The No. 1 and No. 2 cable providers will join forces to become a giant that will control around 30% of the television market, as well as almost half of the bundle market for Internet, TV and phone.
If and when the $45 billion Comcast-Time Warner Cable deal is approved, Comcast will effectively become the largest Internet provider in America. But how will this deal affect consumers around the county? How will it affect Internet freedom and American's access to affordable, fast broadband?
Comcast's larger number of subscribers will give the company even more of a stronghold on a market that critics already say is too monopolized, and this deal should make the situation even worse.
"It's pretty troubling for any one company to have such extreme gatekeeper power," said John Bergmayer, a senior staff attorney at Public Knowledge, an advocacy group that has pushed for more competition in the telecommunications market. "It basically gives one single company the power to influence the future of the industry."
Officials from Free Press, another pro-Internet freedom organization, said the merger will bring even less competition to a market with very few players.
"This deal would be a disaster for consumers and must be stopped," said president and CEO Craig Aaron in a statement.
See also: The Digital Divide Is Still Leaving Americans Behind
Comcast and Time Warner Cable, however, were not direct competitors in any of the local markets in which they have a presence. That's why competition isn't a reason for concern, and it probably won't stop the merger from happening on antitrust grounds, according to Scott Wallsten, the vice president for research and senior fellow at the Technology Policy Institute.
However, if not direct competition, consumers will lose benchmark competition.
"A customer can never choose between Time Warner Cable and Comcast, but they might be able to see, to have an idea how Comcast is doing relative to Time Warner Cable," Wallsten told Mashable.
That ability to compare might give consumers a chance to complain to their cable provider, and force it to offer more competitive prices or services that others are already offering, he said.
Critics, moreover, point to the fact that Comcast will now have even more leverage to impose restrictions and get more favorable deals with other companies because it's not just a cable and broadband provider. Comcast is also a content provider after its merger with NBCUniversal, which was proposed in 2009 and approved in 2011.
Considering that the D.C. Appeals Court struck down net neutrality rules, the fear is that Comcast will favor its content over the one of competitors, avoiding deals with other cable and Internet providers like, say, Google Fiber.
It's easy to see Comcast as a "great digital boogeyman," as Berin Szoka, president of Techfreedom, a libertarian tech policy think tank, told Mashable.
But Szoka warned that if you're worried about net neutrality, "you should be thrilled" about this deal because Comcast is bound by a series of net neutrality rules imposed by the Federal Communications Commission as conditions to approve the merger with NBCUniversal. These rules prevent Comcast from discriminating among web services and impose protections for online video providers as well.
Comcast itself claimed in an investor presentation Thursday that the merger means "more communities will benefit from the public interest commitments" it made as part of the NBCUniversal dea.
While net neutrality might be dead for everyone else, it is alive and well for Comcast, which has to respect these rules until 2018 as the FCC ordered.
"Comcast has to provide to all [multi video programming distributors] at fair-market value and non-discriminatory prices, terms and conditions, any affiliated content that Comcast makes available online to its own subscribers," Szoka explained.
Michael Hiltzik, a Los Angeles Times business columnist, wrote that after 2018, though, "the shackles are off." But Szoka and Wallsten don't think Comcast will change its behavior even then.
See also: Why Monopolistic Telecoms Threaten Internet Equality
Google shouldn't be worried about Comcast trying to impose higher prices to deliver NBCUniversal channels via Google Fiber, they both argued. Moreover, big Internet providers are now so powerful they can hold their own in negotiating with Comcast.
"The issue really isn't about Google, Netflix, Facebook, Amazon, etc. Their content is simply too important for an ISP to have much scope for misbehavior," Wallsten said.
Of course, these net neutrality concerns, before and after 2018, might be assuaged if the FCC reclassifies cable providers and imposes net neutrality rules on them.
Competition and net neutrality issues aside, Susan Crawford, a prominent telecommunications expert, said there's another problem. A more powerful Comcast might slow down the expansion of fiber-optic networks, which are more essential than ever in a country where its citizens have to pay more for lower Internet speeds than their counterparts in other cities across the world.
"High-speed wired connections are now infrastructure, just like bridges, roads, and water," she wrote in her Thursday Bloomberg column, repeating her mantra that the Internet should be treated as a utility. "We can't flourish as a country unless someone takes the long view and ensures that American businesses aren't forced to pay whatever tribute Comcast demands in order to thrive."

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