TimeWarner Cable no longer exists and was purchased by Charter.

I thought he meant TimeWarner -- the content company that owns TBS and Warner Bros-- not Time Warner Cable which was bought by Charter? (For the sake of correctness, the two companies are written as Time Warner Cable and TimeWarner, Inc)

I meant an arbitrary established player giving another arbitrary established player a nicer deal than a startup could get.

Everyone should feel free to insert proper nouns that make more sense to them.

Agreed. And corporations like AT&T that not only provide ISP services but actually serve original content, they are uniquely positioned to push their services over their competitor's. Perhaps we'll be seeing streaming services like Netflix become slower, while, say, DirecTV Now runs at full speed.