Posted on 08/07/2005 7:56:40 PM PDT by Born Conservative
Tired of constantly rising cable-TV costs but convinced you can’t do anything about them?
I know the tug of defeatism. When my bill climbs, I do little more than grumble that I’m a prisoner of Comcast and its chokehold on local sports. Using a loophole in federal law, it refuses to provide Comcast SportsNet to satellite TV, my only alternative.
Maybe it’s time for all of us to vent.
Last week, close to 12,000 people did so. Prompted by Free Press, a media watchdog group, they complained to the Federal Communications Commission about cable’s rising prices and anti-competitive practices. They urged it to reject a proposed deal that would further enlarge Comcast and Time Warner, already the nation’s top two cable companies.
I know what you’re thinking: Why bother? Don’t consumers always lose when they’re up against big business?
Maybe so. But there are exceptions, especially when we, too, have business firepower on our side.
On the SportsNet question, we do.
I’m not just talking about the usual suspects, though they are again speaking up.
DirecTV and Dish Network recently raised the issue in the case that drew those 10,000 e-mails. They urged the FCC to strike a blow for real competition before letting Comcast and Time Warner divvy up the cable systems of bankrupt Adelphia Communications.
Similar arguments come from RCN Telecom Services — the company that once offered to build a competing cable system in Philadelphia but was scared off by Comcast and city officials.
But in the SportsNet debate, the new star power pushing to close the loophole comes from another quarter: Verizon Communications.
Don’t get me wrong. I’m not portraying Verizon as a white knight.
Verizon and the other descendants of the old AT&T monopoly have done all they can to ward off competitors, especially companies that want to piggyback on their local phone systems to deliver high-speed Internet service.
But ironically, in today’s confusing telecom landscape, Verizon may suddenly be the best friend a disgruntled cable customer has.
To understand why, consider how our on-again, off-again system of regulation has basically left cable companies as unregulated monopolies, and allowed the price of standard service in many places to top $50 a month.
The latest deregulation came in 1996. Its goal was to free the market to do what it does best: stimulate investment and innovation, along with the discipline of competitive pricing.
Investment and innovation have come as promised. Cable has delivered a flow of new channels and technologies, including a high-speed link to the Internet. Even phone service.
But consumers have paid a price because, as a spur to competition, the ‘96 law was a bust. Consumers served by two cable companies enjoy prices averaging about 15 percent less than in noncompetitive markets. But only a tiny fraction has that choice.
That’s where Verizon comes in. Until other new technologies come of age, its planned fiber-optic network will be alone in offering a cable-like bundle of services.
But to compete, Verizon needs access to SportsNet, and assurance that Comcast and other cable companies won’t be able to use "must-have" local programming to lock customers into their cable services.
Comcast officials like to compare SportsNet to DirecTV’s "NFL Sunday Ticket, a package of out-of-town football games to which DirecTV has exclusive rights. But as any local sports fan will recognize, it’s an apples-and-oranges comparison.
Personally, I’d prefer it if Comcast and Verizon had to offer me a path to the Internet, where I could buy their programming, and anything else, a la carte. Ultimately, that’s what these technologies should promise.
But right now, the FCC may have enough leverage to close the SportsNet loophole. So if competition matters to you, it’s time to speak up. (For instructions on how to comment, go to www.freepress.net.)
Contact Philadelphia Inquirer columnist Jeff Gelles at consumerwatchphillynews.com or 215-854-4558. Read his recent work at http://go.philly.com/jeffgelles. Visit his blog at http://consumerwatch.blogspot.com.
[I like the Military Channel but there is not nearly enough new programming. I'm seeing many shows that originally aired literally 5-8 years ago and they repeat a lot, like Wings. Most of the shows on Gulf War I are literally 10+ years old. Discovery is being watered down with environmental junk science and PC crap.]
Not quite the footprint of a decent TV satellite..
The internet service is slow. But at least we have it..
What's wrong with FREE TV? This is America, not England.
TV is supposed to be FREE here, and it is. Lots of free channels with local/national/intl sports. All you need is an antenna, and most apt buildings have it for FREE, all you have to do is ASK for it. Most people don't realize their apt bldgs have a FREE antenna service.
And if you have DSL or broadband, try http://tv4all.com/portal.htm
FREE Internet TV.
LOL!!!!!!!!!!
Nope, I walk each way........up hill :)
It's totally bizarre.....Verizon offers it 10 miles north of us in Maryland, and 10 miles south of us in Virginia.
Verizon's infrastructure, and the cable company's are the absolute pits. The phone lines were so bad that if it rained for more than a few hours, I was without phones, and was told I would have to wait up to 3 days for a repairman to get to me.
Technology is capable of offering cable customers the ability to pick and choose individual channels instead of packages of channels. When the customers demand it, the cable companies will provide it. That way, MTV and the Queer Network (whatever it's called) will not be able to survive in the free market. Demand carte blanche cable choices.
My Comcast cable bill is $106 per month, which is why we don't go see movies as much anymore...perhaps that is why a lot of people are not going to the movies lately and the box office is down.
There are only a couple shows on TV that I watch, and they are on free channels. Otherwise, I don't pay for cable. If I really need to go see a football game, I can go to the local watering hole and watch, for merely the cost of a couple beers.
Once Cable TV pulls it's head out of it's a** and gives us a system where we can pay for only the channels that we want, then I'll give them my money.
I've stated this a few times before. Cable was originally advertised as COMMERCIAL FREE TV. Now we watch more commercials than programming.
We pay to watch commercials, and every time they add more channels, we pay more to watch them.
Can you really get the **full** effect of Baywatch (the slow motion runs, etc) with this?
I think Rockville is a bit further north from me than 10 miles. I'm in Accomac county VA, 5 miles south of the Chincoteague Island turn off.
I seriously doubt the DC bureaucracy has anything to do with other options........Verizon and Charter are just taking their sweet time worrying about the less sparsely populated parts of the county. I'm 2 miles off of Rte 13, my nearest neighbors are chickens.....and they don't use TV, telephone or computers :)
Good enough for FReeping ;)
Can you really get the **full** effect of Baywatch (the slow motion runs, etc) with this?
You can if you buy their software for $30/$50.
I can even watch shows that are unavailable in the US. "Charle Jade" is a very cool sci-fi show a la "Blade Runner" currently airing in Canada and South Africa. The new "Doctor Who" series is currently available only in the UK...
...and in my living room courtesy of BitTorrent.
The picture was incredible but I only ended up having the converter connected for about 30 minutes before I called and cancelled the service.
The reason being because every time I changed the channel, I got a pop-up that took up about 1/3 of the bottom of the screen with the channel information AND a little static advertisement box.
I mean....WTF?
At this point in my life, I didn't know that the Bar of Annoyance could be so dramatically raised by anything other than say, becoming incontinent or accidentally marrying Susan Sarandon.
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