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The Courts Government News

Cable Companies Free To Grow, Grow, Grow 106

Posted by timothy from the why-grow-past-5.075-feet? dept.
Dasheiff writes: "A federal appeals court [NYTimes, free reg. req. [?] ] struck down a set of regulations today that had prevented the nation's largest cable companies from growing beyond serving more than 30 percent of the cable and satellite market's subscribers and providing more than 40 percent of its channels with programming from its affiliated companies. In other words AT&T and AOL Time Warner can now continue to expand their monopoly. However it's not clear if this is a bad thing, if shows continue to be poor people will not watch them. Companies need to compete with the viewer more than the other companies." So, were those limits actually doing customers good or not? And will this make high-speed access (even if AOL-TW dominated) available in many places it's not right now?
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Cable Companies Free To Grow, Grow, Grow More

Cable Companies Free To Grow, Grow, Grow

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  • Did you try the link yourself? Have you noticed the 'partners' links don't work any more, probably because of overuse from /.? It's 'channel.nytimes.com' that works now, but even that might not last forever.

    In general, it's a good idea to test you links before posting, and it can be done via the preview page. I thought this would be obvious...

    In case someone missed my other post, the correct link is here [nytimes.com].

    --

  • In general, cable companies do not compete. With or without this regulation, most areas have one cable company available. If anything this may spur competition. Right now, AT&T has one area that they acquired from TCI and a couple of small players. Time Warner has a totally different area. They have no incentive to invade each others' territory because of the government regulation.

    Now, without the regulation, it is at least remotely conceivable that either AT&T or TW might attempt to expand by invading the others' area. Hence, competition. Probably won't happen though. It's going to be a couple of large cable companies with non-overlapping service areas for decades to come.
  • Local and state governments would have good reason to begin regulating the huge cable monopolies because they have an almost guaranteed market. Almost everyone I know that gets tv where I live uses cable and my cousins in NC get their net access via cable broadband. I think there is going to be a trade off: much less competition but a right to use government regulation to demand a good level of quality. Frankly I think neither the cable companies nor consumers would really complain, the cable companies because they would make so much money that quite frankly a little more regulation and taxation than what they pay with only a small amount of the market would be well worth it for the stockholders.
  • I beg to differ....what recourse do we REALLY have. Oh yes, we can split them up. It worked so well with the Baby Bells and it did such a blow to AT & T...wait, AT & T is one of the cable companies.

    The pagan credo goes "Harm none, do what you will". However, these cable companies (with higher prices and bad customer service in tow) will "harm anyone and do what they will". The government has given them license to. So, when they are screwing us...we have no legal recourse...and don't think that the government cares about the citizens. We don't have enough money to lobby them.

    It's like the steel companies. They did nothing to prevent lower grade, cheaper, imported steel from coming in and as a result legions of steelworkers lost their jobs and whole cities economies have been devastated (example: Youngstown, OH, USA) The point is the government could have stopped the steel from being imported to allow the American steel industry to prosper but they did not. Now the government is being asked to help the bleeding stop...when they are holding the machete. Doesn't make much sense... So, in short, we have NO recourse.

  • Costs rise. It's called inflation.

    A business therefore has two choices:

    1) Expand to increase revenue and increase "economies of scale" efficiency.

    2) Raise prices.

    Unless you want your cable rate going up constantly, your cable company needs to expand or perish. Where in the Constitution of the United States is the government granted the power to tell them HOW MUCH they can expand?

    Now, if your state or city has laws preventing other cable companies from moving into your area, there's something for you to protest. If other cable companies just don't choose to do it, however, that's your problem, not the government's. Start your own cable company.

    -
  • Does this mean that I can finally get Cartoon Network? Finally, I can get my Toonami? I can get my Techi, DBZ, and dare I say Powerpuff Girls, fix? Dream come true! I haven't felt this alive since they added the TV Guide channel!
  • The only answer to this problem is common carrier regulation of all mass distribution networks (dsl, cable, broadcast, satellite).
  • I've heard that AT&T will be selling its broadband branch. I remember hearing something about AT&T shareholders wanting to get rid of the cable systems and all. Does anybody else remember hearing about this? I know that in my area AT&T has sold its system and we will have a new company in town that has good potential.

  • I think we should be particularly careful about monopolies when they are monopolies of media outlets. Monopolies may not always cause harm, but they certianly have the potential.

    A large media outlet has enormous potential to influence public opinion and maintain their hold on power even after they have caused harm. If we wait until they cause harm, they may be much harder to stop.

