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'Comcast Corporation', () based in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, is the largest cable company^[1] and the largest broadband Internet service provider in the United States. Comcast now serves a total of 24.1 million cable customers, 14.1 million digital cable customers, 12.4 million high-speed internet customers, and 3.5 million voice customers. It develops broadband cable networks and is also involved in television programming content. The company employs over 90,000 people and also has corporate offices in Houston, Detroit, and Denver.
Comcast was founded in 1963 by Ralph J. Roberts, Daniel Aaron, Edward Rex and Julian A. Brodsky based on a recommendation from Warren "Pete" Musser, of Harrisburg, who brought the deal to Ralph Roberts to buy his first cable system in Tupelo, Mississippi. The company was incorporated in Pennsylvania in 1969, under the name ''Comcast Corporation from American Cable Systems'', though a former insider says that "Comcast" is a derivation of the name "Communications and Broadcasting". Moving into the area of programming content, Comcast became majority owner of Comcast-Spectacor, Comcast SportsNet (in Chicago, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, Washington DC/Baltimore, MD, metro Sacramento, Detroit, and Houston ), E! Entertainment Television, Style Network, G4, The Golf Channel and Versus (formerly known as Outdoor Life Network) over a period of years. In 2006, Comcast started a new sports channel in cooperation with Major League Baseball's New York Mets, SportsNet New York in the greater New York City region.
Comcast also has a variety network known as CN8, or the Comcast Network, available exclusively to Comcast and Cablevision subscribers. The channel shows news, sports, and entertainment and places emphasis in Philadelphia, New England, and the Baltimore/Washington, D.C. areas, though the channel is also available in New York, Pittsburgh, and Richmond. In August 2004, Comcast started a channel called CET (Comcast Entertainment Television). It is only available to Colorado Comcast subscribers. It focuses on Life in Colorado. It also carries some NHL & NBA Games when Altitude Sports & Entertainment is carrying the NBA or NHL. In January 2006, CET became the primary channel for Colorado's Emergency Alert System in the Denver Metro Area.
The UK division was sold to NTL in 1998. After the sale of their cellular division to SBC Communications of San Antonio and the acquisition of Greater Philadelphia Cablevision in 1999, Comcast and MediaOne announced a $60 billion merger which did not occur until three years later (as AT&T Broadband).
In 2002, Comcast paid the University of Maryland $25 million for naming rights to the new basketball arena built on the College Park campus, named Comcast Center.
On January 3, 2005, Comcast announced that it would become the anchor tenant in a new skyscraper in downtown Philadelphia, to be named the Comcast Center, not to be confused with the Maryland arena mentioned above. The 975 ft skyscraper, while still under construction, has topped off and is officially the tallest building in Pennsylvania.
In December 2005, Comcast announced the creation of Comcast Interactive Media (CIM), a new division focused on online media.

Contents

Acquisitions

Adelphia purchase

thePlatform purchase

High-speed internet service

Controversies

Monopoly Effects

References

External links

Acquisitions

Comcast bought 25% of Group W Cable in 1986, doubling their size. Two years later, they bought a 50% share in Storer Communications, Inc. They bought the American Cellular Network Corporation the same year before combining with Metrophone in 1990. Comcast became the third largest cable operator in 1994 following their purchase of Maclean-Hunter's American division. Comcast owned the majority of the electronic retailer QVC from 1995-2004 when its share was sold to Liberty Media. Following other acquisitions, Microsoft invested $1 billion in Comcast in 1997.
In 2001, Comcast announced they would acquire the assets of the largest cable television operator at the time, AT&T Broadband (AT&T's spun-off cable TV service) for $44.5 Billion USD. In 2002, Comcast acquired all assets of AT&T Broadband, thus making Comcast the largest cable television company in the United States with over 22 million subscribers. This also spurred the start of Comcast Advertising Sales (using AT&T's groundwork) which would later be renamed Comcast Spotlight.

