 cdruGo ColtsPremium,MVM
join:2003-05-14
Fort Wayne, IN
kudos:5
 ·Frontier FiOS
| said by oliphant:but I did like how Ergen was a bit of a scrapper when it came to programming negotiations. He wouldn't hesitate too much to pull programming off the air if the price wasn't right which helped keep their prices lower that everyone else. I wouldn't say is a scrapper. I would say that he is a good business man. I would never want to play poker with him. Unfortunately most cable providers happily take whatever price increases and just pass them off to the customers. I'm happy that Charlie at least resists the constant increases.
Increases are inevitable. Charlie just makes sure that those increases are happening yearly just because the providers can get away with it.
That said I don't want a merger. Competition is a good thing and both E* and D* have their good and bad points and from the looks of it both are doing pretty well. For many people in the boonies these are the only two competitors they have and a merger would bring nothing new for consumers but the possibility of higher prices. I have mixed feelings. Yes a merger would eliminate competition in some areas. But not really as much as you think. Neither provider has regional pricing. All pricing is done at the national level. So even if the merged company became the only provider in a rural area, they would be still competing on price across the nation with cable companies.
Programming for the most part is very similar between the two with the national offerings. Both have channels that are on them exclusively that the other probably wouldn't mind having as well. There is a massive amount of bandwidth that is wasted between the two duplicating channels being broadcasted. A merger would free up a lot of badly needed bandwidth to enable HD programming for most or all markets once the MPEG4 switchover is complete.
The reduction in duplication of services would also mean that costs related to providing those services would be reduced as well. Unlike cable when you merge to suddenly have 2x the physical plant to maintain, with satellite it costs just as much to broadcast to one person as it does to 1 million (subscriber costs excluded obviously).
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Quis custodiet custodes ipsos? |
