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Cities Comcast is Leaving Say Company Providing Few Answers

Comcast is looking for any sort of good promotion these days. When they aren't throwing pizza parties to promote their product or dealing with fallout from their security system being terrible, they are continuing to finish near last in customer satisfaction surveys.

Now, Comcast is taking heat for their decision to abandon Detroit and a number of other Midwest cities. Comcast is leaving these cities so that they can get below a 30 percent market share of US pay-TV homes, a requirement set by federal regulators if Comcast wants their acquisition of Time Warner Cable to be approved.

Those in Detroit, Minneapolis and elsewhere will become customers of GreatLand Connections Inc. GreatLand is a spin-off of Comcast customers to a company run and partially owned by Charter Communications.

In order for GreatLand to take the place of Comcast in a number of cities, those city councils must approve a new franchise agreement with GreatLand. Both Comcast and Charter are telling cities that they do not have that long to approve those franchise agreements with mid-December deadlines.

But a number of cities are telling the companies that they simply don’t have the information to make such a decision to approve a franchise agreement. In fact, very little is known other than GreatLand starting with close to $8 billion in debt.

One city administrator claimed that “answers have been inadequate at best and mostly not forthcoming." An executive director for another city’s county commission group claims that “Comcast hasn’t provided adequate information about GreatLand, and there’s nobody to talk to at the new company." One elected trustee from another city bluntly said that "We don't have the answers we need."

People in Detroit should be sad to see Comcast leave. In 2006, Comcast & AT&T pushed through deregulation laws which allowed Comcast to get out of hundreds of franchise deals with local governments. Let’s look at some of the highlights of Comcast’s time while operating in and around Detroit:

• Comcast celebrated the first anniversary of cable deregulation by raising the price of its cheapest cable package by 25% in many communities; rates for other service tiers jumped between 9%-25%.

• Comcast removed the high majority of local service stations for people to visit around the state for customer service.

• Comcast fought cities around the state to get out of previously agreed-upon franchise agreements that mandated Comcast support local TV channels.

• After Comcast finished dead last in the American Consumer Satisfaction Index, Comcast successfully pushed through more deregulation laws which stripped cities to regulate minimum customer service standards for its residents.

• A spokesman for a group led by Comcast justified all of these anti-consumer moves by claiming, "that's what the market wants."

Most recommended from 53 comments



why60loss
Premium Member
join:2012-09-20

5 recommendations

why60loss

Premium Member

Sure Comcast is the only ISP doing wrong

It would be kind of nice if the media had more story's on all ISP's and what they do to customers than just grill Comcast all day long. Maybe a state of the internet type post with things ISP's are clearly doing wrong. Like caps or peering issues to where they rank on customer satisfaction.
Bob61571
join:2008-08-08
Washington, IL

5 recommendations

Bob61571

Member

All these proposed GreatLand cities should just delay any decision,

given that they have so little information. This would seem to be a logical and legal way to gum up the Comcast/TWC merger.
rfrooney
join:2006-02-26
Antioch, TN

2 recommendations

rfrooney

Member

The correct answer is

Force the cable companies to open the last mile to competition, for a reasonable fee.