When it was first announced that AT&T Broadband and Comcast were going to merge, the chosen name for the new company was "AT&T Comcast". That decision was changed so as to not confuse current and future investors in the company, and the merged company retained the Comcast name.
On February 11, 2004, Comcast surprised the media industry by announcing an unsolicited $66 billion bid for The Walt Disney Company, a deal that would have made Comcast the largest media conglomerate in the world. After rejection by Disney and uncertain response from investors, the bid was abandoned in April. It was later discovered that the deal was mostly for Comcast to acquire one of Disney's most profitable operations, ESPN, in an attempt to expand its sports reach. Comcast has since opted to expand OLN's sports coverage with the Tour de France and the NHL, and in the process renaming the network in the United States ''Versus''. Comcast's NHL deal also obligates them to launch a U.S. version of NHL Network by the summer of 2007. However, if either Comcast or the NHL decides to void the final year of their three year deal, the planned launch could be cancelled.
Comcast announced on March 25, 2004 that their new gaming-oriented television network G4 (operated by subsidiary G4 Media, Inc.) would acquire Vulcan Venture's technology-oriented television network TechTV. The deal was finalized on May 10, 2004 - and the two networks became G4techTV on May 28, 2004. On January 11, 2005, Comcast announced that it would drop TechTV from the station's name and again be known as "G4".
On April 8, 2005, a partnership led by Comcast and Sony Pictures Entertainment finalized a deal to acquire MGM and its affiliate studio, United Artists, and create an additional outlet to carry MGM/UA's material for cable and Internet distribution.
On October 31, 2005, Comcast officially announced that it had acquired Susquehanna Communications (SusCom,) a York, PA-based cable television and broadband services provider and unit of the former Susquehanna Pfaltzgraff company, for a net cash investment of approximately $540 million. In this deal Comcast acquired approximately 230,000 basic cable customers, 71,000 digital cable customers, and 86,000 high-speed internet customers. Comcast previously owned approximately 30 percent of Susquehanna Communications.

Adelphia purchase

In April 2005 Comcast and Time Warner announced plans to buy Adelphia Cable. $17.6 billion was to be paid (partly in stock) in the deal that was finalized in the second quarter of 2006 — after the FCC completed a seven-month investigation without raising an objection. Time Warner would become the second largest cable provider in the U.S., ranking behind Comcast. As part of the same deal, Time Warner and Comcast would also trade existing subscribers to create larger clusters of customers for each company in various geographical areas.
The changes became effective on August 1, 2006. As an example, Comcast's systems in the Dallas-Fort Worth Metroplex were traded to TWC in exchange for Time Warner's North Louisiana market, which covers Shreveport and Monroe.
Also in August 2006, Comcast and Time Warner dissolved a partnership that controlled the systems in the Houston, Southwest Texas, San Antonio, and Kansas City markets. After the dissolution, Comcast obtained the Houston system, and Time Warner retained the others.^[2] On January 1, 2007, Comcast officially took control of the Houston system, but continued to operate under the Time Warner Cable brand in the interim. As of June 19, 2007, the Time Warner name was officially retired and replaced by Comcast.
Comcast also took over Adelphia systems in the State College, Pennsylvania area.
In early 2007, Comcast took over Adelphia operations in Palm Beach County, FL.

thePlatform purchase

In July 2006, Comcast purchased the Seattle based software company thePlatform. This represented an entree into a new line of business - selling software to allow companies to manage their internet (and IP based) media publishing efforts. Customers of thePlatform include Verizon Wireless, CNBC, Scripps, CourtTV, Amp'd Mobile, and ABC News.

