Reshuffle the deck?_其他_趣味英语-查字典英语网

Reshuffle the deck?

Roughly a month after Comcast's much-hyped deal with Time Warner Cable fell apart, TWC has found another suitor: Charter Communications, the country's fourth-largest cable operator, will buy Time Warner Cable, the country's second-largest cable operator, for $55 billion. Together, they will form, well, a bigger version of the country's second-largest cable operator (Comcast will still boast the most cable subscribers).

Both Charter and Time Warner Cable are profitable companies, but overall profits have started to fall as the US cable industry in general is signing up fewer customers as many begin cutting the cord for internet-only services such as Netflix. Meanwhile, a flurry of startup internet service providers and community-funded gigabit fiber internet collectives have begun to challenge incumbents in cities all around the country.

It's early days for both of those movements, but it's clear that big telecom is looking into the future and is working hard to conserve the market share it already has by forming even larger companies capable of weathering the damage smaller startups will do as the latter begin to chip away at former's customer bases.

- Telecom Giants Are Merging to Stop the Nascent Broadband Revolution, Motherboard.Vice.com, May 26, 2017.

About the author:

Zhang Xin is Trainer at chinadaily.com.cn. He has been with China Daily since 1988, when he graduated from Beijing Foreign Studies University. Write him at: zhangxin@chinadaily.com.cn, or raise a question for potential use in a future column.