Comcast taking hits on merger, prices

Maybe Comcast can make a clean start as Xfinity. One thing becomes ever more clear though: as Comcast the company is a lightning rod for criticism. Free Press, which calls itself a national, nonpartisan, nonprofit organization working to reform the media has circulated an easily duplicated email asking its members to petition Congress to nix the Comcast-NBC Universal deal. The email contends that the merger would consolidate too much power in one place.

The use of email is slightly ironic because Comcast's high-speed data service, which millions use for their email, is raising its rates $2 across the board. That's drawn the attention and ire of FCC Commissioner Mignon Clyburn who called it "an issue we must examine closely going forward."

Of course Free Press agreed with that, pointing out that the best way to keep broadband prices low is to encourage competition. "Our competition failures are why America continues to lag [behind] our global counterparts in every measure of broadband services and they are what drove Congress to ask the FCC for a National Broadband Plan," Free Press Policy Director Ben Scott said in the inevitable statement.

For more:
- see this story
- and this story from the Washington Post
- and this release from Free Press

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