ACA to Hill: Comcast/TWC Deal Threatens Competition

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American Cable Association President Matthew Polka plans to tell the House Judiciary Committee that Comcast's proposed $69 billion merger with Time Warner Cable, and its proposed system spin-off/trade with Charter, will result in a multitude of anticompetitive harms and needs a bunch of fixes if it is to be approved.

Polka is among the witnesses at an oversight hearing on the deal on May 8.

"To put it mildly, the Comcast-TWC transaction is a “big deal” that threatens consumers and competition, likely resulting in higher prices for consumers," he says, according to his prepared testimony.

"As I will discuss, there is more than sufficient evidence already to demonstrate that the proposed transaction will result in significant anticompetitive harms in many ways. ACA is concerned about Comcast as both an MVPD -- the nation's largest --and as a programmer with regionals sports nets (RSNs), cable nets -- USA, Golf, Syfy, Bravo, E!, MSNBC -- as well as TWC as a cable operator with RSNs.

It argues that gives the deal both vertical and horizontal elements and creates potential harms from the combination of the two company's programming assets; from the combination of Comcast's programming assets with distribution assets from TWC and Charter; and from the combination of Comcast's distribution assets with those of TWC and Charter.


ACA to Hill: Comcast/TWC Deal Threatens Competition