Esquire: Why Comcast Will Be Allowed to Buy Time Warner Cable and Kill Net Neutrality [View all]

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For the past three years, Comcast's Senior VP of Governmental Affairs has been Meredith Baker. Baker's last job was the Commissioner of the Federal Communications Commission, where she signed off on the controversial NBCUniversal sale to Comcast in 2009.

Now we know that Baker, the former FCC Commissioner and a public official, was around to help make sure net neutrality died so Internet costs could soar, and that Time Warner Cable would be allowed to fold into Comcast, despite claims that the new megacorp might violate antitrust laws.

Neither the new net neutrality rules nor a Time Warner Cable sale to Comcast could possibly benefit an average consumer or a small business. Both are likely to pass anyway.

Today, the FCC announced it will allow for a euphemistic "Fast Lane on the web," demolishing Net Neutrality, and allowing content providers to charge both consumers and companies more if they don't want speed to their website or service artificially throttled.

It's a plan universally reviled by tech companies, who believe the low barrier to entry of a speedbump-free web allowed for the innovation boon that created the successes of Google, Twitter and Facebook.

Comcast is attempting to purchase TWC for $45 billion, and they'll need approval from the FCC to do it. That's where Baker comes in.

Critics of the deal, like Slate's Matthew Yglesias, argue that the purchase of the country's second-largest cable operator by the biggest cable operator "will in effect turn two medium-size regional monopolists into a big sprawling monopolist. But in terms of consumer-facing competition, you're going from zero to two times zero."

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http://www.esquire.com/blogs/news/comcast-twc-chart