  • Re:I'm so confused (Score:3)

    by Jah-Wren Ryel ( 80510 ) on Saturday March 03, 2001 @09:28AM (#387652)
    You laugh, but Vulcan Ventures, the investment vehicle for Paul Allen (you know, Microsoft Co-Founder) has been buying up lots of cable companies over the last few years.

    Here's just one story talking about it (the first good one that came up in google):

    http://www.zdnet.com/zdnn/stories/news/0,4586,21 95 305,00.html

    Now, Allen isn't as tight with MS as he once was, but perhaps there is more to your parody than even you realize...
  • dictionary...

    What dictionaries say not really what's important. What is important is how much opportunity firms have to increases prices (above cost of producing whatever they sell) without losing customers. The more firms there are, the less opportunity each firm has to do this. But even with more than one firm, there is still some opportunity.

    Free-market economic theory would indicate that CEOs would never do this

    Not necessarily. You can look at it as a repeated prisoners dilemma, which case, your best strategy is usually cooperating (i.e. keeping prices high). Try for yourself here [princeton.edu].

  • Re:A monopoly can be more than one company (Score:3)

    by adubey ( 82183 ) on Saturday March 03, 2001 @09:43AM (#387654)
    Oh dear. While the poster does a good job of explaining how collusive oligopolies can be thought of as monopolies, this post does not deserve a +5 score.

    The problem is that cable companies don't acheive their monopolies through collusion but rather through spatial monopolies. For instance, here in Canada, there are a number of cable companies: Rogers, Shaw, Videotron, etc. However, my only choice in cable company is Rogers Cable or no cable.

    The problem is that Shaw and Videotron only have cable running to people's houses in their territories. The situation is no different in the US (or for that matter, pretty much anywhere in the developed world). If you have AT&T you can't pick TW. This is a monopoly.

    Are these monopolies dangerous? In some sense, because they do control the flow of information into households, this might be a problem. However, as time goes on, there are more and more sources of information (ie dialup internet, satellite TV & internet, not to mention newspapers, magazines, etc).

    Oh, and BTW, check out AT&T's website [att.com]. There you'll see that, far from being in danger of buying more cable networks, the US's largest cable system is actually selling off parts of it's network.
  • By the way, government has the "power to thell them HOW MUCH they can expand" through the Antitrust acts.

    Yes, government granted itself that power through those acts.

    The Constitution doesn't allow them to do that, but they did it anyway. I have a problem with that.

    -
  • All areas are served by one cable company

    You, sir, are an ignorant ass.

    Not only is that not true (I have a choice of Comcast or Americast as my cable TV provider), but it is currently a violation of U.S. federal law for any U.S. community to grant a cable TV monopoly. Has been for eight years now.
  • Now, if your state or city has laws preventing other cable companies from moving into your area, there's something for you to protest.

    In federal court. U.S. law has prohibited exclusive cable franchises for the last eight years.
  • Ultimately, their goal will be to make money not by selling bandwidth to consumers, it will be the access to those consumers that they give to those same media producers and advertisers.

    The "private garden" approach has been considered, even attempted by companies like AT&T. Nobody's very sure if it's going to work out very well-- so far precedent has closed ISPs like AOL opening up more and more to the rest of the internet.

    This is an open access issue. Pushing the ownership limits from 40% to 60% is right on schedule for ATT's recent acquisitions...

    Yes, they have been pushing these issues, but don't forget that AT&T's in the process of imploding right now. And they're the biggest cable company-- even TW isn't that big.

  • Re:Cable companies=lousy service (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Where in the Constitution of the United States is the government granted the power to tell them HOW MUCH they can expand?

    Article 1, Section 8, Paragraph 3. Congress shall have power to "regulate Commerce with foreign Nations, and among the several States, and with the Indian Tribes". (emphasis added)

  • OK, could somebody explain for the benefit of all us metric people out here in the Rest Of The World, what the crack about "5.075 feet" in the "dept." line is about?
  • All I can say is "about time".

    Is it really any better to force one area to have one cable company simply because company a is too big?

