In his latest op-ed published in the Benton Foundation's Digital Beat blog, former Federal Communications Commission Chairman Michael Copps says the proposed Comcast-Time Warner Cable merger is bad news all around -- "bad for consumers, competition, and our very democracy." He focuses on three key facts:
- The merged company would further diminish competition.
- Consumers, long hurting from over-priced cable and from scarce and costly broadband, would face even higher bills.
- This proposal, if approved, would wreak significant harm on our civic dialogue and, indeed, on our democracy.
Copps concludes:
I don’t believe that, apart from the cable barons themselves, anyone would welcome the cableization of the Internet. Yet that is precisely the danger here. And who better to cableize it than the biggest cable company? What a tragic denial of the promise of the Internet this would be! Let’s get rid of this threat right now with clear and straight-from-the-shoulder denials of the merger by the Department of Justice and the FCC. This is a time for “No!”
Read the op-ed at http://benton.org/node/180659