Future Gatekeepers?

Well, Charter Communications is still bankrupt. Didn't know about that? Aside from a teeny-tiny blurb in the High Country Press, there's been very little coverage of Charter's bankruptcy in High Country media outlets.

You'd think there would be a tad more coverage, given the fact that Charter is basically the monopoly cable provider up here. Lots of internet service, too. Just sayin'.

Would it concern local residents to know which companies might be interested in buying Charter?

It might concern local residents if they knew that one of the companies which may be very, very interested in scooping up Charter is in the process of laying the legal framework to monitor (and charge for) their subscribers' bandwidth usage--by rewriting their consumer subscriber agreements and engaging in a subscriber "education" campaign:

Time Warner Cable has modified the language of its consumer subscriber agreement that is directed at legitimizing the cable company’s ability to throttle and measure a consumer’s bandwidth. The new additions to the agreement also sanction tiered pricing.
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The language means that a subscriber can’t sign up for a contract plan hoping to avoid tiered pricing by getting in before a new tiered plan is implemented. It also specifically threatens throttling of a person’s service for violating the terms of use (hopefully it makes those terms of use a little clearer, though).
...

You see, if consumers actually know about things like this, then they can write to the FCC and express their concerns. They can even write to the FCC and express their opposition to a Time Warner acquisition of Charter. Public service in journalism--what a concept.

Meantime, we think this is kinda funny.