    I live in Northern VA. and we have the *worst* cable company I have ever had (adelphia) and I would be very happy if someone else could move into this area so I might finally get broadband (no possibility of dsl here either)

    dewke
  • I have @home and I have reached d/l speeds well over 300kbps and uploads over 50kbps, but I don't do much uploading, so I don't know how fast I could possibly go. (my cap is 512down/128up)

    And this is because having '@home' means nothing. @home is not your cable company.
  • there are alternatives to use instead of Time Warner

    I live in an apartment in the city, as do most people here. I'm sure some do it, but I can't imagine that my landlord is going to let me put a dish-- even a little one-- out my window. So Time Warner it is. Plus, how many satellite services are there going to be? At most a couple, and what's to stop the cable monoliths from buying them up when they hit hard times (with this ruling as precedent?)

  • Well, most areas have cable monopolies anyway. Whether there are 3 cable companies or 8, for the most part they don't compete (except in a very few markets.) The only thing that's going to control their prices is competition from the phone companies or government regulation. The government seems to be getting out of that market, and it's not clear that the phone companies have any interest in keeping prices down. Not being able to afford my crappy HBO wouldn't be so bad, but it's pretty clear that we're going to rely on these information services for more and more as time goes by.

  • Re:Monopoly? (Score:4)

    by VAXman ( 96870 ) on Saturday March 03, 2001 @07:00AM (#387665)
    Dude, are you new to Slashdot or something? 'Monopoly' has nothing to do with marketshare. It is fair game to use on any company which is really trendy to hate (i.e. any company which is actually successful). For example, everybody knows that all five (!) major record companies are monopolies, since they put only one good song per album. Similarly, Intel is a monopoly, since they make better products than Via, Transmeta, and AMD. Lastly, the cable companies are all monopolies, since they deliver high bandwidth data at affordable prices. Got it now?

    The only solution to this is to have the government impose restrictions. Like the article submitter said, the government should choose what cable companies you should be allowed and not allowed to subscribe to, by putting caps on the marketshare of each company. The government always knows what's best for us. We're not smart enough to make decisions for ourselves, and the only solution is a massive, overreaching government beauracracy to control every aspect of our spending decisions (which, as we all know, are much more friendly and efficient than all of those evil, big, bad corporations).
  • In Philly, Comcast is currently the Monopoly. RCN recently tried to get in the area, but later retracted their bid - because the local government (Philly's City Council) pretty much blocked them. While yes, the legally could get into the area, the Red Tape was so thick RCN decided they were not wanted, and backed out.

    If that is de-regulation, I'm scared.

    As for the lame shows thing, I have not had cable TV for over a year now (I belive the quote from Pink Floyd is "Got thirteen channels of sh*t on the T.V. to choose from"). My Comcast @Home Cable Modem still sucks, but it's still cheaper than DSL for the same speeds. Until competition really arrives, I'm stuck with the best of a bad situation.

  • Cable modems have a shared uplink of about 400Kbps (bits, not bytes). Even if @Home weren't limiting you (and they might not be, there might just be a lot of Napster on your local loop), you'd still be pretty tightly limited on uplink. This is the achilles heel of cable modem service. When the service was designed, people looked at high-bandwidth as almost purely a downlink solution. I think this was a big mistake, and unless new systems can be put together (quickly) that use a wider frequency range for the uplink, DSL is going to have a huge advantage.
  • Then the government can break them up into little MaPaSuxes

    This assumes that the government is ever going to be willing to break anything up again. With the current state of Antitrust litigation in our country, I'd get used to monopolies for the better part of the next couple of decades.

  • From http://www.directv.com:80/howtoget/howtogetpages/0 ,1076,24,00.html

    If you want to install your own DIRECTV System first check with your landlord or property manager for permission to install it on your rooftop. If you are not able to install it on a rooftop, you may be able to take advantage of a January 1999 FCC ruling stating that apartment, condominium, townhome and single family home renters can install either satellite dishes or TV antennas on private balconies, patios or gardens. Remember, regardless of where the satellite dish is installed, it must have a clear view to the southern sky.

  • story here [att.com]

    Basically, AT&T is in debt up to their eyeballs and need cash. I live in one of the markets being acquired, and can't wait. I don't use AT&T for broadband anymore, been with Qwest for a year on a buisness DSL plan and have been very happy. I still use AT&T for digital cable, but I hardly watch t.v. Besides, I'm pretty sure it would defy some law of the universe for Mediacom to charge more for less than what I'm currently getting from AT&T digital cable.

  • The canonical treatise on the concentration of corporate power in the media is Ben Bagdikian's excellent The Media Monopoly [uua.org].

