Yesterday, the House Judiciary Committee’s Subcommittee on Regulatory Reform, Commercial, and Antitrust Law held a hearing on the proposed merger of Comcast and Time Warner Cable (TWC), during which Comcast Executive Vice President David Cohen was peppered with a number of tough questions from lawmakers. That should come as no surprise – this is a significant transaction that will affect tens of millions of consumers.
While lawmakers are right to carefully scrutinize the deal, they should resist the urge to more actively involve the federal government unless there is clear and specific reason to believe that laws are being broken or that the merger would result in excessive market consolidation. Neither appears to be the case here.
That’s why NTU joined a coalition of free market organizations to author a letter to Senators Chuck Grassley and Mike Lee – both key members of the Senate Judiciary Committee – to urge them to support the consolidation.
The letter makes a number of strong arguments about the importance of free markets and the vast potential benefits for consumers, but the key takeaway for policymakers should be that the merger will not limit consumer choices in any way.
As it states: “Because Comcast and TWC do not operate in the same markets (and therefore, consumers will face no loss whatsoever of competitive choice in television and video, broadband Internet, and telephone choices) there is no apparent substantive antitrust concern here. The transaction will simply swap one cable company for another in some markets – something which is competitively neutral on its face.” (emphasis mine)
Again, this is a $45 billion deal that will affect tens of millions of cable and Internet users, so it certainly makes sense for Congress to focus attention on it. But at the same time, lawmakers should avoid engaging in political grandstanding or, even worse, intervening in a transaction that will benefit consumers.