If you live in Eden Prairie and you buy your television signal from a cable television company, you are a customer of Time Warner Cable – but not for much longer.
Time Warner Cable and one of their national competitors in the cable television business, Comcast, have reached an agreement to “exchange” customers in certain markets so that they will no longer have to compete against each other directly. This will allow them to focus their individual corporate competitive strategies against a common foe: satellite television.
Comcast came to Minnesota in 2002. They are the largest cable operator in the Twin Cities. Their service area covers St. Paul and the eastern suburbs, but also stretches around the north side of the metro area and catches places like, Anoka, Blaine, Maple Grove, and Plymouth.
Comcast is the nation’s largest cable operator. It’s roots are in The South. It started out as a small cable television company in Tupelo, Mississippi in 1963 under the leadership of the Roberts’ family. In fact, a member of the Roberts’ family, Mr. Brian Roberts, is the Chairman, President, and Chief Executive Officer of the company. The 2004 revenues for Comcast were $20,307,000,000. Yes, that’s right. Over twenty billion dollars.
Comcast and Time Warner have now officially approached Eden Prairie and the other cities where customers will be “exchanged” to seek City Council approval for this deal. Federal law requires the City to act upon their request for approval within 120 days of yesterday. That’s when I met the Comcast government affaris manager and he handed over the FCC Form 394 Application, which is what triggers the official 120 day clock to start ticking.
But before anyone gets too excited about what we might extract from the cable giants in exchange for a favorable ruling, let’s be sure to acknowledge that the regulatory deck is indeed stacked in their favor. City Councils are restricted to considering the “legal, technical, and financial” wherewithal of the absorbing cable company. Cities cannot consider programming, community involvement, or any other factor outside of the Big Three when deciding whether or not to grant approval for the deal to go through here in Eden Prairie.
So based on the legal technical, and financial capacities of Comcast, I’d be very (very) surprised if Comcast was not Eden Prairie’s new cable television provider by the end of this year, or early into the next.
Learn to like them. They’ll be your only choice for cable television. That’s just the way it works.
One Comment
Is there any update on this? The first I heard of it was a few weeks ago. I received a flyer from Qwest trying to scare me about Comcast and offering their services.
I’m a little concerned about my internet access (currently through Time Warner/Earthlink). I work entirely from home and can’t afford an interruption in service. I can’t find a definitive date on when this changeover is going to occur.