Given Comcast's notoriously shady service, we're not exactly in favor of the company being allowed to
ruthlessly torture service any more markets than necessary, but we can see why it might be a little frustrated with the FCC, which has allowed all sorts of giant phone companies to merge in the past few years, yet still recently decided to block cable companies from owning more than 30 percent of the market. Comcast and the FCC have butted heads in the past on similar
regulatory issues, but this one should be particularly interesting, since FCC Chairman Kevin Martin is currently the focus of a
congressional probe into his handling of the agency. We can actually sort of see Comcast's point -- the FCC probably shouldn't allow giant telco mergers while arbitrarily capping cable ownership, but really we'd prefer a lot more competition and a hell of a lot more focus on customer service from all of these companies instead of yet more lawsuits and paperwork.
[Via
TechDirt]
posted Mar 14th 2008 6:14PM
Comcast v. The Government.
Geez, I wonder who is going to win...
Please let it be the government.(Feels weird saying that) In fact, I hope they also force Comcast to not suck while they're at it.
The problem is when "the government" (by which I mean "lots of politicians") win by letting Comcast win.
It would be poetic justice, of course, were they to get some judge who was pissed off by his comcast service. I'd pay to see that.
I'm for a free market with little government involvement, but since the cable companies are divided into districts and each territory has one cable company operating it. The FCC should have the right to tell what the cable companies should do to maintain fairness to its consumers.
Or just deregulate the cable market so more than one cable company can operate in an area, you know, like how a free market is supposed to be, not this pseudo version we currently have.
Anyone use their BLAST!!!!!!!!! service or whatever they call it in SF or the bay area? I'm happy with my cheap ATT DSL for now (well sorta, the modem drops its signal for ~10s every time the land line is used. Same with my friend. Yes we use filters). And anyway, torrents down seem bandwidth limited typically but latency (?) limited?
You should give earthlink a whirl then, if you can. I had the connection dropping issue with AT&T also, but with earthlink there is absolutely no slowdown when somebody picks up the phone. Good latency too, and I've never had 1 single second of downtime (that I know of, obviously).
are you using your line filter?
I foresee comcast being crushed and forced to only have 20 % share and to stop lying in their commercials :P
The problem here is that any company can get access to the telco hardware and offer service through the same infrastructure. But with cable, there is only one company that is delivering service in my area...if cable opened up their infrastructure to anyone who wanted to offer service, then I would be fine with these mergers...and would have a choice beyond time warner or getting a dish. Somehow the cable companies are not considered a monopoly, but I have never lived anywhere that had the option of more than one cable provider.
God I wish they would go bankrupt
They have THE worst service and it seems that no matter where I live they are generally the only company I can get High Speed from ><
PA needs to let Verizon hook up their Fios service across the whole damn state and watch as Comcrap shrivels up and dies since at least in PA, we seem to prefer Satellite to the only other option
I agree w/ you 100%. I moved to State College, PA a year ago and comcrap is really the only option i have except for Sat. I'm just waiting for Fios to make it way to my area so i can give comcrap the boot!!!
It's not just Comcast that sucks in PA. Blue Ridge Communications also sucks hard. They have virtually no competition in this area.
We really want Verizon to come here with FiOS and give BRC some good competition.
Now although I completely agree that Comcast has absolutely no true competition throughout most of PA (I'm in Southeast PA, Embarq area), I have no issues with their internet, phone, or cable (for the most part).
I don't know about you guys, but my Internet is very fast with Comcast and I ALWAYS get 100% of the speed I pay for (8/768).
Who cares? Comcast sucks, and they don't like net neutrality. For once, I'm rooting for the FCC... I think a part of me just died.
comcast's broadband is nice; however, they have TERRIBLE customer service and their rates and promotions (and ADs for that matter) are shitty.
If it wasn't for my need for internet I would boycott Comcrap altogether. I thought deregulation was supposed to bring competition. Comcrap can suck it.
That's right, screw those monopolistic coporate giants!
they should kill the 30% cap. monopoly breeds hatred. hatred creates fierce competitors.
Look what happened with windows and linux. You think we'd be anywhere if windows and osx had 30% market share caps? no.
~ubuntu user
Ethana, since you refuse to stop making everything about yourself and your "superior" OS, I'm going to follow suit and make everything about you too. For example:
"I get my music mostly from Jamendo.com nowadays. Are they going to show up there anytime soon? The truth they've realized is the first step. See, I value freedom a lot. Through Christ, we have freedom from sin, through open source software, we have freedom from the EULA, and through creative commons, we have freedom from the Music and Film Industry Associations. :) ethana2@gmail.com"
There's a lot more where that came from. And by the way, there is an EULA on open source software. Ever heard of the GPL?
@ethana2
30+30=60 right? 100-60=40 right? Wouldn't Linux already be in the lead at 40% by your logic? I might be wrong though as this MEST mathematics makes no sense to my Cleared mind.
am i missing something as to why comcast sucks? i've had their catv and high speed internet service for about 5 years now and i can only remember one instance where their internet was down (june '04 system was hacked, i think) and with their catv service you get tons of channels plus on demand. i do think the are expensive, though. but as they say - you get what you pay for... solid internet connection and a vast array of catv channels.
