Comcast/AT&T Broadband Ballyhoo

Freedom is about choices and choices bring about competition. That's why folks start getting twitchy when they hear about huge companies banding together. It has the potential to limit our choices. Just last year, independent broadband providers were making a go at competing with the major telcos. However, as the independent providers have been dropping like flies, AT&T has been more than happy to pick up market share by buying out the assets of failing companies like Northpoint , as we reported in May. On Sunday, Comcast, the third largest cable provider in the U.S. announced that it wants to merge with AT&T's business in a tax-free transaction that would create the largest broadband communications provider in the world with approximately 22 million subscribers and leading positions in eight of the nation's 10 largest markets. Comcast says that, if the deal were done, it could generate combination benefits of at least $1.25 billion annually upon the full integration of Comcast and AT&T Broadband, with a potential to increase these benefits to between $2.6 billion and $2.8 billion annually as the companies work together to dominate the U.S. broadband market. However, today, AT&T issued a response to Comcast on its site that says the bid was unsolicited and that they have no current plans to sell off the Broadband business, including the transaction proposed yesterday by Comcast. AT&T says the discussions they had with Comcast were informal. To make things more interesting, Comcast's release included a letter from AT&T Chairman and CEO Michael Armstrong, that says "we have shared a vision that AT&T Broadband and Comcast should be combined to create the world's leader in broadband communications." The letter kind of does make the whole thing sound close to a done deal. Usually, we don't send you off to read press releases, but since everyone is trying to make heads or tails of this, here's AT&T's . As an interesting side note, Comcast picked up the Baltimore MD cable system (about 115,000 subscribers) from AT&T on July 2 of this year for about $518 million in cash.