Charter Offers To Buy Time Warner For $61.3B

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Doesn't this sound familiar? It was fourteen years ago, almost to the day, that AOL paid $164 billion for Time Warner. We all know how that turned out. ;)

But a deal confirmed on Monday by Charter may still be a long way away. The offer, which comes out at $132.50 a share, saw Time Warner Cable ($TWC) dip slightly just before the closing bell. Shares in the cable giant rose by 0.5 percent, almost offsetting any end-of-day losses.
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Man talk about shit buying out worse fucking shit.

Its like if Kim Kardashian and Lindsey Lohan combined into one fucking retarded whiny monster that spends its time snorting coke off of any cock near by.
 
Less competition is never a good thing especially since the USA lags most of the world with fast speed penetration and good prices.
 
Those fuckers just raised my bill by $15 because i'm a loyal customer.
 
heatlesssun said:
This will face significant anti-trust hurdles.
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I agree ... if there is any regional overlap of this I doubt it would be approved ... if they shot down the ATT/TMobile merger there is no way they will approve this one ... the only way this would have any chance is if there are no cities where they compete with each other
 
What the fuck. Instead of buying another provider, why don't they decide to actually get some kind of quality for their broadcasts. The HD picture looks so damn bad. I thought it was the TV at first, but I tried a Blu-ray and it looked really good. Same with netflix/amazon instant. Fuck Charter.
 
how would this merger affect the quality of current time warner customers? i have charter and i have no complaints at all, it's pretty damn good actually. I've heard nothing but bad things about time warner.
 
From rumor to actually happening.

Please, somebody do something to prevent this from happening. I will miss my no cap data plan if TWC is sold to Charter.
 
snowcrash said:
From rumor to actually happening.

Please, somebody do something to prevent this from happening. I will miss my no cap data plan if TWC is sold to Charter.
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Since when Charter had a data cap?

I might be the exception but I HATE TWC. They increased the speed twice and my bill didn't go up once. With TWC, I'm paying for 20MB down what I was paying for 50MB down with Charter. *shrugs*
 
snowcrash said:
From rumor to actually happening.

Please, somebody do something to prevent this from happening. I will miss my no cap data plan if TWC is sold to Charter.
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To be fair, Charter internet is actually pretty consistent and good. I also believe they don't really enforce their cap, at least from what I read.
 
I may be wrong, but if Charter is jsut a cable op like TWC then there is no monopoly to be created... I have never seen anywhere where you had 2 choices for cable TV (speaking strictly of actual coax) so the competition wouldn't change as there would still be charter/twc & whatever else there already is.
 
Apparently anti-trust might not be an issue since Charter is much smaller than the #2 company Time Warner (Comcast is number 1) ... the combined company would still only be number 3 (if DirectTV is included as a competitor) ... however, this is a hostile takeover and there is no guarantee this will be approved by the shareholders (TWC management has already rejected the offer as too low) ... this is also likely to be opposed by the movie studios who do not want to see the market consolidated
 
bastage said:
I may be wrong, but if Charter is jsut a cable op like TWC then there is no monopoly to be created... I have never seen anywhere where you had 2 choices for cable TV (speaking strictly of actual coax) so the competition wouldn't change as there would still be charter/twc & whatever else there already is.
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This. I doubt that there would be much of an issue at the federal level as you would be replacing one monopoly with another. No real change in competition at a local level, just a transfer of subscribers. In terms of customer service, I have actually had a positive experience with them and they have the cheapest internet and TV for the price in my area, albeit with the other options being either DSL or satellite for internet and TV respectively.
 
"Charter offers... services to more than 6.8 million customers across the United States.

Time Warner Cable has an estimated 14 million cable subscribers across the U.S."

As much as I like to see competition, the truth is this might not be stopped by the FTC. We're talking about approximately 21 million customers. With a US population of nearly 320 million, this less-than-7 percent chunk would hardly be considered monopolistic from an over-all standpoint. Sure, some regions are going to be left with less choices, but many regions - like mine - never had the choice of the other provider to begin with.

AT&T U-Verse has more customers right now than Charter. Dish has just as many subscribers as TWC. You also have Cox and Comcast, as well as many more smaller, regional providers. It's going to be a tough sell to say this potential takeover is monopolistic.

With that being said, I pray it doesn't happen in the name of competition.
 
