- White House Aide at Soiree Shows Comcast Reach for Deals [Bloomberg] “Led by David Cohen, executive vice president in charge of government affairs, Comcast deploys more than 100 lobbyists, donates millions of dollars to politicians through its political action committee, gets help from charities it supports and enlists two former senators, three retired House members and an ex-Federal Communications Commission member. ‘I have an old fashioned view of advocacy,’ Cohen said in an interview. ‘If you’re right on the merits, you deserve to succeed.’ […] The company also makes friends via the nonprofit Comcast Foundation that Cohen co-chairs. It donated $16.2 million to charities in 2012.”
- Netflix/Comcast accord will bring local streaming links [Philadelphia Inquirer] “Netflix, an on-demand video service, will now connect directly to Comcast’s broadband network in “dozens” of locations around the nation instead of streaming its film and TV content through third-party Internet content-delivery companies – a process that some believe was expensive for Netflix and degraded its service. One or more of the interconnection locations is expected to be in the Philadelphia region, sources say.”
- Consumers Union asks regulators to scrutinize Comcast-Netflix deal [LA Times] “‘We are concerned that many Comcast customers who experienced problems with Netflix sought faster and more expensive services from Comcast to alleviate the problems,’ wrote Consumers Union attorney Delara Derakhshani. ‘Comcast failed to disclose what was transpiring.'”
- Comcast versus the Open Internet [New Yorker] “The deal sets a bad precedent—it will embolden Comcast to extract more tolls from any popular Web company that wants to reach its broadband customers and fears degradation of service. Crucially, there is little that Comcast provides here; the Netflix deal costs it nearly nothing, which is one distinction between a business and a racket.”
- $1.2 billion Comcast tower plan advances in Philly [Newsworks] “Councilman Wilson Goode Jr. questioned Angela Dowd Burton, the head of the city’s Office of Economic Opportunity, about minority contractor participation in the $1.2 billion Comcast Technology Center project. The developers are striving to send 25 percent of the work to racial minorities and 2 percent to women and the disabled.”
- Ignore Paranoid Bloggers: The Comcast-Time Warner Merger Is Good For Consumers [Forbes] “The broadband populists that dominate this conversation like to claim that DSL is not fast enough to be a competitor to cable. But some of DSL’s 31 million subscribers (compared to cable’s 51.5 million) might disagree. And there is good reason to expect DSL speeds to improve – new technology, called vectored DSL, promises 100 Mbps under the right circumstances. And of course, in 6 of the 19 metros, Verizon FIOS fiber service is a robust competitor.”
- Comcast, Time Warner and the Future of the Cable Box [FastCompany] “In acquiring Time Warner, Comcast is obtaining a media company with a much different view of the cable box’s future and the interplay between broadband Internet and cable television. While Time Warner has been willing to work with partners like Apple TV and Roku to provide cable television programming that doesn’t go through actual cable boxes, Comcast’s view is different. Rather than a Roku or smart television future, it seems as though Comcast wants to essentially turn customer’s cable boxes into smart devices.”
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