Culling through all the various due diligence and Securities and Exchange Commission filings, SNL Kagan on Tuesday released what is perhaps the clearest numerical snapshot yet of what a combined Comcast (NASDAQ: CMCSA)-Time Warner Cable (NYSE: TWC) would look like, post-merger.
The newly merged giant would control nearly 29.1 million U.S. residential video subscribers, after Comcast divests 3.9 million pay TV customers in the joint venture with Charter Communications (NASDAQ: CHTR) known as SpinCo. The wedded Comcast-TWC would house about 29 percent of the U.S. pay TV market, just under the Federal Communications Commission's unofficial 30 percent limit.
The combined company would also control 27.9 million residential fixed broadband customers, accounting for nearly 36 percent of the market, and 13.4 million residential voice customers. In terms of business customers, the behemoth would have around 900,000 video customers, 1.7 million fixed broadband clients and 1 million voice subscribers.
A more precise numerical sketching of the proposed merger comes as TWC customers in New York flood the phone lines and comment widgets of the New York Public Service Commission (PSC) looking to stop the deal.
As Ars Technica reported Tuesday, TWC has about 2.2 million subscribers in the area, many prone to activism.
"Both Time Warner Cable and Comcast already have monopolies in each and every territory in which they do business today, and combining the companies will reinforce those individual territorial monopolies under a single corporate umbrella, with NBC-Universal thrown in to boot," resident Frank Brice argued in a comment to the PSC posted Monday.
"I, as a NYS resident, am absolutely terrified by the potential of this merger," another resident, Michael Kennedy, posted. "Time Warner has raised my rates no less than three times over the last two years with no improvement in service (to speak nothing of their deplorable customer service). This merger will destroy what little competition exists in the Internet delivery service, raise everyone's bills, and in the end not benefit not one single New Yorker."
For more:
- read this SNL Kagan report
- read this Ars Technica story
Related links:
Consumers opposed to Comcast-Time Warner Cable merger, survey says
Comcast-TWC merger opposed by powerful computer industry group
Protest mars Comcast shareholder meeting; Sen. Franken seeks clarity on net neutrality abidance