I have already written the FCC and my Congressman about stopping the merger. Is anyone else following this? I smell a potential monopoly.

Yes, its a bad idea. Not surprising though. Cable companies do already monopolize most areas. Where I live I can only get timewarner. Some of my friends can only get comcast.

Im not aware, Im not sure they service our area

where we live we can have dish, or directv, or centurylink, or a number of smaller providers,,,,

This is because, unlike other countries, cable providers have exclusive use of their networks. So every company that wants to be able to offer you service would have to build their own network. Other countries like Korea operate more like our electric system. You only have one set of lines going to you but you can shop around because providers can all operate on the same lines.

The latter is how it should be. It would have more competitive pricing and bandwidth would be less of an issue.