighting to keep Google fiber off utility-owned poles.

Google continues to completely ignore the northeastern United States for fiber expansion. Analysts suggest Google will not enter areas where fiber broadband service already exists, and this region of the country is home to the largest deployment of Verizon’s FiOS. Despite the fact Verizon has canceled further expansion, and large sections of the region have little chance of seeing a fiber upgrade anytime soon, Google seems more interested in serving the middle of the country and fast growing areas including North Carolina, Georgia, Phoenix and Texas. Its choice of San Jose obviously reflects the presence of Silicon Valley.