Another Merger....Everyone Knows the Drill

A few months after regulators approved its $48.5M merger with DirecTV, AT&T, in an October 13^th letter to the FCC, raise concerns that the Charter-Time Warner (and Bright House) merger would harm competitors and consumers.  They claim that cable firms, who choose not to compete head-to-head in local markets (see map), will find it easier to coordinate national activities, namely sharing affiliated programming with each other and raising costs to non-cable rivals.*  AT&T claims that:

“Cable companies share common, national rivals in broadband, video, and telecommunications services.   These geographically segregated cable companies therefore have incentives to coordinate their activities to fend off these common rivals and have demonstrated the ability to do so.”

Dish also petitioned the FCC on Tuesday to deny the merger claiming that similar to the Comcast-Time Warner merger, the larger operator could harm online video services (e.g. Sling).

Publicly opposing the merger is what the satellite providers have to do.  (In hindsight, Verizon should have been on record opposing the 2011 AT&T-T-Mobile.)  A more concentrated market helps the remaining competitors.  In the months/years ahead, expect more consolidated in the saturated pay TV/broadband market.  And, expect more weak statements of opposition from competitors.

*While AT&T is now the largest paid TV provider with 26M subscribers, its 5M broadband subscribers is much smaller than the 20M+ subscribers each for Comcast and a combined Charter-TW-Bright House.