pnh102
Reptiles Are Cuddly And Pretty
Premium
join:2002-05-02
Mount Airy, MD
 ·Comcast
| reply to itguy05
Re: FCC Sanity?
said by itguy05  :Which is why FIOS, DirecTV, Dish, and Comcast are roughly (within $5/mo) the same price for each other... Also the reason FIOS also raised rates this year. Cable would have gone out of business if not for satellite TV, however. Had satellite not initially provided some sort of competition for cable TV, cable providers would not have offered new services like On Demand, DVRs, real high definition programming and the like.
said by itguy05 :Competition almost never guarantees low prices. It just makes you feel better about the price you pay. A panacea if you will. Competition does allows you to play the providers against one another to get a better deal for yourself. Quite a few people have used with success the threat of moving from one provider to another as a means to get their current provider to continue a promotional rate where it would have otherwise expired.
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Only SHATNER is Kirk. |
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RickNY
Premium
join:2000-11-02
New York
1 edit | said by pnh102 :Cable would have gone out of business if not for satellite TV, however. Had satellite not initially provided some sort of competition for cable TV, cable providers would not have offered new services like On Demand, DVRs, real high definition programming and the like. Are you sure thats what you meant? If a company exists without any competition, they have a better chance of prospering, not the other way around. If there was no competition, there would have been no reason for them to expand their service offerings, they would just have to keep raising the prices of their existing products.
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" Any society that would give up a little liberty to gain a little security will deserve neither and lose both." - Benjamin Franklin |
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pnh102
Reptiles Are Cuddly And Pretty
Premium
join:2002-05-02
Mount Airy, MD
·Comcast
| said by RickNY :Are you sure thats what you meant? Yes. There was a brief period a few years back when satellite TV was killing cable. I remember when Comcast was offering satellite TV subscribers $400 in discounts to become cable subscribers.
However, cable now offers more of the types of services that satellite TV offers. If cable had not made these improvements, those providers would have continued to lose customers to satellite.
Of course, if there were no satellite TV providers, cable would still be making money hand over fist but their product offerings would be worse than what they currently offer.
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Only SHATNER is Kirk. |
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itguy05
join:2005-06-17
Camp Hill, PA
| reply to pnh102
quote:
Cable would have gone out of business if not for satellite TV, however. Had satellite not initially provided some sort of competition for cable TV, cable providers would not have offered new services like On Demand, DVRs, real high definition programming and the like.
I highly doubt that. HD programming followed the trend in big screen HD sets. I'd say that one was driven more by consumers and CE companies vs competition.
The rest is nice, but more like a natural evolution. DVR's were the result of Tivo coming on the scene and the CableCo's realizing that they could make $9.99 off Tivo-like functionality.
quote:
Competition does allows you to play the providers against one another to get a better deal for yourself. Quite a few people have used with success the threat of moving from one provider to another as a means to get their current provider to continue a promotional rate where it would have otherwise expired.
And many more are told "see you". And if you do switch, it's often for a short time before your rates go up. I have been with both sat providers and now comcast. After all the rate increases on sat, Comcast is roughly (within $5-10) what I was paying DirecTV. |
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Fatal Vector
join:2005-11-26
| "After all the rate increases on sat, Comcast is roughly (within $5-10) what I was paying DirecTV."
Which is the current marketing technique. This will also happen with fiber in a few years. They will just set the prices so close to each other that it will not matter who you get service from. Standard price fixing collusion. |
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braynes
Premium
join:2005-03-14
Waterville, ME
 ·Great Works Internet
·RoadRunner Cable
·Verizon Online DSL
| reply to pnh102
"Competition does allows you to play the providers against one another to get a better deal for yourself. Quite a few people have used with success the threat of moving from one provider to another as a means to get their current provider to continue a promotional rate where it would have otherwise expired."
Not where I live they say ok sorry good luck,bye-bye.
Bruce |
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