I've been talking with a number of Comcast employees whose opinions are mixed on the regulatory scuttling of the company's $45 billion acquisition on Time Warner Cable. On some fronts, employees and executives continue to believe that Comcast would have significantly improved Time Warner Cable territories via the implementation of faster speeds and slightly more sophisticated set top box gear. Most notably: Comcast's recent promise to deploy two gigabit speeds to 18 million homes and the company's X1 set top box.
But there's another group of employees that believe that the very thing that helped cause Comcast's horrible customer service reputation was growing too fast, too quickly since the company was founded in 1963.
"You know, most people here are happy," said one employee. "There were a few people hugging and high fiving."
This set of employees believes that this fast growth, combined with the need to give investors' the ever-demanded quarter over quarter improvements, led to the company's dismal satisfaction ratings, which ironically played a starring role in the company this week being prevented from growing further. This group of employees think the merger was a needless distraction from the kind of things Comcast needs to do if it wants to rebuild its reputation and improve internal support structure and communications.
Both camps have expressed concern that those working closest on the Time Warner Cable integration may find themselves looking for a new job in the coming weeks. Regardless of which camp dominates internal Comcast discourse and future trajectory, a Comcast insider has offered up the e-mail Comcast CEO Brian Roberts circulated to employees this morning shortly after the deal's death was made official:
quote:
We’re writing to you today with an important update on our proposed transaction with Time Warner Cable (TWC). We are terminating our merger agreement with TWC as well as the agreement with Charter Communications.While we and TWC believed our combination was a great next step for our companies, we knew from the beginning there would be regulatory hurdles to approval. And even though we were hoping for a different outcome, we have elected to terminate this transaction.
Throughout the process, we have had an amazing team and great momentum and the company has worked hard to deliver strong results. Thank you for all you have done to accomplish that. We can now quickly turn our attention to what’s next for Comcast and continue to do great things for our existing customers. We’ve never been in a better position to do that than the one we are in right now.
Comcast is such a great company, and within the past year alone, we have seen amazing operational performance, teamwork, creativity and dedication. While today’s announcement may feel disappointing, particularly to our employees who have worked so hard to plan for the integration, we should all be incredibly proud of ourselves.
Over the past year, a lot of planning and preparation has been accomplished, and many of you were already looking ahead to support our post-close organizational structure. That structure was contingent upon the close of the TWC transaction. For those of you who were willing to make moves in support of our new footprint, we thank you. In addition, we are so glad to be keeping our terrific systems in Heartland, Twin Cities, Tennessee and Alabama now that the related transactions with Charter and formation of GreatLand Connections will no longer occur.
There will be a lot of press coverage over the next couple of days. Just as we’ve done over the past year, the best thing we can all do is stay focused on our customers and our business.
Thanks for everything you do.
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