Police: Man Threatens To Kill Over Cable Bill

WDIV ^ | 4-8-05

[Dan from Michigan]

Police: Man Threatens To Kill Over Cable Bill
Suspect Being Held On $200,000 Bond

POSTED: 7:15 pm EDT April 8, 2005
UPDATED: 7:45 pm EDT April 8, 2005

ST. CLAIR SHORES, Mich. -- A man was taken into custody by police after he allegedly made threats to employees at a Comcast customer service station in St. Clair Shores.

Daniel Taugher, 41, rode his bike to the service center and went inside to complain about the price of his bill, Local 4 reported. Police said he started shouting threats while in the lobby.

Taugher (pictured, left) said he was going to blow up the building and told employees he would kill everyone inside, according to police. Detectives believe he was under the influence of alcohol.

[neb52]

Convince the content providers to start offering streaming video. Then you either pay them directly for the content or you pay a Multi Service Operator(ex 4com.com, Comcast) a monthly fee to access the content. The way IPTV works you connect to the streaming server via set top box on your TV. You pick a channel and it starts to stream to your TV. Currently you have what is called muticasting, which means 200 digital channels are being shoved done a line to your house and you tune into the channel you want to watch. This eats up a lot bandwidth. IPTV you would be doing unicasting which means only one channel is being sent down the line. This saves tons of bandwidth that can be used for other things.

IPTV has the potential to lower the start up cost of starting your own TV station by a large margin. You would just need the software to encode the content into a MPEG4 packet and store it on a streaming server. Then get a big enough internet connection for people to access the server.

[neb52]

Comcast has no contracts, so I don't he would have a problem with termination fees.

[TheForceOfOne]

Daniel Taugher, 41, rode his bike to the service center loaded with alcohol complaining about a voluntary service he chose to receive and could have cut off any time he chose to do so.

What a loser.

[Route101]

He could'nt have been to drunk if he could ride a bike.......

[6SJ7]

I heard that someday soon, we will be able to view TV and get most of our TV viewing on the Internet instead of having the traditional cable. Were can I get information about that ?

When the local teleco rewires your neighborhood with fiber-optic lines in place of the copper, bandwidth capabilities will allow them to then offer TV, high-speed internet, etc. In my neighborhood, Verizon will convert phone lines to fiber optic within the next 2 years. Interestingly, I got this info not from the companies website, but from a local installer/ DSL service tech.

[Living Free in NH]

Can anyone verify if they (the cable companies) have a financial interest in the shopping channels?

I can't verify that, but I do know that the cable companies are required by law to provide all local channels. And that's how HSC and the like get in - they are broadcast locally on an obscure channel that you've probably never heard of.

[Prophet in the wilderness]

How can I find out if they already installed fiber-optic cables to the neighborhood's phone lines ?
There not much I can do about the line from the phone line, to the wall , since I don't own a house.

[Route101]

Was that the Cableguy?

[trickyricky]

What about satellite? I have Dishnetwork.
Maybe if you could get a large enough segment of the subscriber base to
threaten a boycott, that might convince them to offer ala-carte?
Create a website, ALACARTENOW.COM, get all the satellite subscribers to register.
Come on George, Just Do It!

[infocats]

Daniel Taugher, 41, rode his bike to the service center and went inside to complain about the price of his bill, Local 4 reported. Police said he started shouting threats while in the lobby.

Ah, another satisfied customer.

[dennisw]

I've had Comcast cable internet for a few years. In my area there are very good introductory deals for DSL and for Comcast. So I told Comcast I was going to DSL unless they gave me "a taste" of what they are offering new cable internet customers. That their introductory offers are making me look like an idiot to stay with them.


I started internet cable with AT&T which gave me a modest introductory offer to start. Comcast bought them up and promptly jacked up prices. I never ever got any kind of deal from them.

When I go DSL I will buy my own modem on Ebay. Westell modems work on BellSouth's system.

[infocats]

http://wwitv.com/

[dennisw]

You have to stop and think about the fact when you pay $55 for Comcast Cable HSI, you are paying for the line and access. With Bell South DSL you are paying for the access. You pay for the line via your local phone bill. So you need to add your phone bill and DSL bill together to get the true cost.

I've done the numbers and BellSouth's midrange speed DSL rate is cheaper. This speed is 1.5mb/second download speed.

