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This is a sub-selection from Advantages
ITGeeks
join:2014-04-20
Cleveland, OH

ITGeeks to nothing00

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Re: Advantages

What competition are they reducing?????? Explain that??? TWC and Comcast do NOT compete in anyway shape or form.

As far as reducing employees- TWC is doing that without Comcast as been doing that for a few years now.

Equipment and hardware standardization across is a great thing, lower R&D costs being lower are great too.

karlmarx
join:2006-09-18
Moscow, ID

1 recommendation

karlmarx

Member

Competition. It's that thing that makes companies provide BETTER service for a BETTER price? You know, the OPPOSITE of a monopoly? You know, having NO CAPS on the amount of data you use? If you PAY for a higher speed, then, by definition, you would be using more data. If Comcast is allowed to be the monopoly provider of cable broadband (the combined company would have control over more than 30 million households, they would be in a position to dictate terms and people would really have no choice than to do business with them). That's why it's BAD for the consumer. The COST to provide 100GB is EXACTLY THE SAME as the cost to provide 500GB. There is NO UNIT COST for bits. Period. There is a CAPITAL cost to purchase the equipment to provide those bits, and a MAINTENANCE cost to keep it running, but the bits themselves costs next to nothing. Please explain to me how charging a 10,000% markup on bits is FAIR to the consumer. If comcast is allowed to merge, then 30 MILLION households will have NO CHOICE to pay whatever comcast decides it wants to charge. Make NO MISTAKE ABOUT IT, Comcast desperately wants to monetize the transmission of BITS by volume.
Uplinkpro
join:2008-02-11
Lake Charles, LA

2 recommendations

Uplinkpro to ITGeeks

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to ITGeeks
The shill is strong in this one.

Contrary to what you might believe there are areas that, while very limited and certainly not the rule, these two companies overlap and thus compete. So yes, them merging will actually reduce competition, but the real problem is that it will become an even larger monopoly/monopsony. There are reasons for the Sherman Antitrust Act and this is one of them.

I'll just leave this here so you can read up on it - »en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sh ··· nal_text

Going by the interpretations of the text one could say ISPs that have data caps but exempt certain services from those caps but not others of a similar type (like Netflix vs ISPs version of Netflix) can run afoul of the law.

Morac
Cat god
join:2001-08-30
Riverside, NJ

1 edit

3 recommendations

Morac to ITGeeks

Member

to ITGeeks
said by ITGeeks:

What competition are they reducing?????? Explain that??? TWC and Comcast do NOT compete in anyway shape or form.

And this is part of the problem. Comcast has no competition (with the exception of FIOS in a few locations). Comcast can already basically do whatever they feel like. Outlet fees? Yep. Fees for using your own equipment? Sure. Fees for pulling in OTA broadcasts? Sure why not.

Though the reduction in competition he is talking about is actually in the industry, not on the consumer level. When you have one de facto provider of TV/Internet, that company has a huge amount of leverage over other companies, even if they don't directly compete.

Remember also, that Comcast isn't just a Cable TV/Internet provider, they are a multi-media company that owns NBC-Universal. They can charge themselves nothing or very little for channels they own and also license TV/movies from studios they own to them for next to nothing as well. You'd be surprised by what Comcast owns.

tshirt
Premium Member
join:2004-07-11
Snohomish, WA

tshirt to Uplinkpro

Premium Member

to Uplinkpro
said by Uplinkpro:

Contrary to what you might believe there are areas that, while very limited and certainly not the rule, these two companies overlap and thus compete.

Can you point out exactly where that is and how many customers are effected.
I know there are a few places that two cable companies both, but I don't think these two every overbuilt each other or even bought and continued to operate such a system.
If one does exist I would be interested in seeing how that influenced the pricing, available services and continued investment.

ev
@172.56.11.x

ev to ITGeeks

Anon

to ITGeeks
Exactly! And the consumer will further benefit when Comcast absorbs TWC's plant by accepting the teeny tiny concession of a cap ban for life.

Kuro
@75.151.50.x

Kuro

Anon

While I would love this they would weasel out of it some way. Whether it be not implemented for years until everyone forgets it or calling it something else I don't think we can get away from them while they are the only game in town.

hurfy
Premium Member
join:2002-08-06
Spokane, WA

hurfy to ev

Premium Member

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Cap? What cap? You can buy as many 50Gb buckets of data as you wish and the first one is free.....

lol, I didn't even have to think much for that one, way too easy.
Uplinkpro
join:2008-02-11
Lake Charles, LA

Uplinkpro to tshirt

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As I said, it's a very, very limited area. the graphic here »stopthecap.com/2014/07/0 ··· rticles/ highlights one of them in the Minneapolis/St. Paul area. Needless to say that's just one area, but I'm fairly sure there are other borderline areas like that where they overlap.

