A merged Comcast and TWC still has plenty of competition

See The Bigger Cable Guys, WSJ, 2-14-14. Excerpts:

"He's right, but unlike the markets for beer, air travel and wireless, cable companies don't compete with each other. They have local franchises and compete against telephone, wireless and satellite companies. So there's no market overlap between systems owned by Comcast and those of Time Warner Cable. Comcast, which is dominant in Philadelphia, will get millions of new customers in New York and Los Angeles. But how can dominance in one geographic region give Comcast new pricing power in a different area?

For both firms, the competition in broadband Internet connections comes from firms like AT&T T -1.02% and Verizon. VZ -1.69% In video programming the cable guys compete with those same firms, plus Dish Network, DISH -2.43% DirecTV, DTV -0.11% Netflix, NFLX -0.24% Google's GOOG +0.24% YouTube and various other online ventures seeking to provide video. In this arena cable operators, regardless of size, are hardly dominant. Comcast CEO Brian Roberts said on a call with reporters Thursday that every single cable operator has lost video customers over the last 10 years.

Another fear is that owning more cable pipes would give the combined firm more leverage in negotiations with the producers of TV and other content. But CBS, CBS +0.54% Disney DIS +1.71% and our former corporate cousins at Fox are big enough to take care of themselves. In any case Mr. Roberts has already promised to divest some three million cable subscribers, so the combined Comcast-TWC would still have 30 million subscribers or less than 30% of the cable market nationwide, about the same share it had a decade ago."

"The larger reality is that technology is disrupting the cable industry as it is so much else. Mr. Roberts says the merger will help consumers get higher broadband speeds and faster in-home Wi-Fi, and maybe he's right. But Comcast hasn't been the most nimble of competitors in innovating across the Internet, and in two or more years it could be outmaneuvered in the marketplace."