Inquirer Editorial: Comcast faces the customers

Cable and Internet customers should hope that Comcast Corp. can deliver on its prediction before Congress this week that consumers would be the "big winners" under any terms federal officials set for the Philadelphia company's planned $45.2 billion acquisition of Time Warner Cable. Certainly no one who has spent hours waiting for the cable guy wants to be at the mercy of a combined Comcast/Time Warner whose "massive tentacles," in the words of a former Justice Department official, have strangled what little competition exists in pay-TV and broadband services.

Judging by the charged atmosphere of a lengthy Senate hearing on Comcast's second recent megamerger - following its 2009 takeover of NBCUniversal - many cable customers are not ready to embrace hope over experience. It's hard to blame them. Given low customer-satisfaction scores for both Comcast and Time Warner, a coalition of consumer groups was able to amass 400,000 names on a petition urging regulators to reject the deal. Nor can consumers be expected to be content with promised benefits like increased Web-surfing speed and other technical advances while hearing no assurance that cable rates will stabilize, much less drop.

As federal communications and antitrust regulators evaluate this merger, their challenge will be to set terms that preserve or enhance competition in ways that make the benefits for consumers clear. Since the deal would spin off goodies such as an $80 million parachute for the Time Warner chief, there should be ways to make it more attractive to paying customers.

Were this deal measured solely by its impact on Philadelphia, it would be a slam-dunk, especially in light of Comcast's expanding local workforce, plans for a new office tower, and role in cutting-edge technology. Those gains can still be realized after regulators set reasonable terms that reassure all cable customers.