Apparently Comcast loves you. My comcast service crashed 6 or 7 times the first year after they took over for Roadrunner. And every time I called I got attitude. Plus when I was on RR I got 8 mbps+ and it was rock solid. Comcast cut my speed down to 6 mbps (off peak times) or 4 - 5 (peak times).
And at one point if I was downloading a torrent my internet would slow to a crawl, no matter how fast the torrent was coming down or going up. Nothing is more frustrating than paying $55 plus a month for 6+ mbps service only to see it load like dial up if you're getting a torrent 5k a second and uploading at 0.
Not to mention that they charged me a rental fee on a modem I owned. Road Runner gave away modems when I signed up (no monthly fee and if you have service for over a year you own the modem). I told Comcast this and they said they'd fix it. Nope. They moved that charge to the back side of my bill instead. And since my roomate (who pays the bills) never checked there we didn't know we were still paying a rental on a modem we owned. I called a second time to get it fixed and the woman accused me of lying and then when I offered to fax over a copy of my original contract that explains the terms for owning the modem she claimed I was falsifying documents. Then she wouldn't connect me with her supervisor. I asked her where I could bring it because I would just buy a new modem and bring them back the one I had been using for years. She gave me an address to bring it to. I would've called back but it took 20 minutes on hold to get that bundle of helpfulness the first time. After I bought a new modem I called to verify the address, turns out she fucking lied and gave me the wrong address.
Or there was a time I was trying to contact my senator becuase of an action alert I got from one of the activism mailing lists I'm on. The page wouldn't load on my computer. But loaded fine on my Wing on T-Mobile (EDGE). It also loaded fine the next day from work.
Here (Minneapolis) they know our options suck so they treat us like shit, at least in my neighborhood, in whiter areas their service is fine. We've tried DSL (slower) and the new municipal wifi (extremely slow). If it gets any worse I'll be switching to Speakeasy and paying an extra $30+ a month for the same speed. But I'll be sure that I get the speeds I pay for. And lets not forget the invisible cap.
When they bought out our local company our rates went up, we actually lost channels and my internet service started going bad. They finally "fixed" it but it was never as good as it was before, it is still spotty and even the HD channel line up was lacking and would drop down to SD from time to time.
I'm stuck with them for a little while, I'll get Satellite soon and if Verizon can get their act together and get FIOS to where I live, I will dump Comcrap like a bad habit.
I forgot to mention the action alert was of course about how Comcast screwed over their customers. And I never had a problem loading any other action item on that site, but the one time its against Comcast it doesn't work. Happy coincidence, for Comcast that is.
Comcrap has been involved in one too many scandals. I think for me it has to do with the cost of the service and the lack of good customer service. The icing on the cake is what they did when they bought out TechTV and the way they treated those people. That particular bit was inexcusable to me. And for what? G4? What a piece of shit station. TechTV already had great programming for gamers. There was no need to dedicate an entire network to gaming when they already had a great tech station with great programming such as The Screensavers and Call For Help as well as great programming for gamers. TechTV catered to the newbies as well as the more technically inclined as well as the gamers. Why fuck with a good thing? Obviously they fucked it all up because you can see in the way their lineup has so drastically changed from when they took over. I loathe Comcrap for what they did to us the consumer as well as what they did to the staff of TechTV. It makes my skin crawl every month when I pay them for service for which I have NO alternatives. They're a bunch of twats.
Hey - look at the bright side - maybe they'll take it to the street and finish each other off. Then my least favorite 2 organizations on the planet will be gone and we can dance in our rainbow-stuffed utopia.
I filed a complaint against Comcast with the BBB for deceptive business practices. They quoted one price for installation on their website and gave me another over the phone citing a "new promotion" as the reason. Yet, several weeks later, the "old installation price" is still being quoted on their website.
You Comcast Haters are uneducated on this matter.
Facts:
Yes typically, most municipalities have only one franchise agreement and thus, one cable company.
Verizon and ATT are >10x the size of Comcast. Together they are bigger than the whole industry of Cable.
Verizon is expensive for plain telephone.
Telecom owns the FCC, Congress, and Kevin Martin. Congress is investing Martin
ATT was broken up in 1984 to stop one telephone company. Now theres like 4 major ones, the two are giants.
Cable is the reason Telecom has new services to mirror.
Content Cost is the reason for all services are so high for tv.
Cable competes with Telecom, and Satellites. within each's industry, neither really competes with itself.
Cable is a large pool of companies. Teleccom is not
None of that made a whole lot of sense.
So you're telling me that the only reason cable is expensive is that the content costs a lot. Makes sense. Now explain why rates increase like crazy every year, and (for example) AT&T U-Verse can offer the same Craptastic!® service (if not better) for maybe $20? a month cheaper. Don't they have "content cost"? Or do they get free channels? And by the way, cable is about the same size pool of companies as "Telcom". All I can name off the bat are:
1. Time Warner (what we get in Ohio)
2. Insight
3. Cox
4. Comcast
5. Charter
"Cable competes with Telecom, and Satellites. within each's industry, neither really competes with itself."