    We need real alternatives to the corporate gerber, and one real alternative is Public Access Television. For those that don't know what this is, it is a system whereby the cable provider allocates channel space, and provides studios, equipment and training to *anyone* to create their own TV shows. A fairly complete list of these facilities is here: http://www.openchannel.se/cat/ [openchannel.se]. Educate yourself about Public Access, petition your local city government to require it (if you don't have it), and MAKE YOUR OWN TV SHOW! (It's real fun!)

    Keep in mind that for these corporate media companies to operate, they generally must obtain the grant of a franchise from your city government. These franchise agreements have a term limit (like 10 years), and ensures a bit of local control w/r/t taxation (franshise fee), and that the franchise operate in the public interest.

    Now remember that in the USA, government is created by the people, and the government charters or franchises these media companies. A creates B and B creates C... Get it? The people ultimately sanction the corporations, and thus, they must operate in the public interest.

    So, while you're petitioning your city government to provide Public Access Television [binghamton...access.org], be sure to remind them that it is their duty as public servants to make sure these monopoly franchisees operate in the public interest, like the Terms of Use "Agreement" [stny.com] , where YOU the user must usually "consent" to monitoring, such that you won't engage in any sorts of illegal speech (whatever the hell that is), that you won't run servers, etc. This stuff is NOT PROPER SUBJECT MATTER for a common carrier to require in contracts with customers, especially when they are the only game in town (monopoly) AND that they are supposed to be operating in the public interest, as they were created by the government which "derives it's just powers from the consent of the governed" [constitution.org], to quote TJ.

  • Real World Up/Down (Score:3)

    by Gregoyle ( 122532 ) on Saturday March 03, 2001 @08:26AM (#387672)
    Disclaimer: I do not approve of huge cross-industry monopolies (e.g. AOL-TW).

    I'm sorry you're getting such shitty bandwidth, but I'm afraid it depends almost completely on the company rather than the technology.

    I have been a faithful and happy customer of MediaOne (now AT&T, who would have thought I'd *ever* say something like that?) for about 2 years now. The reason is that my cable modem has consistently given me speeds to rival those of a T1 on downloads and about half that on uploads. When downloading from university ftp sites, I will consistently get speeds of approx. 1.5 Mb/s. As far os uploads go, the best indicator I've seen is Napster uploads; people get transfer rates of about 120 KB/s (Yes, I'm pretty sure that's Bytes not bits, feel free to correct me, I don't feel like firing up napster to check which units it uses).

    On the other side, I used to work for Bell Atlantic/Verizon in their DSL department, and I can attest that it is about the shittiest broadband service I have ever seen. I know however that there are many good DSL providers out there (although I don't think any of their customers get speeds like mine). It all depends on the company.

    Now to keep the post at least moderately on-topic; this business with allowing Cable providers over *40* percent market penetration seems completely insane. Do people have no memories? Well, stupid question...

  • A monopoly can be more than one company (Score:5)

    by fhwang ( 90412 ) on Saturday March 03, 2001 @08:30AM (#387673) Homepage
    More then one person has noted that there are two companies being named here (AOLTimeWarner and AT&T) and argued that if you have more than one company, you cannot have a monopoly. While this might be correct semantically, it is certainly incorrect in spirit.

    Depending on which dictionary you go to, monopoly is either held exclusively by one company, or by a group. (Dictionary.com [dictionary.com] uses the word "group", while Merriam-Webster [m-w.com] just refers to a single company.) The definition of "group" is what's important here. There are many instances in business history where competitors in one field got together to agree not to compete in certain ways -- most notably by price-fixing.

    Free-market economic theory would indicate that CEOs would never do this, that they would decide to compete in any way possible to eke out more market share. Yet this does happen. We have documented cases of price-fixing across all sorts of industries: legal research [lawnewsnetwork.com], oil firms [usatoday.com], even vitamin manufacturers [quackwatch.com]. There are plenty of theories as to why it happens, though my personal favorite is psychological. I think that CEOs, when they're placed in charge of vast corporations they cannot entirely control or understand, become extremely risk-averse. This is why large corporations rarely innovate; it's also why a CEO might enter into a price-fixing agreement. It's just one less thing to worry about. At least for the CEO; everybody else usually suffers, in higher prices and poorer quality.

  • Actually, since federal law prohibits local communities from giving exclusive franchises, now competing cable companies that would otherwise be prohibited for entering your area by marketshare limits can come in and compete for your cable dollar.
  • Even keeping the local cable channels (since the Feds have screwed up satellite access to local channels)...

