UofMiamiGrad
Premium
join:2001-02-03
Great Neck, NY
| Comcast hates competition!
Do any of the bells offer TV service to 30% of the US market? I doubt it, excluding bundled satellite service. FIOS TV only passed the 1 million mark recently. U-Verse TV is nowhere near that, only 231,000 subs. So why is Comcast crying foul over the Bells? Afraid of competition? How do they control more than 30% of the market solely as a pay TV provider, which is the issue? I hope Comcast loses in court.  |
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BF69
join:2004-07-28
Camden, TN
| said by UofMiamiGrad  :Do any of the bells offer TV service to 30% of the US market? I doubt it, excluding bundled satellite service. FIOS TV only passed the 1 million mark recently. U-Verse TV is nowhere near that, only 231,000 subs. So why is Comcast crying foul over the Bells? Afraid of competition? How do they control more than 30% of the market solely as a pay TV provider, which is the issue? I hope Comcast loses in court. Do they( the bells ) have 30% of the market or more? No. CAN they? Yes. which is the issue. So can DirectTv. They have 17 million subscribers and are adding at least 1 million a year. |
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UofMiamiGrad
Premium
join:2001-02-03
Great Neck, NY
| said by BF69 :Do they( the bells ) have 30% of the market or more? No. CAN they? Yes. which is the issue. So can DirectTv. They have 17 million subscribers and are adding at least 1 million a year. And when they pass that 30% mark, you can bet the FCC will tell them to sell assets (areas) to get below 30%. If they don't then and only then does Comcast and other MSOs have a case that the FCC rule is flawed. Until such time, Comcast can enjoy the new competition, since they seem to love it so much already. |
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jester121
join:2003-08-09
Lake Zurich, IL | You bet on it -- I'll take your action and win your money. The anti-cable FCC doesn't believe in level playing fields. |
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gaforces
United We Stand, Divided We Fall
join:2002-04-07
Santa Cruz, CA
 ·Cruzio Internet
| reply to UofMiamiGrad
said by UofMiamiGrad :Do any of the bells offer TV service to 30% of the US market? I doubt it, excluding bundled satellite service. FIOS TV only passed the 1 million mark recently. U-Verse TV is nowhere near that, only 231,000 subs. So why is Comcast crying foul over the Bells? Afraid of competition? How do they control more than 30% of the market solely as a pay TV provider, which is the issue? I hope Comcast loses in court. They should apply the 30% rule to all information services. Then it would be fair. Clearchannel anyone? 
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Vista ~ Less functional every day! |
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S_engineer
join:2007-05-16
Chicago, IL
| reply to jester121
Comcrap has a lot of nerve suing anybody about caps. How about identifying ones imposed onto customers!
Funny, maybe Comcrap should look at the irony here.
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"There is no such thing as public opinion. There is only published opinion."....Winston Churchill
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RadioDoc
Sortofadog
Premium,ExMod 2000-03
join:2000-05-11
Chicago, IL
·AT&T Midwest
| reply to gaforces
Clear Channel owns far less than 30% of all US radio stations. More like 13% at their peak and considerably less today. You might want to refine your arguments to reflect the reality of the numbers.
The CATV 30% cap is mostly related to video programming delivery and not the Internets. If Comcast operated as a common carrier this would not be an issue, but they do things that are anti-competitive within their own systems and are justifiably spanked for it.
