Study: Caps And Overages Are About Ripping You Off → Cable wants MAX profits - what a shock

Cable pricing strategies are designed to maximize profits. That is called capitalism. If they charge too much, competitors WILL find a way to move in.

How when there are monopolies and duopolies in the entire country? ( Oh you mean Dish or DirecTV).
There's a fine line between market forces and collusion...

Hard to find a way to move in when the incumbents are paying for laws to be passed to prevent any competition from being able to move in and/or quickly "buying out" any potential competition that manages to spring forth.

All of that is reversible. It starts and ends with the consumer. We are in this position because we were ignorant. Were not so ignorant anymore. The facts are there for everyone to see. Now its time to put on the pressure. Pressure you ISPs for better service at a better price. Pressure you local politicians to listen to their communities. Our problem is not the lobbyists. They are irrelevant if we are doing our job as citizens.

what capitalism when cable is your only choice in town for many people?

Monopolies don't get competition. Free market doesn't work when corruption controls the marketplace. That is the WHOLE point. Competitors can't move in because monopolies control the backhauls and can charge ANYTHING their mood feels like to raise rates (per company) on anyone who would dare try and compete with them pricing them into bankruptcy. Their lobbyists create constant legal red tape for monopolies to bankrupt mom and pop startups. Then throw in monopolies sign non competing agreements with other big carriers to gouge their areas for constant unescapeable rate hikes unless you want to live cut off from the world.

This is WHAT has been happening for the last ten+ years and for the same time there is ALWAYS someone saying "The free market will very soon fix the bad things happening right now!" "So everyone stop worrying already!" News flash it's been 10+ years and we still have the same monopolies grinding startups into dust. Nothing is changing.

We DON'T have a free market anymore. All we have for communications in America is monopolies who have vast control in who can be elected and own said elected. Then by proxy they get to staff their own regulatory agencies!

I think things are far worse from a competitive viewpoint than they were 10 years ago.

10 years ago, telephone companies were phone companies that also provided data services. Within DSL, there were lots of competitive sub-choices (third party CLECs, third party ISPs). There was a healthy rivalry between cable and DSL.

Today, the two biggest telcos are now providing video service (U-Verse and FiOS). That puts them in the same position as the cable companies - Netflix and satellite VOD competes with them, so limiting internet consumption gives their own service a competitive advantage. Their next gen networks are faster, but they're also closed to competitors.

The higher speeds are great, but they put a nail in the coffin to old, unlimited third party ADSL services and all of the competitors that don't own their own infrastructure.

The telcos are now looking at heavily capped wireless services as their new cash cow. Innovation from them has pretty much stopped. New U-verse and FiOS deployments have ceased. Without competition, what incentive do cable providers have to do anything other than offer sub-par service? They don't even do that well with TV service, where there is at least SOME competition.

I don't have a lot of hope for Google Fiber coming to my neighborhood, but I sure hope it or something like it takes off in the US. If it doesn't, I'm very concerned about the future of US broadband.

Maximizing profits in an anti-competitive landscape means only one thing. Regulate.

Either 1) We must have open last mile and many options or 2) The providers should be regulated to prevent abuse.

Take your pick.

Option 3) None of the above is what we have now, and the abuse is just getting started.

Competitors? You mean Muni-Fiber? Of course not. That would be "unfair" now wouldn't it?

100% agree. I will never ever pay for television. Ever.

But with Internet, it gets a bit tricky because it is essentially a utility now.