Comcast says it's at 4mb/second download speed which is fine but I don't need to go so fast. My high cable rates are paying for them to upgrade their system to 4mb/second. Screw 'em.

[dennisw]

Where I live mid range BellSouth DSL is cheaper than Comcast by 15-20 dollars per month. BellSouth was asleep for a long time but are now fighting back. They see that Comcast is a huge threat when they see Comcast offering telephone services too.

BellSouth has a marketing tie and package deal with one of the satellite TV services.

[neb52]

Ka-Band Satellites are available now. So the 2 Sat. TV companies could use these satellites to offer a IPTV format if they choose to. DirecTV and Dish Network have express the desire to change part of their service to a Video on Demand. So you might have the ability to pay a flat fee for the main chunk of channels and then separate fees for "Permian" channels. As far as a boycot goes I doubt you would get it to happen. They charge the prices they charge, because the majority of customers are willing to pay it. You would have to point out a win-win situation for the Satelitte and Cable companies for them to change their pricing structure. Moving to a flat fee that allows you to pick certain number of channels, like 10-20, is not economical for them right now. The way things work right now is, the content providers(i.e. Disney, ESPN) make a deal with a Satelitte company like AES Americom to uplink their content. Then the MSO or Multi Service Operator( DirecTV, Comcast) contract with the Satelitte company for a downlink of the packaged content. As in the MSO buys one or two packages, not individual content. The MSO then sends this to a headend equipment that then broadcast the content to access either the MSO's Satelitte or HFC(Hybrid Fiber Coax) infrastructure to the customer's premise. The MSO could chop up the package content into smaller packages or they could(which is what IPTV allows one to do) store the content on a streaming server and then you the customer pay a certain fee to access the server and pick which channel you want to watch. It would give the MSO ability to offer different pricing structures for maybe being able to view certain channels. Most likely you wouldn't see a price difference. As long as the MSO's pay for a combined package from a Satelitte company then they are going to push the BS channels to the customer to validate the cost.

Comcast is looking into replacing the PVRs that they offer and install Streaming Servers at the node(which is where their fiber ends and then converts to coax to the customer premise). The customer then browses the server for what he/she wants to watch or they could store content on there as well.

[neb52]

"You have to stop and think about the fact when you pay $55 for Comcast Cable HSI, you are paying for the line and access. With Bell South DSL you are paying for the access. You pay for the line via your local phone bill. So you need to add your phone bill and DSL bill together to get the true cost.
I've done the numbers and BellSouth's midrange speed DSL rate is cheaper. This speed is 1.5mb/second download speed.

Comcast says it's at 4mb/second download speed which is fine but I don't need to go so fast. My high cable rates are paying for them to upgrade their system to 4mb/second. Screw 'em."

Thats fine, most internet users only surf the web and check email. This uses maybe at most 512kb/s download. The killer will always be the upload side. Even Comcasts 384kb/s stinks. But oh well.

[dennisw]

My library has high speed internet and the computers have CD burners. You can also plug in USB flash drives and hard drives

Theoretically I could go back to dial up (10$/month and less from WalMart and others) and do any large patches and downloads at the library and take them home on disk. And have people call me on my cell phone if they need me. Inconvenient but I could do it particularly on the short term.

[Bear_Slayer]

Twenty years ago my dad had problems with the cable co. His solution - workable then, but not now - was to get a roll of quaters, then call from every phone in the city and leave the receiver off the hook. It didn't fix his cable problem, but it made him feel better.

My dad was a phone guy.

[dennisw]

That's fine, most internet users only surf the web and check email.

I like to move around fast as I surf. Dial up surfing can be aggravating. At 1.5mb/second I'll be moving around plenty fast. And if I do download a file it will take a bit longer but not much. I'm not downloading music except occasionally and I don't download movies and videos and pr0n.... except occasionally :)

[bert]

.....I blew up last week and said I was going to BellSouth DSL if they didn't give me a deal similar to the introductory offers out there......

Interesting. I have a similar situation with Charter, a debt laden company tetering on failure. They recently raised the cable rate but decreased the highspeed rate leaving a combined monthly bill of about $90.00.

How long will your deal last?

I've considered the action you made but dread the hassle and especially changing my primary e mail address.

Apparently digital cable has been a failure because not enough people have subscribed to pay off the capital costs invested.