FCC looking to facilitate programming competition for apartments

Apartment dwellers frustrated with the outright lack of choices when it comes to selecting a content provider may soon be feeling relief, as the FCC is expected to approve a new rule that would "throw out exclusive cable television service contracts with apartment buildings and open up competition to phone companies." Supposedly, the new regulation "could significantly lower cable prices for millions of subscribers who live in apartment buildings and have had no choice in selecting a company for paid television," and of course, the execs at Verizon and AT&T are likely licking their chops at the notion of being able to steal away precious market share while potentially providing a cost savings to boot. Granted, some states already have provisions in place to prevent landlords and tenant associations from inking exclusive deals with cable providers, but for those currently stuck in a "take it or leave it" situation, all that could be changing in the very near future.

[Via AP / Yahoo]

[alpha736 @ Oct 30th 2007 4:12AM]

I live in an apartment complex which is run by Archstone, and they have an exclusive deal with Comcast. Therefore FiOS isn't available here for me, although it is available all over other places in Reston, Va.

[Reginald @ Oct 30th 2007 5:00AM]

I live in an apartment building in Philly and although we do have FiOS, we can only get Comcast cable service due to some shady "franchise licensing" between Comcast and the city of Philadelphia. So no FiOS TV. We're even charged monthly for this franchise fee. Nice, eh?

I hope this move will rule in favor of us in Philly. We need the competition.

[Alexander Pink @ Oct 30th 2007 5:40AM]

I live in apartment buildings owned by my medical school, and they have an exclusive contract with ATT for cable, internet, and phone. I welcome a change in in that, as ATT is the most vile of corporations. Odd that ATT would push for this change, as if it became law it would allow me to switch to Time Warner for my internet usage.

[Paul Brown @ Oct 31st 2007 8:48PM]

Where do I sign????!!!!

I can't wait to tell Comcast to jump in the lake. My bills have been in flux the whole time I have had their service; last month's bill was for $200!! And the service sux big cheese.

[Steven K @ Oct 30th 2007 7:46AM]

What about students who live on campus at colleges and universities? Most of them are locked in to whatever provider the school chooses. Will this apply to them too?

[MEAT! @ Oct 30th 2007 10:05AM]

We are, and it's complete bullcrap! I'm sick of paying $25 a month for a 100kb/s connection that not only do I have to periodically re-login to, but which also opens each packet and infinitely slows down ones it doesn't like (p2p, for example, or requests to any ".torrent" file).

[johnzilla @ Oct 30th 2007 8:11AM]

I have to say, the title on this blog entry makes no sense whatsoever on first read. I read it, and thought the FCC was holding a software programming competition and giving away apartments as prizes.

[Dan @ Oct 30th 2007 9:30AM]

I'm all for this, Mediacom can go straight to hell, I'd love to be able to switch to the competitors in the area, instead of being forced to use Mediascam cable.

[JT_X @ Oct 30th 2007 10:02AM]

When we lived in a large apartment complex, my wife and I had 2 choices for cable and internet: either go with some cable company we had never heard of, or get a dish for TV and maybe DSL for the net. If you live on the wrong side of the building, you're SOL. We had to go with their overpriced, crappy cable company, whose net connection would go down frequently, whose Weather Channel had no local info, and who didn't even seem to understand what a DVR was, or why anyone would want one. We also had fun when we moved out and, as instructed by the cable provider, left the modem with the front office. The office lost the modem and we were charged for it.

Good riddance.

[Visionep @ Oct 30th 2007 10:25AM]

All I could think of when I read "Programming contest for Apartments" was will it be Free Threaded or Multithreaded.

Yea yea, you can just send the biggest geek award to my house.

If you're lost just look up "Free Threaded Apartment"

[Diceburna @ Oct 30th 2007 1:51PM]

This is the best news I've read all week. I like Comcast and they've treated me good but man when a friend of mine told me how much he was paying for Verizon FIOS and what he was getting for that price, I almost choked

[Dan Durand @ Oct 30th 2007 1:57PM]

About God Damn time.

I've been stuck with time warner's shitty service for over a year. Now maybe i can go with verizon FiOS.

That cable companies have been allowed to have these monopolies over urban territory for as long as they have has always boggled my mind.