Cable competition works?
For as long as I can remember I’ve had Comcast Cable. My parents have Comcast, I have Comcast, and everyone I know has Comcast. Today I saw an ad that cable competition works; I’m just kind of wondering what competition they are talking about?
Verizon has cable service. Apparently, though every time I look into it the service is always coming soon to my area. It’s been this way for about five years. I should call up Verizon and see what their definition of soon happens to be, though they’d probably have a problem with the math of it all.
I don’t think I’ve ever been happy with my services. I pay too much for internet and whatever they decide extended basic cable is this month. I understand the occasional outage; I’ll let a storm knock down the lines that’s fine. I don’t watch a lot of TV anyways.
What really bothers me is the hiccups in service. This is how it usually happens. You’re watching a program and right at the height of tension the cable hangs, the picture freezes and the sound stops. It’s annoying and happens twice an hour.
I figured this was simply an issue in Prince George’s County or even just unique to College Park. Nope. It happens at my parents’ house and my friends’ house, actually it seems to be a pretty normal hiccup.
You’d think the Comcast monopoly would have sorted providing constant service, you’d think.
Even as I write this there is a new commercial about cable competition and high speed internet. This is almost laughable. The average US broadband connection tops out at about 1.9 Mbps. This isn’t even considered high speed “FCC definition of high speed … not less than 2 megabits per second (mbps) download and not less than 1 mbps upload.” Strange huh? This is from the Communication Workers of America’s report to the Subcommittee on Telecommunications and the Internet of the House Energy and Commerce Committee. Our internet isn’t even remotely fast in comparison to the average in Japan. It’s 61 Mbps if you were wondering.
Cable competition works, why look at their profits in quarter 1 this year. They netted $837 million compared to $466 million just a year ago. Check out the Washington Post article for yourself.
At least there is competition so we’re able to choose a better service. Ha. One day Verizon may come to my area, but I’m sure they’re no better.
Cable competition doesn’t work because it doesn’t exist.
Comments (3 comments)
Yeah I know, there used to be at least 3 other companies but then comcast ate them like lunch, and as for the freezing, yeah that’s been happening all day today, everyone with comcast knows what you mean, its suck, its lame, its and unstoppable monster of consumerism, gak Die Cable box DIE….
ShadowXD / July 11th, 2007, 7:06 am / #
Interesting idea…the cable industry is now advertising that it all but invented the idea of competition. How could a branding strategy be so far removed from reality, and not laughed off the air (or off the wires, or whatever)? For that matter, the telecoms pushing for ‘cable competition’ legislation aren’t any better; all of these services rely on locking consumers into onerous, long-term deals that have putative punishment for leaving (multi-year contracts, investments in equipment). And, once won, these services generally treat consumers much as monopolies once did…so where’s the ‘choice’ other than that one moment when consumers can choose to give up their subsequent freedom? I’ve written a bit about this branding challenge at DIM BULB, at http://dimbulb.typepad.com, if you’d like to check it out.
Jonathan Salem Baskin / September 4th, 2007, 8:00 am / #
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