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by ebbv 4036 days ago
This isn't any better of an idea than Comcast buying TWC was. It should be stopped for all the same reasons.
1 comments

I’m a bit conflicted. First, Charter is nowhere near as large as Comcast, so no, it wouldn't create a situation where > 50% of American consumer broadband came through one company.

The other thing is, TWC is terribly managed, completely inept. Yes I know everyone hates their local monopoly, but I’ve lived all over the US in the past five years and can say with some authority that TWC is worse.

Rumor has it that the rank-and-file at TWC was hoping for the Comcast merger to go through because they knew their own management couldn't fix the company. Perhaps Charter could pull it off? They are the one broadband ISP I have no experience with.

Charter is smaller but it's still a regional monopoly just like Comcast and TWC are. Yes the Comcast + TWC regional monopoly would have been more monstrous than the Charter + TWC one, but that doesn't mean that either is good. They're both bad.

TWC's internal issues are completely and entirely beside the point.

Charter is generally better-behaved than TWC--less peering congestion, better customer service in general, etc.

If Charter cleans house I'd expect a pretty big improvement in service quality for TWC customers.

$WORK is a customer & competitor of Charter and TWC, they've sued $WORK for something dumb and lost. I'd still rather deal with Charter over TWC.

Perhaps Charter could pull it off? They are the one broadband ISP I have no experience with.

Charter cable and internet seem pretty solid. Their business phone service has had terrible growing pains over the last year [maybe two years? my memory fails me], with multiple, multiple-hour outages during the middle of business days. Our sales guy told me they've recently decided to implement rolling switch restarts after future emergency outages, instead of trying to restart every switch in their network at once and getting their shoelaces tied together. I told him that sounded like a good idea, so good that perhaps they should have had it from the very beginning.

I can't say I've had the same experience. They've made me miss Comcast - never thought I would say that.
>but I’ve lived all over the US in the past five years and can say with some authority that TWC is worse.

There is absolutely 0 chance TWC is worse than Frontier. I've had both, it's not even close.

Look at the ratio in size WRT who would "infect" who.