Cable's Top Lobbyist: Over-Charging Consumers Helps The Poor → Did no one else think this?

You know...for months now I have been reading this site and stop the cap (www.stopthecap.com) and others about topics like these. What kills me is that every time an ISP or cable operator tries to justify usage based billing, the default to the stance that a lower cap = lower price to get to socio-economically (poor, welfare, etc) areas increasing cable penetration.

Because yea...NOT ONE of those poor families own Xbox 360s or would ever have even heard of Netflix and YouTube to attempt to use a newly acquired broadband connection to do what everyone else uses with it. Right? Or....wait.....

Does no one else even consider that when saying caps are good?

Of course no one believes that. And not one of the caps that have been tried or implemented thus far has involved lowering the base price. Besides, there's nothing stopping the cable companies from offering economy plans right now that include lower speeds and/or a low cap.

As for allowing them to build out more areas, that's utterly laughable. I can't count the number of times I've heard of a cable company telling a homeowner that they almost reach that, in order to come that last few hundred feet, the homeowner will need to pay some astronomical amount. Hell, it's even happened to a friend of mine. And, in an even more extreme case, several years back, a friend living in an apartment complex wanted to sign up with Knology. Knology served his building, but their lines stopped at the apartment ACROSS THE HALL, and they refused to go any farther.

These rationalizations for caps are just that: rationalizations. They're BS, plain and simple.

Charter did it. Caps were imposed the last week of November and not only did prices not go down they sent out with the December bill that in January rates will go up.