Posted on 04/23/2019 4:07:11 AM PDT by DUMBGRUNT
Instead of competing by offering better serviceprivate sector telecom giants like Comcast and AT&T have routinely turned to a cheaper alternative: easily corrupted state lawmakers. In exchange for campaign contributions, lawmakers frequently and uncritically pass on model legislation written by industry and distributed by organizations like ALEC.
Community broadband isnt a magical panacea, and like any effort it depends on the viability of the underlying business model.
(Excerpt) Read more at motherboard.vice.com ...
BFL
I fired Comcast years ago after my own epic battle.
I will NEVER EVER EVER EVER EVER go back to them. Ever!
I’ll move to Alaska and become one of those off-the-grid people first.
Despite this their super-aggressive salespeople chase me around the aisles at Walmart when I tell them no, not interested.
I am not so sure that where wires are concerned that competition has always helped.
AT&T had no competition when they moved from operator assisted long distance to direct-dial long distance. They did advance the household equipment over the years and I think in general the service was always reliable. They were even in on the very earliest advances with cell phone technology - back when Bell Labs was then doing top research.
Look at all that WAS done when AT&T was the only phone monopoly in the U.S.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_the_telephone
Of course it did take the breakup of AT&T and FCC regulation changes that went with that before Americans could go buy their own land line phone instead of paying rental on one from the phone company every month. Not long after we started getting the cordless phones.
That might be one place where some regulation could hit the cable monopolies - free up the supply of the cable set-top boxes so folks can buy them, from retailers, and quit paying many times over their cost to rent them every month. Of course, as that (the set top box rental) is gravy for the cable companies, their response may be to just raise their rates further.
The BIGGEST one would be to FCC demand that customers be allowed to buy and hook up their own DVR. And why not. I have a dual cassette tape player plugged into an auxiliary slot on my stereo amplifier and I can put a cassette in an have it record whatever is playing on my amp. If the FCC regs allow that for music on your home stereo amplifier, why not for movies and shows shown from any source on your TV. You’ve paid for the initial showing, and now you just want a copy for your personal future use - like we do with music on our stereo.
BFL ?
Belt Fed Links?
Bump for later. Or Big Fat Louise.
Befriender of Fat Ladies.
That might be one place where some regulation could hit the cable monopolies - free up the supply of the cable set-top boxes so folks can buy them, from retailers, and quit paying many times over their cost to rent them every month.
See #11
Bump for later
I should have known that one.
Thanks.
Befriender of Fat Ladies.
From down in the gutter, where I get the very best info...
The big ones, provide warmth in the winter and shade in the summer.
Not from the gutter, there is Ben Franklin and his cats...
My son, unaccountably, has a thing for Rubenesque women, which I could abide if they weren’t all radical leftists.
I got the same run around with Charter/Spectrum in California trying to improve services at an older brother’s house. I was told I could hook up a better modem for him. I went on Charter’s website to see which modems their technical specs said qualified. I found a better one. Then Charter said if I buy it privately I need to notify them when I am hooking it up, and if anything goes wrong they may require me to disconnect it and put their equipment back on the line.
Of course they were planning on saying anything that went wrong could certainly only have occurred on our end, not theirs. /sarc
My older brother then decided he did not want me to spend the extra money.
Ah yes, surfing Comcast from the elongated bowl.
Comcast is basically monopoly for actual hi-speed Internet. in the city I am in MA. Verizon does not have FIOS here and it looks like it will see no more expansion, contrary to what it inferred to states, and it wants to get out of the copper line business en toto. Thus you can only get 7 to 15Mpbs with nationwide landline phone for about $84 a month w/ Verizon, while the only alternative is Comcast, which provides about 80Mpbs and the phone for increasingly more. For while the first year was $65.00, after the promo it goes up to about 84 and keeps increasing.
So I cancelled the Internet as a brother in Christ downstairs is more than willing to let us use his wireless (at least 50+ Mpbs) and just kept the Comcast phone service (which has better features) which costs about $62, with the $11 a month modem rental.
I am sure both Verizon and Comcast would make money if I only paid about $15.00, but its supply and demand. However, we would be blessed even to be able to have phone service for any price.
Have to agree there. This is where I diverge from most conservative that seem to worship the free market. When you look at the history of free market capatilism business that succeed get it attempt to get a monopoly on their market. Thats why I think Teddy Roosevelt was right to bust up monopolies, and didnt go far enough.
Capitalism doesnt work without competition or where there is no profit motive.
To wit, Verizon's ToS for residential customers states, in part,
General Policy: Verizon reserves the sole discretion to deny or restrict your Service, or immediately to suspend or terminate your Service, if the use of your Service by you or anyone using it, in our sole discretion, violates the Agreement or other Verizon policies, is objectionable or unlawful...
use the service in any fashion for the transmission or dissemination .. in a manner that.. espouses, promotes or incites bigotry, hatred or racism;
The Comcast Cloud Solutions Terms of Service (for businesses) states, in part,
BY USING THE CLOUD SOLUTIONS MARKETPLACE YOU AGREE NOT TO post, upload, or distribute any User Submission (as defined in Section 8 below) or other content that is defamatory....inaccurate... or that a reasonable person could deem to be objectionable, offensive,...threatening, embarrassing, distressing, vulgar, hateful, racially or ethnically offensive, or otherwise inappropriate.
And the tendency is that of the Left taking what they see deemed in universities as being objectionable, threatening, inappropriate by etc. by a reasonable person and applying to society as a whole. And just who do they define to be "a reasonable person?"
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