One nation, under cable

TV Azteca, Televisa, Time Warner, Comcast — take your pick, they're all the same monster.

This monster — this big-cable, axis of evil that is cultivating itself in our cable packages — has begun earning from me some of the most emphatic sighs I have ever sighed. The Web has been alight, since the announcement of the TWC merger, with an almost universal combination of ire and fear: net neutrality, and if we include cable in this, communications neutrality, is hanging by a very long, very thin thread — is rescue possible? This is perhaps the question of our decade, if not most certainly of our year.

Responding, however, is an almost tragic sort of thing. The Mexican citizens, whose televisions have been inundated by the influence — mostly monetary, for that matter — of Enrique Peña Nieto, have found perhaps their most principal outlet of protest crippled. Their response, in a nation less inundated with the internet as is the US, was to take to the Web, to some marked success.

Though one can't help but fear the fate of such alternative measures if the Mexican ISPs took the same route that TV Azteca and Televisa had — to relinquish some of their honor in the hopes of a very sturdy pay-off, or some augmented political influence? It's not so hard to imagine.

And why should it be, especially when the US — Mexico's northern neighbor — is such a sterling example of this possible fate. Time Magazine has likened Comcast's team of lobbyists as an "army," and said this their article "Comcast Has About 76 Lobbyists Working Washington On The Time Warner Cable Merger. This is Why:"

 Comcast has registered about 76 lobbyists, spread across 24 firms, to work on its pending $45 billion purchase of Time Warner Cable, according to first quarter 2014 filings with the Senate Office of Public Records.

Comcast is, for many individuals, the only choice in television and internet available to them. Many choose their services reluctantly, and the provider has admitted to throttling service speeds to websites like Netflix and Youtube (See: http://consumerist.com/2014/02/23/netflix-agrees-to-pay-comcast-to-end-slowdown/). Though despite rampant consumer outrage, and countless large-scale online protests, little has slowed the company's pursuits.

Sadly, despite the merger's pending status, net neutrality in the US may as well be a head, sprouting from the ground — buried neck deep. Activists trying to exhume our networking freedom, typically over the very service they loathe so enthusiastically, are essentially protesting the dragon from within it's den. This is not to discredit their efforts, though it is obvious a whole new medium — or at least a whole new network — may be in order, though that is a different blog post entirely.

So excuse my own fear when hearing of Mexico's pioneering into online protesting: perhaps they have seen the Reddit visits from Barack Obama, or the ensuing Google Hangouts with said president. They may have seen the recent, web-wide protests. The promise of these select moments are, surely, an exciting notion for a nation subjected to such skewed political influence — such an easy, streamlined way of making one's thoughts know.

But I worry — have they seen, consequently, the minute change it has brought? Even a mere day ago, the consumerist published a piece entitled, "Comcast CEO “Cautiously Optimistic” He Can Shove TWC Merger Down Regulators’ Throats." They quote:

“All of the cable deals have always gone through,” explained Roberts. “The process is underway in earnest and we’ve got many states and local communities to already approve of the transfer.”

So his reasoning is that because the FCC has, against all common sense, historically let the pay-TV and wired broadband industry consolidate to the point where there are only a few remaining companies and allowed those companies to exist in a market where competition is all but outlawed, it will do so again?

Sadly, he may be right. 

How disconcerting it is, then, to wonder — how quickly will it take for this political rigging to slither onto the Mexican web?

Perhaps this is all premature cynicism — Mexican activists likely have seen, and may be following the US controversy surrounding net neutrality, and hopefully have begun to think about its implications. This, I certainly hope.