Opinion
Consumers will not benefit from a bigger Comcast and less competition.
Frankly, I’m not sure I trust Comcast. They have always tried to help when I have issues, so I have to give their customer service a nod, but under load their connection speed always drops. I really don’t care too much about speed bursts. I want a consistent speed.
At peak times on Friday and Saturday evening, when I need it, I have trouble streaming movies. (I know about the shared bandwidth, party-line thing and maybe I should just switch to FIOS).
I’m pretty sure they are still throttling services (prioritizing packets as they put it). If we give up on Net Neutrality and allow them free reign, we’ll only get good performance via Comcast delivered content. They have little incentive to help improve our Netflix experience , particularly if their “competitors” aren’t offering anything better.
(on topic article: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-25743200 )
… to make things worse, they have decided they should have their own OS. Just what consumers need, another walled garden to play in. Welcome the X1 Entertainment Operating System http://www.comcast.com/x1
If you want a differing opinion on the merger. Business week is showing how big a tool they are with this article: http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2014-02-18/comcast-time-warner-merger-good-for-competition-and-consumers (Dude, that piece of advertorial must have come straight from the offices of Comcast).
If you’d prefer to read something a bit more objective: http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2014/02/how-the-us-could-block-the-comcasttime-warner-cable-merger/