Reviews:
 ·Charter
 ·Brown Dog Networks
 ·Access US
 ·Google Voice
| Some props for Charter I'll be the first to admit that I've bashed on Charter on more than one occasion. I'll never, ever again used leased equipment since it's been a major source of my issues.
But to know Charter is to know how Charter came to be in my town. Originally throughout the St. Louis area most cable companies started out being built at the community level by subcontractors. Strangely enough the most populated areas got cable last which is against the industry norm. I know at one time there were at least 10 or more different operators that each served a slice of the area.
Standards didn't exist and you could seriously walk one block from your house and get different channels and packages. In St. Louis the cable company was owned by the City itself and was one of the last areas in the entire area to get cable. It finally arrived in the early 80's and comprised of a whopping 20 channels. But it was twenty more than we had ever seen.
Since then the cable company was sold off to a group called TCI Cablevision. They operated for several years and did little to change or better things. AT & T came along and bought out the system. Personally I think they did it to mess everything up as much as they could then sold it to Charter.
What Charter was handed could have been nothing less than a nightmare. I wouldn't be half surprised if they had to rebuild most of what was in place to offer what they do now. Even when the first cable modems hit the area they were already more stable than DSL. That pushed Ma Bell to improve their stuff but no matter what Charter is always a step ahead in speed offerings and is to this day.
The only issue I've had with them was the shoddy Netgear routers that they lease out as part of their home networking package. I went through five of them and had very flaky internet for nearly a half a year. Do yourself a favor and buy your own stuff and if you can get DD-WRT. My service rarely ever has issues, cable TV the same. Very rarely any issues at all. Speeds rock as well.
So imagine the situation Charter is in if this happened to them elsewhere and probably did. Charter's built a good system - as good as anyone else has. But the customers may only be starting to see the results. Now there is a buttload of debt that needs to be paid off from what they spent to build the system. I'd like to see them survive and continue to improve.
God only knows - if they don't AT & T might just buy it back and dismantle the system like they did the first time. |
Reviews:
·WOW Internet and..
| the ATT Broadband is NOT the same as the ATT today. ATT Broadband was owned by the former ATT. NOT SBC.
back from SBC came into play Ameritech used to own several cable systems they were called Americast but where shitty in service. Those were sold off to some private company and named W.O.W (over priced services). and rebuilt. Columbus Ohio still has WOW and i think Cleveland does as well. But the system is in select areas of the city and only in maybe 4 cities at the most?
The only thing ATT would give you is a cap on your usage. But it would be good to bring in an actual cable company and people that know how to run it, but the services would be outsourced and the jobs would be gone. Or the staff would call a strike they didn't get to become union.
The old POTS network would be tossed out the door though. |
1 edit | reply to megarock
What you state for St Louis is EXACTLY what happened throughout Charter. It's the same story for pretty much every system that Charter has ever aquired. From first hand experience of working in both Charter and Comcast systems in Michigan, I can say Charter's technical quality from the house to the headend is far superior to Comcast's. Charter has an extensive technical quality program, that at first seemed like a collosal waste of time, but 3 years down the line we are finally seeing the benefits. Technicans are working on a pro-active basis before problems crop up, instead of reacting to outages as they occur. Service calls are kept to a minimum. Is it perfect? Of course not, but it could be a hell of a lot worst. Charter is going through the same teething issues in its systems in California and Texas right now. From the horror stories I've heard from various internal sources, the employees out there are ones they kept from the previous system owner, and they cannot keep up with Charter's requirements. They inherited scraps and it takes time and money to turn it around.
I don't see Charter going away. Investors are just trying to get what money they can, these kind of lawsuits and accusations of fraud are common in Chapter 11 filings. They made an investment and lost money - thats the risk you take. United Airlines was in restructuring for 3 years before coming out of bankruptcy.
The worst I see happening is a 'strategic consolidation and relocation' of Charter's systems. I have nothing to back this up and is based purely on rumors I've heard from a few different sources, but I can see Charter trading some of its outlying systems for other ones that are closer to its existing strongholds in the Midwest or California. A good example might be trading its systems in Texas, Nebraska or New England for other systems in Michigan, Wisconsin or California. The latest one I heard was trading Fort Worth, TX (a Charter system) for Grand Rapids/Muskegon, MI (Comcast). It would have about the same customer count, Charter services all other towns and suburbs around Grand Rapids, it has a call center there and its master headend that feeds the entire state is about 15 miles away. This would be a great move IMO as it would allow Charter to get rid of a system that is a burden, as well as use existing managers that are in MI to cut costs.
Thats just my 2c. |
