Politicians Didn’t Stop the Comcast–Time Warner Deal. You Did.

[Commentary] The collapse of Comcast’s plan to buy Time Warner Cable is a big victory for anyone who watches TV or uses the Internet. But it won’t be the last time the interests of consumers clash with the desires of big corporations in the media and technology space. Here are five lessons from this fight I think we should keep in mind going forward.

1. We should believe in the power of grassroots activism: we won because ordinary Americans can wield extraordinary power when they raise their voices.
2. We should empower regulators to do their jobs: This decision illustrates an important reason why we have the FCC (and federal regulatory agencies in general): to protect the American people from being taken advantage of by big corporations.
3. We should still be worried about lack of competition: Even without this deal, there is far too little competition in the cable and broadband markets.
4. We should remember when corporations break their promises: Comcast had a hard time convincing me, and regulators, that this deal wouldn’t hurt consumers. Part of the reason why is that we had heard similar promises from Comcast before -- and they’d been broken time and time again.
5. We should always put consumers first in media and technology policy: I happened to know a lot about consolidation in media because I used to work in media. But to a lot of people, vertical integration and antitrust law sound like obscure, and almost comically boring, topics. And that’s a shame. Because this is really about consumers, and the services they rely on as part of their daily lives, and how much they have to pay for those services every month.