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Toolmaster of La Grange. |
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BF69
join:2004-07-28
Camden, TN
| reply to UofMiamiGrad
said by UofMiamiGrad :said by BF69 :Do they( the bells ) have 30% of the market or more? No. CAN they? Yes. which is the issue. So can DirectTv. They have 17 million subscribers and are adding at least 1 million a year. And when they pass that 30% mark, you can bet the FCC will tell them to sell assets (areas) to get below 30%. If they don't then and only then does Comcast and other MSOs have a case that the FCC rule is flawed. Until such time, Comcast can enjoy the new competition, since they seem to love it so much already. How can DitrecTv sell areas? In fact how can at&t sell areas? Sell to who? verizon? No wait they'll have to sell too. Oh wait maybe to crappy TDS the only other telcom that servies my state and they don't offer TV hell they barely offer DSL. Try THINKING before posting. |
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UofMiamiGrad
Premium
join:2001-02-03
Great Neck, NY
| said by BF69 :said by UofMiamiGrad :said by BF69 :Do they( the bells ) have 30% of the market or more? No. CAN they? Yes. which is the issue. So can DirectTv. They have 17 million subscribers and are adding at least 1 million a year. And when they pass that 30% mark, you can bet the FCC will tell them to sell assets (areas) to get below 30%. If they don't then and only then does Comcast and other MSOs have a case that the FCC rule is flawed. Until such time, Comcast can enjoy the new competition, since they seem to love it so much already. How can DitrecTv sell areas? In fact how can at&t sell areas? Sell to who? verizon? No wait they'll have to sell too. Oh wait maybe to crappy TDS the only other telcom that servies my state and they don't offer TV hell they barely offer DSL. Try THINKING before posting. The 30% rule doesn't apply to satellite, it's wireline. So what the hell does D* have to do with it? AT&T/Verizon would have to sell their wireline assets to other wireline providers, if they ever offered TV services to 30% of US market. So Quest can't buy a AT&T/Verizon area? Northpoint can't purchase more areas? Any wireline provider will have to offer TV if they are to survive in 10 years. How about you try thinking before posting. Must suck to live in your area of TN, if you are broadband limited. Enjoy your limited options. |
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BF69
join:2004-07-28
Camden, TN
moderated:
March 14th, @02:28PM
| said by UofMiamiGrad :The 30% rule doesn't apply to satellite, it's wireline. So what the hell does D* have to do with it? Try reading what you quoted of me and then your response. anyways why can DirectTv have more than 30% and not Comcast? How is that not hampering competition?
AT&T/Verizon would have to sell their wireline assets to other wireline providers, if they ever offered TV services to 30% of US market. So Quest can't buy a AT&T/Verizon area? Is there a Quest area west of the rockies? No. would quest be interested in such areas? No. Could quest even afford to buy other areas? No. Does Quest even offer Tv? No.
Northpoint can't purchase more areas? Any wireline provider will have to offer TV if they are to survive in 10 years. How about you try thinking before posting. You try thinking. At&T will NOT be forced to sell areas when they hit 30% FACT. No other TV provider but cable is subject to this rule. FACT. Therfore it's not right. FACT.
Must suck to live in your area of TN, if you are broadband limited. Enjoy your limited options. How would Comcast owning more than 30% of cable going to limit my options? If Comast own 100% of the cable market how would that affect my option. Ther has ALWAYS be one cable provider in my area. There will ALWAYS be one cable provider in my area. In fact this rule would actually LIMIT my choices.
Say if Charter wanted to sell my area well because of the cap Comcast can't buy it. There for limiting the number of suitors for my area. Increasing the chances that some inferrior company with crappy service and no plan on increasing service or speeds would take over instead of a company working on Docsis 3.0 for all it's areas within 2 years.
yeah it sucks for broadband here. I can only get 6Mbps/512Kbps max from at&t and only 10Mbps/1Mbps max from Charter until later this year when they roll out 16 mbps/2Mbps. Oh the horror! |
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RadioDoc
Sortofadog
Premium,ExMod 2000-03
join:2000-05-11
Chicago, IL
·AT&T Midwest
moderated:
March 14th, @02:29PM
| Here in the developed world there are multiple choices. In Chicagoland alone Comcast has competition from WOW and RCN in various suburban and city areas. U-Verse is ramping up. Should Comcast be allowed to become so huge that they can control program origination? They're already in the shit for withholding their sports network from competitors.
As for satellite, what are their market shares? Do you even know?
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Toolmaster of La Grange. |
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BF69
join:2004-07-28
Camden, TN
moderated:
March 14th, @03:32PM
| there are multiple choices. In Chicagoland alone Comcast has competition from WOW and RCN in various suburban and city areas. U-Verse is ramping up. Should Comcast be allowed to become so huge that they can control program origination? They're already in the shit for withholding their sports network from competitors. Once again Uverse is not subject to the 30% rule. is that fair? No. Those areas with more than one cable providor are in the extreme MINORITY. And if not having 2 means one doesn't live in the "developed world" then 99% of America is a 3rd world country then.
As for satellite, what are their market shares? Do you even know? doesn't matter if they had 50% the TV market they would NOT be affected by this rule adn that's kind of the point. They certainly have more than 30% of the satelite market. |
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RadioDoc
Sortofadog
Premium,ExMod 2000-03
join:2000-05-11
Chicago, IL
·AT&T Midwest
moderated:
March 14th, @03:33PM
| That's priceless.
U-Verse currently is a form of video on demand and will never even approach a 30% market share as such. Nice straw man.
The rule states 30% of the video market. That you want to ignore the definitions and wrap your argument around false assumptions (let along ignoring reality) speaks to how vacuous your argument is.
Go read the rules.
