approval from:
tomsprat 
JTRockville
| You are all clueless to this issue. I see all these comments defending the Cable co's position. Its quite ridiculous. Do you not realize that you can't compete with the cable co's? Let's look at the facts.
1) In order to be a cable co, you must petition the city government in which you live to grant you right of way rights over everyone's land in order for you to lay your cable. You can't just rent space from the power company, nice thought though.
2) It costs hundred of millions of dollars to roll out a full service cable company in just a small suburbian area. No startup has that kind of capital.
3) Current cable cos came about through monopoly agreements with the cities that allowed them to provide service at what ever price they chose without fear of compition, they simply gave a kick back to the cities in the form of cable line taxes. Fast ford 30 years and you now have 3 huge multi-billion dollar cable companies providing 95% of cable customers, Time-Warner, Cox, and Comcast.
4) Cable rates ahve increased year after year at rates much higher than the natural inflation... Yet costs for providing the services have decreased tremendously.
Let me give you an example of a small startup who tried this in the KC, MO area, Everest. They rolled out in highly targeted neighborhoods to increase their chance of success. As their trucks rolled out to build their network, Time-Warner cable trucks followed. Time-Warner sells reps went door-to-door, in front of Everest cable builders, and offered people the completely full channel package for under $35 a month... thats everything, not just basic, HBO, Cinemax, Showtime... you name it, hundreds of channels. Needless to say at these rates, Everest could not compete, they lost million in a matter of months. It got so bad they have ceased their limited expantion on hopes of just becoming profitable with the few areas they currently serve. In the meantime, time-warner has returned many of those customers on their special "test marketing" rate back to full price. The fear of competition is gone and so is their anti-competitive pricing.
That is a prime example of why cable co's should be treated exactly the same as telco's. I won't even go into the censoring they do by not allowing competitor ISPs to even advertise on their cable systems. How many small businesses do you think can afford to run ads nationwide on network TV?
Both Telcos and Cable Cos were create and paid for by You and Me, not themselves. They did it with our tax money and government subsidies.
PS. On a side note, don't feel to bad for Everest cable. They are owned by Aquila... another monopoly, the Power Co. Its a sad state of afairs when one monopoly can't compete with another across different markets.
PSS. Competition has been open among Cable Cos sinse '96, ever wonder why you can't fined Cox and Time-Warner in the same area, or Comcast and Cox, or any other combination... Can you say collusion boys and girls. If its as easy to come in and build your own network and compete as they say, then why aren't they doing it among themselves already? It would really make the whole issue mute if they did, but they won't because its not possible! |
| WOWed is 100 percent correct on this issue. I for one work at a cable company and it is a monopoly. Not just any company can move in in a territory. Now we do sometimes have two companies working in the same building , but they do have their own equipment. They do not share lines at all.
Mind you this would be better for the customer, but even in these situations the customer does not get a better rate. Perhaps it is cause this situation is only in a very small scale. I believe that if a company can go in and provide service to a whole system not only a part of it, the customer will see better prices.
We will see if anything comes out of this. |
