Quote:
Originally Posted by Sregener
As long as Dish and DirecTV keep beaming their signals onto US soil, there's not much hope of a cable company being a true monopoly.
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You don't need to be a monopoly to exert or abuse market power.
Antitrust law is about more than market share. It is in fact about anti-consumer behavior.
The cablecos do in fact pose a consumer problem because of their throttling practices: with Netflix and other TV-alternative services making up the bulk of consumer internet bandwidth consumption, the cablecos have control over the service quality of their competitors, which is why Apple has been trying to tilt the table in their favor through backroom deals to grease their entry into the market.
A familiar tactic, no?
The cablecos in general, and Comcast in particular, are under enough net neutrality pressure that the kind of deal Apple needs to enter the business this late in the game is unlikely until the merger is complete and probably beyond.