High-speed internet service

Comcast, the largest cable provider in the United States, offers downstream speeds of up to 4, 6, 8, or 17.6 Mbit/s and upstream speeds of 384 kbit/s (48 kB/s), or 768 kbit/s (96 kB/s) for the 8 Mbit/s downstream package, for standard home connections. In some areas, they are offering 16 Mbit/s downstream and 1 or 2 Mbit/s (125 kB/s) upstream as a more expensive, yet speedier alternative; or to keep customers from switching to Verizon's FiOS. These differing speed options are made possible by loading a particular configuration file into the modem. Comcast's PowerBoost technology delivers bursts of 12 to 16 Mbit/s downstream and 1 to 2 Mbit/s upstream with their 6 and 8 Mbit/s packages, respectively.
Many users of cable ISP's wonder why their connection can slow down significantly at certain times of the day; this is because everyone on the line is using a shared bandwidth pool, when you buy service rated at a particular speed from Comcast, you're actually buying service that "can" reach that speed, as Comcast (like all ISPs) oversells its lines.
According to the Comcast High Speed Internet terms of service, customers are provided with dynamic IP addresses.^[3] Comcast has a policy of terminating broadband customers who allegedly use excessive bandwidth. Comcast has declined to disclose a numerical bandwidth limit, arguing that the limit is variable on a monthly basis and dependent on the capacity of specific cable nodes. Comcast claims this policy only affects users whose bandwidth consumption is among the top one percent of high-speed internet customers. Statements issued by Comcast in response to press inquiries suggest that excessive usage is generally defined as several hundred gigabytes per month.^[4][5] However, their terms of service state that a customer's use should not "represent (in the sole judgment of Comcast) an overly large burden on the network."³
As of August 18, 2007, Comcast has begun limiting BitTorrent, LimeWire, and other peer-to-peer application upload speeds through Sandvine, which cannot be bypassed solely by encrypting the packets.^[6]
It is possible to set a router, firewall software, or iptables (under Unix/Linux/BSD) to drop TCP packets carrying the "RST" (Connection Reset) flag, on whatever ports the BitTorrent client uses, or to tunnel BitTorrent traffic through SSH.[1][2]

Controversies

After the Washington Nationals baseball team relocated to Washington, D.C. in 2004, Comcast alienated many fans in the area by refusing to add the Mid-Atlantic Sports Network (MASN), which airs the team's games, to its channel lineup. In July 2006, as a condition of its approval of Comcast's takeover of a portion of Adelphia's assets, the FCC ordered Comcast to enter into binding arbitration with MASN to settle their dispute. As a result, on August 4, 2006, it was announced that Comcast would carry MASN programming starting in September 2006. A price increase was announced as well.
In the Philadelphia region, Comcast uses the FCC's "terrestrial loophole" to avoid negotiations with satellite television services for delivery of Comcast SportsNet Philadelphia, which is transmitted via a closed-wired system instead of satellite (as its predecessor, PRISM, was a local-only service). This essentially denies competition in the Philadelphia market for games of the Philadelphia Phillies (baseball), Philadelphia 76ers (basketball), and Philadelphia Flyers (hockey). Comcast does, however, supply Comcast SportsNet Philadelphia programming to Verizon for their competing FIOS video service, even though FIOS is not available to residents of the city of Philadelphia.
A smaller controversy arose when Comcast and Cox Communications announced that their systems in Connecticut (outside of Comcast's systems in New Haven, Danbury, and the Northwest Corner — all areas considered to have a sizeable number of Mets fans) would not be adding SNY in 2006, if ever, for varying reasons not fully explained. Though a distant third behind the dominant Yankees and Red Sox, this came to the anger of Mets fans who would need to switch to satellite to watch games due to all of the state being in the Mets' designated territory (thus, games would not be available through MLB Extra Innings, and most ESPN telecasts would be blacked-out). Comcast's purchase of Adelphia's systems in the state and Cox's skeptical eye towards RSN carriage in regards to fan loyalties (also done with YES and NESN in the past) also could be factors.
Comcast has not as yet agreed to carry the new Big Ten Network that is due to begin at the start of the upcoming 2007-08 college football season. Under the Big Ten's current television agreement ABC/ESPN has the right to choose which Big Ten conference game to air. Big Ten football games not aired on the regular ABC/ESPN feeds have in recent years been syndicated to local television stations and presented as "ESPN Plus" games. The new Big Ten Network will now have the second choice for conference games. Until Comcast agrees to carry the new Big Ten Network, Comcast viewers are likely to miss at least two games involving their favorite Big Ten team. The Big Ten Network is being carried via satellite by DirecTV.
Legal controversy ensued when Comcast blocked Bit Torrent by sending a RST packet claiming to be Bit Torrent, and denying the connection. This effectively blocks the user from connecting to Bit Torrent, in the same way China's internet firewall would. The controversy arises because Comcast is impersonating Bit Torrent in denying the connection, however further actions have yet to be taken.