    Charter does indeed suck. So do the Feds. BTW: I think it's interesting that recently, they blocked out a hockey game from my satellite feed, due to a local station carrying it, but oddly, the Feds say I'm not REALLY local to the station, because they won't allow me to carry ANY Metro-Detroit stations!!!!

    Satellite services have been raped by our government, thanks to big money from the cable companies. That's the legislation that REALLY needs to be struck down!
    Poor boy, all that right-wing anti-government propaganda is confusing your tiny brain!

    1) Sports blackouts occur because the federal government allows monopolistic businesses (i.e., professional sports leagues) to control how their product is distributed. Fair enough, but blame the professional sports organizations trying to protect the local gate and not the government for sports blackouts.

    2) You can now get "local channels" from the Dish Network for $4.99 a month [dishnetwork.com]. If you get local channels that are on cable due to the "must carry" rule, then those channels are local to you and should be available to you. If the Dish Network cannot provide you with local service then it may be them and not the big, bad government that is causing your problems. And how do you know it is the Feds? Local/state governments also are involved through franchise agreements with communications companies.

    3) Why do you even need analog cable? How about using an outside antenna instead? Get one at Rat Shack and install it in your attic -- problem solved.

    4)Without line breaks your post is very hard to read. <br> is your friend...
    --
    You think being a MIB is all voodoo mind control? You should see the paperwork!
  • Nope, it's not "deregulation" or even capitalism. It's a bunch of bought-and-paid-for city councilmen deliberately interfering with markets on Comcast's behalf.

  • I am wondering, where this is coming from ...

    However it's not clear if this is a bad thing, if shows continue to be poor people will not watch them.

    It's been five years since I've been in the states, but I bet you have your fair share of complete TV-junk like we have here in Germany. "Explosiv", "Big Brother", "Talk talk talk" to name a few. Shows like "When animals attack". Who in their right mind watches this crap? Why is this complete and utter crap even being produced?

    Looks like the normal TV consumer will thankfully accept any kind of bullshit that is stuffed in his head. Even more, he'll prefer it over quality programming, which can be seen in the way that the public television in Germany is readjusting their programming to suit the new market needs. This is why a loathe TV. A pile of junk--without which the civilization would be definitaly better off.

    I guess that the principle of competition bring better quality products can't be applied to TV at all.

    Kinda sad that is.

  • Now, if your state or city has laws preventing other cable companies from moving into your area, there's something for you to protest. If other cable companies just don't choose to do it, however, that's your problem, not the government's. Start your own cable company.

    All areas are served by one cable company, as is electric and telephone utilities. Back at the turn of the century (1900) the streets began to be flooded with telephone poles and wires everywhere. To end the morass, governments decided to let just one company serve one area.

    The free market is not always the best way to serve the public. I'm of the opinion that the cable lines should be owned by the government, and that cable companies could license channels just like they do the airways.

    As things are now, cable TV is a sham and a scam. The majority of the channels available are either pay-per view, or premium movies or shopping networks.

    What's even worse is cable internet. Instead of the cable companies selling you an IP number, they sell you junk you probably don't need (web space, newsfeed, email address) and do so at a premium price. Dialup ISPs have no chance to get into the lucrative cable internet market. It is a closed, protected monopoly.


    blessings,

  • AT&T is planning to divide itself into four smaller companies -- wireless, cable, buisness telecom services, and consumer long distance.

  • cable companies are a common carrier (Score:3)

    by fhwang ( 90412 ) on Saturday March 03, 2001 @08:40AM (#387680) Homepage
    First of all, you're wrong about costs rising. Generally speaking, business costs decline over time. It's called technology.

    It's also worth noting that many people now consider cable a common carrier. There are certain types of communications networks that are considered common carriers, in that they should only be built once and then opened on a non-monopolistic basis, because it would be economically wasteful to duplicate the network for the sake of competition on that level.

    There was once a time, for example, when AT&T owned not just the phone network, but all local service and long-distance service. They argued that decoupling the network from the service didn't make any technical sense; the government eventually decided to break them up anyway. The fact that you can have a different long-distance carrier than AT&T now is a direct result of governmental interference, and I for one am happy about the results.

    And guess what? AT&T's still around. They're not in such great shape -- in large part because they were a large bureaucracy, unfit to compete in a world where they no longer owned a monopolistic advantage over the phone networks -- but they're still around. I never understand why companies argue against fairness in the marketplace by saying "We're so ass-backwards here that without our unnatural monopolistic advantage, we'll perish." If I believed my company was that fucked, I'd leave and find another employer.

