Posted on 04/19/2009 5:26:57 AM PDT by shove_it
1. “Deregulation is a joke— but it’s probably not as funny for you.” For years the cable business had acted like a typical monopoly, providing lessthan- ideal customer service, skyrocketing prices, and little choice of service. Then along came the Telecommunications Act of 1996, which opened the door for competition and promised weary cable customers relief at last. Too bad that relief never came. Nearly four years after the bill was passed, a mere 286 of the 30,000 U.S. cable markets were being served by more than one provider, according to the Federal Communications Commission. And in the FCC’s most recent report, in 2005, not much had changed; only 294 out of about 33,000 U.S. cable markets were served by more than one provider—meaning that for all the effort to create change, few customers today are being served by the smaller providers that generally offer better deals.
The lucky few who live in markets with more than one cable company to choose from pay about 17 percent less than those in single-provider markets, according to the FCC. “The Telecom Act was meant to generate more competition, resulting in lower prices for cable TV customers,” says David Butler, formerly of the Consumers Union, a Washington, D.C., consumer-watchdog group. “We have seen just the opposite—more mergers, less competition, and rising prices for customers.”
Meanwhile, the only real alternative to cable—satellite television—has its own issues. While subscribers have been lured with the promise of competitive prices and more programming, about 8 percent of satellite customers still subscribe to cable television, since most satellite services cannot carry local broadcasters’ signals, which cover events like city council meetings and high school football games...
[...9 more]
(Excerpt) Read more at smartmoney.com ...
Still waiting for FIOS in my neighborhood so I can dump the Cox copper.
Wasn’t McCain behind a bill to mandate ala carte cable programming selection?
Too bad that never got through Congress.
==
The main reason I have cable is for the cable Internet.
The only other real alternative is DSL via the phone company, but my wiring would need to be replaced, the speed would be slower and the overall cost would be greater.
Satellite internet is expensive, comparatively, and has much lower dl/ul restrictions (around 5 gb/mo) than cable internet.
Some mobile companies are beginning to offer unlimited wireless, but that is restricted to major metro areas (not rural small towns like mine), and the dl/ul restrictions are similar to satellite (around 5 gb/mo).
The cable tv/internet bill keeps inching up from $84 five years ago to $101. They alternate, upping the tv portion; then upping the internet portion a few months later.
[They do now offer ‘free HD programming’, but that ‘free HD programming’ would end up costing me another $17 a month — because I would have to add digital ($11) plus HD box ($6) just to get that ‘free HD programming’.]
They have upped the internet connection from 1 Mbps 6 years ago to 8 Mbps now. But, they have also installed ‘restricters’ that prohibit, for example, having multiple live video streams going simultaneously. So, the faster Mbps is illusionary if one is trying to multi-task.
I have cable for the ‘net speed, but they do suck for service their e-mail stinks.
I’m watching Fox News right now, free of charge on blinkotv.com. Except during the election, I don’t subscribe to cable, because it isn’t worth the $50 a month. And I’ve got plenty of $50 bills, but none to waste on bringing trash into my home.
Ditto that. Only I don't buy the television package. ONLY internet. Screw all that garbage. I miss the world series and superbowl, but that's it. I haven't had TV since Algore conceded. I recently switched to Cable One. I was getting a max 1.5 download speed from the phone company, and for the same money Cable ONe doubled that, but I splurged another $5 for the 5Mbps.
My wife and I finally dumped Comcast’s HD DVR cable and VoIP. We pretty much only use the internet anyway, and they compress the hell out of the HD signal. We might get TV again when football season rolls around, but I’m not sure I want to spend the money.
The internet is TV for grownups. At least the part of the internet I use
blinko! thanks! watching now
I love it when people act like they have a Constitutional right to tha cable tee-vee.
what wiring would you have to replace to get dsl? I had it for years before I got U-Verse...check into uverse, it is fantastic, less expensive and more reliable than cable...
I’m hoping UVerse comes to my neighborhood soon. Want to dump TW.
Thank you for letting me (us?) know about blinkotv.
Some years ago consulted for a local cable company (since bought up by, I believe, Comcast) who wanted to roll out a new VoIP service. I asked their “CTO” how they handled outages. Coming from the telephony side where every house is connected to a unique port on a switch and every piece of hardware is designed to support remote fault isolation, I was curious about how they handle this on a shared medium like cable.
As it turned out, they did fault isolation by telephone. If one person calls with an outage they wait 15 minutes. If a lot of people from the same area call in that time period they know it’s a repeater or major trunk outage and roll a truck to the site that is down. If nobody else calls they know it’s an individual outage and roll a truck to person’s house and trace back from there.
I tried to explain to them that this might work with someone’s TV reception but we were talking about, among other things, people’s 911 service. Not to mention the fact that if someone’s cable connection was down they wouldn’t be able to call to report the outage. Seems they had not factored in the cost of pro-active monitoring to their OPEX. The whole project was quietly dropped.
I assume (hope) that these days cable companies assign a unique IP address to every set top box and that the boxes are SNMP enabled. Not sure since for the time being I get my TV over an analog wireless connection (AKA rabbit ears).
Pretty cool. I noticed there are 7 channels at the homepage. Is it limited to these 7 ot do you need to install anything in order to watch more channels?
CommunistCast charges a $15 surcharge on top of the internet billing if you don’t have a TV package. The basic one outlet cable package is $11.95. Dang Commies.
Thanks for the tip.
Hey! This is great. BlinkoTV.com has Fox and Discovery. The only other cable channel I would want to watch is History.
I think this may be the future of video media delivery. Can’t believe there are only about 300 people watching.
Thanks very much for posting.
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