Monopoly Effects

Comcast spends millions of dollars annually on government relationships.^[7][8] Regularly Comcast employs the spouses, sons and daughters of influential mayors, councilmen, commissioners, and other officials to assure its continued local monopoly and preferred market allocations, many of which have been questioned as unethical.^{[9][10][11][12]}
In order to provide service to individual homes, a cable provider must place its cable wiring along and across local streets or other rights-of-way. To do so the provider must get permission from the local government(s) that own these streets via rights-of-way permits. Operational permission comes in the form of a document called a local franchise agreement. Most of local government(s) chose to grant permission to only one company, however, recently states have developed broader franchising laws to drive more investment and competition. Changes in the federal law in 1992 had forced local governments to grant permission to other companies to provide service, however the U.S. Government found in 2006 that only 2% of U.S. households had a competitive choice, as the economics of launching competitive service are extremely unattractive. In some cases Comcast, with municipal government approval, had entered into market allocation schemes. By agreeing to not compete head to head, consumers thus are perpetually locked into a single monopoly cable provider with annual price escalations reaching 93% in the past decade.^{[13][14][15][16][17]}
A recent third party survey of citizens in a Comcast franchise area found approximately 62% of the respondents were very dissatisfied (along with another 25% who were dissatisfied) with the cost of cable television service. A majority of the respondents were satisfied with the friendliness and courtesy of customer service personnel, however, approximately 30% of the respondents rated the cable company's performance as poor. With regard to open-ended comments, respondents felt that the cost of the cable service was too high, a need for cable competition existed and the desire for a basic cable package offering was desired. Although respondents cited these critical issues, the local monopoly structure preserves the status quo of poor customer service, limited product choices, no direct competition and uncontrollable annual cable TV price increases. Relief for consumers is being created by state level a multi jurisdictional franchise and service process that will spur investment and competition; thus driving economic development sought by state and local government leaders.^[18]
Comcast strongly lobbies against federal "family tier" and "a la carte" bills that would give consumers the option to purchase individual channels rather than a broad tier of programming. These issues continue to garner attention from state governments, Congress and FCC Chairman Martin.^[19]

References

1. National Cable & Telecommunications Association, ''Top 25 MSOs - As of March 2007''
2. Time Warner Cable, ''Time Warner Cable/Comcast Official Statement''
3. Comcast, ''Comcast High-Speed Internet Acceptable Use Policy''
4. The Boston Globe, ''Not so fast, broadband providers tell big users'' (No longer available)
5. The New York Times, ''Say Good Night, Bandwidth Hog'' (Requires free registration)
6. TorrentFreak, ''Comcast Throttles BitTorrent Traffic, Seeding Impossible''
7. The Center for Public Integrity, ''Comcast Corp. Political Influence''
8. The City Paper, ''Cable group, Comcast spend more then million fighting AT&T''
9. Freepress, ''Prominent Ties Among Comcast Hires''
10. The Washington Post, ''Prominent Ties Among Comcast Hires''
11. The Washington Post, ''Md. Lawmakers Call for Probe of Comcast Ties''
12. Law.com, ''Federal Judge Certifies Antitrust Class Against Comcast''
13. San Francisco Bay Guardian Online, ''The People v. Television''
14. Law.com, ''Motion to Dismiss Fails in Closely-Watched Comcast Antitrust Suit''
15. AN AGREEMENT BY AND BETWEEN THE CITY OF ARVADA AND COMCAST OF COLORADO IX, LCC
16. Federal Communications Commission, ''Report on Cable Industry Prices''
17. The Denver Post, ''Comcast snaps up rival cable systems''
18. River Oaks Communications Corporation, ''CABLE TELEVISION NEEDS ASSESSMENT REPORT''
19. The Center for Public Integrity, ''Comcast Corp. Profile''


★ Comcast Press Room

★ Comcast Corporate Overview

★ Verizon Signs Agreement With Comcast for Comcast SportsNet Philadelphia

★ The Year-Long Comcast Saga

★ Is Comcast's BitTorrent filtering violating the law?

External links

★ Comcast.com: Sales, Stock, and Employment

★ Comcast.net: For Comcast High-Speed Internet customers

★ Yahoo! - Comcast Corporation Company Profile

★ Declan McCullough: The Biggest Spammer on the Net? Comcast?

★ Site for the cable networks Comcast controls

★ The Slowskys Blog