RCN → Re: [Speed] Increase letter - LeHigh Valley

Here's what I think. One, a big portion of my bill is the rental prices. Which we must rent to be able to receive even the basic channels. I think we as consumers must start putting more pressure on the FCC to get more consumer products available in retail stores that we can purchase on our own. Products that can take advantage of CableCard technology like the FCC had envisioned, but never really backed up. In my house, I have three rentals, and one additional tv that I only get the basic OTA channels on. All but one are HD sets. And the rental cost alone on my bill is $30.00 a month. If I want to add HD to the forth set, there's another $12.00 a month, getting closer to $40.00 a month just in rentals. A CableCard is I think $1.50 to $2.50 a month. Big difference. I want to know why I can't walk into Walmart or Best buy and purchase a reasonably priced cablecard product (like we used to be able to do with VCR's), and then just rent the cablecard. Hell, if I could do that, I might even be more inclined to purchase additional premium channels from RCN with the money I could save on the rentals. Or, here's something, why not have the rental price go down as the length of the rental goes up. I've had the same boxes in my house for several years. And the rental price is going up. Why? How long does it take to pay for the device's initial purchase price? And that's if it was new when delivered. The rental prices are a real issue for me.
It's like going to a restaurant and paying not only for the food, but also having to pay for the utensils to eat it with.

shaw cable has rent to own and buy up front.

The problem is the Cable Cards are going to be obsolete soon. They are phasing them out. The cable companies are going to Switched Digital Video or IPTV on FIOS that saves bandwidth.

»en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sw ··· ed_video

The FCC needs to step in and say they need to keep the Cable Cards and provide the necessary tuning adapters. Comcast, FIOS and Time Warner have been deploying this in test markets. Not sure about RCN

My first HDTV was a Toshiba with Cablecard. It was great. It started to have problems and needed to be replaced. I couldn't get another set with cablecard. I contacted Toshiba and they stated that it was being dropped from their sets due to what they stated was an issue with cable support. (this was back in 2007). They stated that yes, there were initial issues with setting them up and working correctly. But that in most cases, it was an issue that was not the fault of the tv manufacturer. But that the cable companies at the time, didn't want to support it, and would constantly put the tv manufacturer on the hook for any issues with connectivity. Was that true or not? I don't know. But Sharp and Toshiba were early adopters and had them on many sets of many sizes. And from my understanding, they ARE now two way so VOD should no longer be an issue.

The FCC should step in and mandate that cable co's need to offer tuners for sale to those that want to purchase them outright.

It's monopolistic to have to have customers be required to rent tuners.

The FCC has already stepped in and mandated that cable companies needed to support any Cable Card tuners that the free market wanted to sell to consumers. It's called separable security. The free market responded by not really making any additional tuner solutions available for sale. Direct your ire at Motorola, Scientific Atlanta, Pace, etc.

The real issue isn't that the rental prices are too high, its that there is no real hardline competition in the Lehigh Valley (except for the subpar Service Electric in *some* places) and there isn't going to be since Verizon has stopped expanding Fios. It's painfully obvious that RCN has made the calculated business decision to to gouge Lehigh Valley residents because the options are limited.

In the other areas where RCN competes (Boston, Chicago, Philadelphia, DC and NYC) there are other established hardline competitors, and therefore RCN must price competitively. In the LV, they felt the need to price competitively in the near past because it was apparent Fios was coming. They they couldn't risk poisoning the market opinion of them knowing that in the near future customers would have a choice. That's no longer a concern, and so they no longer worry as much about losing customers to higher pricing.

What's worse is the excuses they try to give are downright insulting, like we're too stupid to see through them: "our general costs vary across markets and especially across states, which is the reason our prices are higher in one state than they are in another state." Like you really expect your customers to believe that cost of living in the LV is higher than those other 5 areas, so you have to pay your employees more? Or your real estate costs and taxes are more for your hubsites, call centers and tech garages here than in those metropolises? Please.

The reality though is that it is what it is. RCN is not a monopoly, because we do have choices. There's SeTV for many, DSL for internet, multiple satellite companies for video. They are free to charge what they like, and those of us for whom those alternates are not available or not viable just have to suck it up. That doesn't make it less disheartening to be charged a 30-40% premium over RCN's other customers simply because there's no other company that cares about the Lehigh Valley.

Right, so obviously that legislation didn't work, as they can't force companies to make something that's not going to be profitable for them (Motorola, etc.).

So the next step would be to force the cable companies to do something more for subscribers. Cable co's are already forcing subscribers to use their equipment. So to they should be forced to make tuners available for purchase. The same should go for satellite companies.