You're saying that DirecTV and Dish Network don't compete with each other? AT&T and Verizon don't compete? Sure, only one company services residential areas at a time, but what about business customers?
RE: Predator.Z6
6. Bresnan Communications
7. Bright House Networks
8. Cableone
9. Insight
10. Cablevision Systems
Mediacom LLC
Midcontinent Media Inc.
Millennium Digital Media
Northland Communications
RCN Corp.
U.S. Cable Corp.
There's a lot more Cable companies than Phone Companies. And these are the multi state ones.
Content cost rising, inflation, and energy costs are the reason all communication services rise each year.
Verizon and ATT do offer cheaper basic packages, but they all go up after a period to equal about the same.
And what I was saying is that Cable does not usually compete with Cable. Nor does telecom compete with telecom. Satelitte competes with both and itself.
What I am insinuating is that the giant is telecom and Cable is the one spurring the industry to this point. The government is way to in favor of the mega comms, not cable which adds good service and innovation.
And yet the Telecoms and Satellite offer me a cheaper and better experience than the Cable companies, wonder why?
Cox Communications FTW! Omg their Orange County area service is great! They add about 3 new HD channels a month, and their high speed Internet is great, I have very small ping time and I am pretty much always the party leader in Xbox Live matchmaking (best connection gets party leader).
I 2nd Cox Communications FTW!!
Don't live in orange county though. Vegas baby. Got there 10 mb service and for whatever reason i always connect higher than 10mb? thought it's suppossed to cap at 10. whatever, not gonna call them about it though. lol
Yeah, their internet is great. They have PowerBoost set up in my area, so I get around 10 mbps as I usually don't use it during peak hours. The Digital Cable works great with my TiVo HD, too.
Hopefully Comcast will lose, be fined $1bil for wasting tax dollars, go bankrupt.
Silly! You better hope Comcast doesn't loose else your rates will just go up. It's business 101.
LOL.... Well I should point out I have DirecTV
My Comcast service kicks ass...
I guess thats because I live in Philadelphia, and this is Comcast Country.
I didn't realize that it sucked everywhere though, I thought they just didn't care about Pittsburgh (where I go to school) because it's Pittsburgh and no one should care about it.
Hey man comcrap blows here in State College too...
I don't see how allowing them to control MORE than 30% of a market increases market competitiveness. it would seem that they could wipe out the competition.
yo Comcast is evil. I type this on a suposed 10MBPS line and I can't even check my email in like 5 seconds. Comcast is dirty and the ONLY reason i will give them a nickle is against my will due to my roommate's cable tv addiction and availability. Comcast wants to rape us--more than the next guy.
want to hear something crazy? comcast has been trying to collect money from me for almost 2 years now. Actually, they've already got debt collection started on me twice.
The crazy part is, I have never been a comcast customer. they got my name from some company they swallowed up, and then who knows what happened.
Comcast has screwed over my credit, and I wasn't even a customer. I can only imagine how bad it is for people that are under a contract with them, yikes!
Since the Justice Department have taken the shackles off of the Teleco's to include unbelievable mergers (only two markets left for AT&T to conquer) it would only be fair for our competition based market to remove the franchise regulations for the cable operators.
If government is going to regulate, they need to regulate in "fairness" which is not the current case.
(btw, I am not a COMCAST fan as they are using middle-man hacking to improve their network efficiency as opposed to promoting new tools and protocols.)
I don't think that comparing Telco's and Cable operators is a fair comparison, but not from the ISP side of the business but from the actual Cable TV side. Cable operators have heavy sway over public opinion by easily limiting what the public sees and hears by controlling the cable advertising and/or the channels that are shown on the cable system. The telcos, in theory, don't have any control over who you call or what sites you visit so they don't carry the same kind of social weight when they have large markets.
THAT is the best headline. EVAR!!
What's the catch here ? The FCC ignored hundreds of thousands of letters etc. from citizens who opposed big media mergers a few years back ... Comcast must've peeved one of the FCC's BIG corporate sponsors, or maybe the FCC was insulted that the paid Comcast plants fell asleep during the "public" hearings.. I'm pretty sure this show of resistance isn't about you and me.
I'm going to add that my Comcast service is actually pretty stellar. I'm in SLC, Utah and it is BY FAR the best service offered. The only other comparable (speed and cost) is QWEST DSL and it is awful.
Now, as far as Comcast and the Sandvineing that has been going on, I'm not too keen on that. But as far as Comast holding up their end of our relationship, they have certainly been more then adequate. And just to put a number on my use, I'd estimate that I transfer no less than 25GB a month in and about 75% of that back out.
I'm pretty neutral here.
I've had comcast for a few years now (in Portland, OR). I pay for 6 mbps, and end up getting atleast 10 mbps, with bursts around 12 mbps. My upload speed is only supposed to be 768 kbps, while I'm normally around 2 mbps. I'm on the internet A LOT and I rarely have any problems. The same goes with my cable tv; rarely any problems. It all seems to be based on the area.
I don't like the idea of any company having too much control or influence on any one subject. When that happens, you get companies like Microsoft, that can produce a plethora of mistakes and problems and still be no worse for the wear.