So Far, 'Franchise Reform' Means Higher Prices > Shocked?

Shocked?

...and the cable companies were the ones that warned that this would happen. Why would the telcos want to offer a lower price than cable? They need to make money too. The only reason they started offering cable was to have some way to compete against cable companies that offer phone service. If you think about it, just about all customers signing up for cable phone service are coming from telcos. For them to sit back and watch their phone customers disappear to cable is definitely not a winning strategy. They had to launch cable to have a competing product. They can offer slightly lower prices, or even the same prices as cable, and be able to now retain those customers that were jumping ship to get a double or triple play from a competing cable company/

reply to Matt
Cell phone prices have not decreased with all of the so-called competition. Land line prices did not decrease either. Even with the phone companies getting their asses handed to them. The only price drop came from services offered through different technologies by non-entrenched companies such as VOIP.
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dnoyeB
"Then said I, Wisdom [is] better than strength: nevertheless the poor man's wisdom [is] despised, and his words are not heard. " Ecclesiastes 9:16

reply to Comcablrtl
Telco's never had to offer Cable. If they'd offer a lower cost product they'd have business. But nope! they only offer you a special when you threaten to leave to go to Cable, or you go to sign up with Comcast and VZ puts a hold on your number transfer request and then they decide to call you and offer you some promotion that they would NOT have offered to you in the first place. Because they're VZ and don't have to do that.

Remember the telco's are the ones that have the "other fees and taxes" so when they have to lower your price due to them losing business to VoIP and Digital phone customers they have some sort of profit coming in.

reply to Matt
The Telcos promised if granted these state wide franchises, over-riding local and city oversight, that they'd roll out their new services and compete with Cable.

This they have done. However, when they told everyone that the competition would bring lower prices, better service, etc etc they were just blowing smoke. I can certainly say that here the U-Verse offerings are 1) Either slightly less then Cox, for a lot less services or 2) Bundles for everything that actually cost more then Cox.

So if you were thinking that the high prices might fall, well big surprise, it ain't happening. The only thing that's a surprise is that people actually fell for these sales talk.... "Give up your local regulatory power and we'll make your dreams come true."

Ok, so it's given up (taken away, actually) and the dream is actually the nightmare.

Predictable, as some of us said at the start.
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"Regulatory capitalism is when companies invest in lawyers, lobbyists, and politicians, instead of plant, people, and customer service." - former FCC Chairman William Kennard (A real FCC Chairman, unlike the current Corporate Spokesperson in the job!)