What you're seeing is a combination of negotiating tactic and legislative posturing. The GAO report is almost certainly going to shine unflattering light on both programming costs and the cable operators. There's probably enough blame to go around.
The read-across is bullish for the entire cable industry.
There are cleaner ways to invest in cable than Cablevision.
If there's forced neutrality, 100% of building out services provided by cable and telecom companies fall to the consumer. It's going to price true broadband out of the reach of consumers, and therefore there won't be an investment case of building it in the first place.
The key story at the cable unit continues to be their digital telephone product.
This looks to be a pretty attractive price and it underscores a cable market theme: in the last year, the private equity markets continue to value cable much more highly than the public equity markets,