Scythe said:
Wow. Charter? How in the hell do these guys have this kind of money?
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Im not sure. Half the size, half the market cap. But I think charter is owned by a bigger conglomerate so maybe their parent company is footing the bill for this.
 
I love my TWC, hope it doesn't change. I haven't had a noticeable outage in over a year and my speeds stay as described all day and all night.
 
ccmfreak2 said:
"Charter offers... services to more than 6.8 million customers across the United States.

Time Warner Cable has an estimated 14 million cable subscribers across the U.S."

As much as I like to see competition, the truth is this might not be stopped by the FTC. We're talking about approximately 21 million customers. With a US population of nearly 320 million, this less-than-7 percent chunk would hardly be considered monopolistic from an over-all standpoint. Sure, some regions are going to be left with less choices, but many regions - like mine - never had the choice of the other provider to begin with.

AT&T U-Verse has more customers right now than Charter. Dish has just as many subscribers as TWC. You also have Cox and Comcast, as well as many more smaller, regional providers. It's going to be a tough sell to say this potential takeover is monopolistic.

With that being said, I pray it doesn't happen in the name of competition.
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Please don't forget that those are households, not single individuals. Those 320 million people also live in households, not individually.
 
The bigger the monopoly the more Congressmen they have on their payroll, that's how it works heah!
 
timta2 said:
Please don't forget that those are households, not single individuals. Those 320 million people also live in households, not individually.
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True ... households in the USA is about 125 million or so

Also, this is a hostile takeover and not a planned merger ... that will factor in as well since TWC is opposed to the merger and the price being offered
 
The offer was rejected

http://www.lightreading.com/mergers-and-acquisitions/charters-$613b-bid-for-twc-rebuffed-again/d/d-id/707261?
 
As consumers don't let this happen. TWC is actually very decent uncapped service, speed, reliability and value.
 
mi7chy said:
As consumers don't let this happen. TWC is actually very decent uncapped service, speed, reliability and value.
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Decent? I recently went off my "promotional" 12 month price of $45 for 20Mb. Guess what the price went up to? $78 bucks for friggin 20Mb, you have got to be shitting me. So I get to call and complain until they either lower my bill or I cancel.

Also, they tried upping the modem rental fee from $3 to $6 so I bought my own and said FU.
 
Godmachine said:
Man talk about shit buying out worse fucking shit.

Its like if Kim Kardashian and Lindsey Lohan combined into one fucking retarded whiny monster that spends its time snorting coke off of any cock near by.
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+1 This made me laugh my ass off:D:p
 
Lucas Film, worth $12 Billion. Some cable company, worth $63 Billion. Just goes to show it's better to pass along content, as a middle man, than to actually produce content.
 
mi7chy said:
As consumers don't let this happen. TWC is actually very decent uncapped service, speed, reliability and value.
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Charters base service is now 60 meg down and 3 up. Charter isnt strict on the caps unless your obviously abusing it.

you likely wouldnt even notice the difference if it happened other then the speed bump.
 
German Muscle said:
Charters base service is now 60 meg down and 3 up. Charter isnt strict on the caps unless your obviously abusing it.

you likely wouldnt even notice the difference if it happened other then the speed bump.
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It is 30 down, 4 up. Not sure where you got 60 from, unless your area gets special treatment.
 
German Muscle said:
Its 60 down now. Your area just hasnt rolled it out yet. ;)
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Oh damn, just saw that. I am not really betting on seeing this in my area anytime soon though. I bet some politician is gonna say it's unethical here in California to offer free speed increases :D. I have noticed it being out for a few minutes per day for the past week or so though. Not sure if that's a good sign or them just not being able to provide for my neighborhood.
 
SGA76 said:
http://www.cleveland.com/business/i...rees_to_purchase_of.html#incart_river_default
Pray it doesn't go through
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It is unlikely the government would stop this ... There is little overlap in markets between them and Comcast is planning to divest 3 million customers where there is overlap ... The only risk of a merger like this is on Comcast's entertainment side where they might be able to withhold programming from competitors, but I doubt there is much benefit of doing that
 
Well this is annoying..I don't currently have a download cap and am going to be pretty damned unhappy if they try and force one.
 
Oh great, throttling and caps, something I have not had to deal with before now. :( Guess I will be reading more books then.
 
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