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Toolmaster of La Grange. |
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gaforces
United We Stand, Divided We Fall
join:2002-04-07
Santa Cruz, CA
·Cruzio Internet
| reply to RadioDoc
I'm not going to refine my statement. They have, or had way too much control over media in the US and ruined a lot of stations I "used" to listen to.
"Market share
In the late 1990s and early 2000s, the company became an object of persistent criticism. Critics claim that it has abused its market position and has operated in an unethical manner. FCC regulations were relaxed following the Telecommunications Act of 1996, allowing companies to own far more radio signals than before. After spending about $30 billion, Clear Channel owned over 1,200 stations nationwide, including as many as seven stations in certain markets. Competitors and listeners complained, but so far the company has been able to hold on to all of its stations after divesting a few following the acquisition of AMFM, although over 500 stations have since been sold or are in the process of being sold since the company announced plans to become privately held."
»en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clear_Chan···et_share
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Vista ~ Less functional every day! |
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RadioDoc
Sortofadog
Premium,ExMod 2000-03
join:2000-05-11
Chicago, IL
·AT&T Midwest
| The owners who sold out to Clear Channel are the ones who "ruined" those stations. Format changes are a way of life. Seek them out and complain that they ruined your station. I'm sure they'll apologize while rolling in the hundreds of million dollars Clear Channel pumped out to acquire these smaller groups.
Your Wikipedia article is flawed, implying that Clear Channel along exhibits the bad traits the author(s) attribute to them. While CC certainly deserves criticism for certain operating policies they never managed to control much of the media and in fact failed in their growth experiment. They may have had way too much control in certain local markets but overall they never managed to gain an advertising stranglehold. And, as I noted above, they never managed to acquire more than about 13% of the total commercial radio stations before the organization became too large to manage profitably. But this has nothing to do with the cable ownership cap.
When it comes to local strangleholds, nobody beats the cable monopoly. In many smaller markets if you want to advertise locally on TV you have one option--cable. There are excellent public policy arguments made to support a limit on how much of the cable TV market one company should be allowed to control. At some point the industry should be turned into a common carrier and regulated as such.
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Toolmaster of La Grange. |
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djrobx
join:2000-05-31
Valencia, CA
 ·RoadRunner Cable
 ·Time Warner VOIP
·DSL EXTREME
| reply to UofMiamiGrad
Ah, but by that logic, the cable companies can also reduce their percentage by only accounting for actual customers who bought service, rather than the entire territories they serve.
On our street, we've got tons of Dish, DirecTV and even some U-verse subs now. I'd be surprised if TW had 50% of the market share of my street.
My biggest problem with the 30% cap is that I have not seen any real evidence that the big guys are offering significantly worse service than the smaller outfits that such a rule seems to be designed to encourage. Comcast in particular seems to be very aggressive about deploying the latest and greatest technology. I would rather have Comcast or Time Warner than some small outfit that can't afford to keep up with what the bigger guys are doing. |
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djrobx
join:2000-05-31
Valencia, CA
·RoadRunner Cable
·Time Warner VOIP
·DSL EXTREME
| reply to RadioDoc
quote:
Should Comcast be allowed to become so huge that they can control program origination? They're already in the shit for withholding their sports network from competitors.
I totally agree that's a major problem, but how about enacting regulations that address that specific issue, rather than a "30% market cap"? Because again, I would really hate to lose my Time Warner service and get stuck with some half-baked cable company simply because the FCC doesn't like TW's size. |
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gaforces
United We Stand, Divided We Fall
join:2002-04-07
Santa Cruz, CA
·Cruzio Internet
| reply to RadioDoc
LOL, we mostly agree. I havent found that 13% number and I'm not really looking. I think you just enjoy arguing with me 
Only one thing more to say on this subject for me, the format change on one station went from Rock to Mexican RAP, ughh its aweful.
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Vista ~ Less functional every day! |
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bobjohnson
join:2007-02-03
Titusville, FL
·RoadRunner Cable
·Vonage
| reply to djrobx
What I see that sucks about this cap is not just about the tv, but this includes internet, phone and the other services that they offer.. They don't even have the option for those services and it's not included in the cap... The telco tv will take years to get big enough to compete with comcast or tw, and will never make it to the rural areas.. but since they made this rule it should be universal with tv providers (except dish and such) because they technically cover like 99% of the us markets... |
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hottboiinnc
Kyle
join:2003-10-15
Toledo, OH | reply to RadioDoc
How is U-Verse a form of VoD? I didn't know you got to select what shows you wanted to watch all the time. I thought it was just like cable just according to AT$T used a different platform for delivery. |
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