What's really annoying though is the companies are blatantly stating they don't want to compete. Both Cameron Communications and Vyve down here have stated they refuse to expand their service into Suddenlink areas when I had called them.

tshirt
Premium Member
join:2004-07-11
Snohomish, WA

tshirt

Premium Member

given it's a comic strip with no hard numbers, and the area marked "both" is tiny, it's really a non-event. you can be pretty sure that this is one area that one was already planning to sellout/give to the other
You being sure, is wonderful but does little to present actual other examples.
this isn't about Cameron Communications and Vyve , but the principal is the same, cable companies know overbuilding one another is a lose-lose choice it costs just as much to build for no more than 1/2 the customers, they aren't being rude, they are trying to be smart.

commanguy
join:2013-08-05

commanguy

Member

Living in Minnesota I find that comic strip annoying in one regard. They should have included political boundries to show better the service areas. I would say a larger area shown covered by Charter is the St. Cloud area and south of that. I know the Mankato area is covered by both Charter and a local telco now calling themselves Eventis, used to be Hickory Tech. I am off the Minneapolis system, former Time Warner until the swap with Comcast years ago. If they do get Time Warner and the reports I saw on DSL Reports a while back are true the area I live in my end up with Charter.
And my brother in Wisconsin has Charter and he thinks they may have a 250GB data cap at which point they throttle his speed.
Almost to the point where tv is not worth it anymore.

tech1103
@50.159.74.x

tech1103 to Morac

Anon

to Morac
I'm going to call BS....

I work for Comcast, have now for 14 years as a technician.

The outlet fee you so fondly point out is either going to be activating it or installing it. All you talk like it should ALL be done free. You expect the service to be free. You expect the troublecalls to be free when it's YOUR own equipment that is at fault 90% of the time. Your equipment are things like TV's, Radio shack purchased splitters and wire (guess what, you just paid MORE in that troublecall then you would of just having us come out and do it for you), your own router, and best yet, your computer. I do not know HOW MANY troublecalls I run on for slow speeds when it's the computer so bogged down with malware, yet the customer expects US to fix their computer. Trouble calls cost the company on average $70 to roll a truck to your house.

And as for charging to use your own equipment, show me the proof! Comcast does NOT charge for you to use your own equipment. Have your own modem? Sure, no charge for using it. Have a Tivo? No charge there either, maybe a buck or two for the cablecards. Unless you're talking about having to pay for the service to watch TV when you use your own Tivo, then I say see above.

THe fee you talk about for the OTA channels, well guess what there Mr. Know-it-all. Comcast is REQUIRED to pay for the rebroadcasting of said channels! Call up your local stations and ask them. While it may be free over the air, your MCO's are required to pay to rebroadcast.

So before you start spouting off what you obviously have no idea about, educate yourself. Go down to your local cable office and ask to read the franchise agreement. It's public, all cable companies are required to allow you to read it. It will tell you EVERYTHING the cable companies can and can't do. How much they can charge, where they can service, how long hold times can be, etc.

And reason cable companies are usually the only one, except in huge cities like NY, Chicago, LA, San Fran, to name a few, is because it's astronomically expensive for a new company to come in and over build. For a company to come in and open up shop, they have to have the city approve their application, pay the franchise fees, then build out their infrastructure. A city, say the size of Portland, would cost a company in the range of $500-$750 million. Then they need to figure out what penetration rate tey would get, how long it would take to recoup, etc. Most will not do it because of the legnth of time it takes to recoup. And it's not like telephone, you can't share cable lines. WAY to many issues to deal with. And it's a private infrastructure anyways! It was NOT built with tax money like telco's are.

Morac
Cat god
join:2001-08-30
Riverside, NJ

Morac

Member

said by tech1103 :

I work for Comcast, have now for 14 years as a technician.

The outlet fee you so fondly point out is either going to be activating it or installing it. All you talk like it should ALL be done free. You expect the service to be free. You expect the troublecalls to be free when it's YOUR own equipment that is at fault 90% of the time. Your equipment are things like TV's, Radio shack purchased splitters and wire (guess what, you just paid MORE in that troublecall then you would of just having us come out and do it for you), your own router, and best yet, your computer. I do not know HOW MANY troublecalls I run on for slow speeds when it's the computer so bogged down with malware, yet the customer expects US to fix their computer. Trouble calls cost the company on average $70 to roll a truck to your house.

The outlet fee I'm referring to is the one Comcast decided to implement so they can rent their converter boxes way amortization costs. It's a way to sock it to people who own their own equipment like TiVos and the like. Comcast decided that rather charging customers $11.95 a month for an HD converter box and losing money to people who buy their own box, that it should cost $2 a month to rent the HD converter and $9.95 a month to get service on said box or any customer owned box. This despite the fact that the customer is already paying for service and don't get me started on the bogus "HD fee" (which is completely made up and not "required". It's sleazy things like this that makes Comcast despised.

As for spending so much money on truck rolls, if Comcast had a competent phone support service then I'd estimate 80% of the truck rolls could be eliminated. When I have a service problem that I know for a fact is not a problem inside my home (or even likely in my neighborhood) such as weird colors on channels or sound channels cutting out, phone support's only "solution" is a truck roll. If Comcast really wanted to save money, they would have a way for customers to get in touch with their local service department instead of talking to people in India. Customers used to be able to email their local service centers, but that option was taken away. Even the Twitter support team has been scaled back.

That doesn't even take into account the fact that many technicians, like you apparently, seem to think all customers are idiots. My "favorite" technician solution to an upstream signal problem was to replace my eMTA about 3 times, the splitters twice (breaking the wall plate in the process) and doing a bunch of other things before actually trying to track down the problem.

As for franchise agreements, because of lobbying from Verizon, there are no local franchise agreements in NJ and many other states. They were replaced with a statewide franchise agreement.
« problems with Comcast TWC Merger
This is a sub-selection from Advantages