  • Free-market economic theory would indicate that CEOs would never do this, that they would decide to compete in any way possible to eke out more market share.

    Go re-read your free market economic texts. This is not what they say. None of them say tht collusion or cartels can never happen. Quite the opposite. However, they point to market forces as being a very difficult thing for collusionists to overcome. No cartel that did not have government or criminal backing of some form has ever survived for any appreciable length of time.

    One example is OPEC, one of the most successful cartels in history. But they are only able to maintain their cartels because all the members are governments. There is no free market in oil. Another example is one of yours: legal services. Attorneys in the US have the legal equivalent of a "Letter of Marquis", and can control their exact membership through the force of law.
  • ...if shows continue to be poor people will not watch them.

    I beg to differ. Mencken was right on when he said, "No one ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American public."

    Given that Gresham's Law has overtaken Sturgeon's -- bad shows are driving good ones off the screen -- I say let AOL/TW have their cable monopoly. They're not getting any of my money, anyway.
    --
    Ooh, moderator points! Five more idjits go to Minus One Hell!
    Delenda est Windoze

  • Did i fall asleep and miss a court case? AOL, a monopoly? I dont' think so... Monopoly's a strong word to use, when you're actually looking for "dominant", i think.

    Yes, they own a lot of media, but they have no power in stopping you or i from starting our own competing website or magazine, etc...
  • THere is an economics term for "a few companies having monopolies" if they intend to duke it out. (true in this case?) It's called "oligopoly".
  • Just what we need 700 more channels to chose from with nothing on. I can just picture the channel line up now, 123 the Socks Channel, or 212 the Dan Quayle Learing Network, or how about 355 the Alien Abducties Network, or even dare I say it 666 the Satanic Channel.
  • here [nytimes.com].

    --
  • Costs rise. It's called inflation.

    Inflation is what happens when the government issues more currency, causing the value of existing currency to decrease. We're not living in a particularly inflationary time. Why do you think inflation has anything to do with this?
    ...Expand to increase revenue and increase "economies of scale" efficiency. ...

    Expanding to increase revenue would not solve your hypothetical problem of rising costs, because the costs will presumably scale along with the revenue. As for economies of scale, I would guess that even the smallest cable company is already past the point where further growth would yield further economies of scale.
    Where in the Constitution of the United States is the government granted the power to tell them HOW MUCH they can expand?

    In the Commerce Clause [lls.edu], of course.
    Now, if your state or city has laws preventing other cable companies from moving into your area, there's something for you to protest.

    As far as I know, every cable TV operator in the US is operating under a "franchise" granted by the municipal government. A quote from this page [beaconhill.org] sums it up:
    Ironically, though, head-to-head competition is just what local governments don't want. Once a second operator enters a market, the whole idea of a cable franchise collapses and, with it, the possibility of charging a franchise fee and extracting other benefits for local government.
  • RCN is what is known as an overbuilder. Others include WINFirst, maybe cablevision? What happened in Philly may attact the attention of the FCC - they are pushing to get overbuilders in. There will soon be some competion, but expect to see it in large, highly profitable markets. The threat of an overbuilder here in San Jose has forced AT&T to upgrade the existing cable infrastructure - that isn't going to help given that I get more channels and better service from Dish, for $15 a month less. AT&T here bought out TCI, and managed to make the service even worse. I really feel sorry for those who used to have Media One, and more so for the Media One employees - talk about getting shafted!

    There are some new technologies on the horizon that should make cable even more profitable, and attract more overbuilders. Video on Demand (VOD), interactive TV (quite popular in europe now), and other services could generate enough revenue to encourage competition - if you make the pot too attractive, more and more companies are going to want a piece of it. If the existing cable companies try to block the entrace of competitors, they become monopolies abusing their power, and open up their firms to anti-trust laws - very expensive give the treble damages clauses and such.

  • "The monopoly power of cable companies will be further unleashed. It will send shivers through broadcasting and independent content producers."

    Many are forgetting it is we the people, who subscribe and pay for cable and there are alternatives to use instead of Time Warner, or any other cable company. e.g., A satellite dish will cost over time less than cable. Anyways, everyone is ranting over AOL and TimeWarner, while a smaller fish can cause just as much damage, AT7T and MediaOne. Where are the screams and outrage for this?

    [?] [antioffline.com]
  • "... if shows continue to be poor people will not watch them"

    Many people will watch something even if they don't like it that much, just to avoid doing other things(reading?).

    When you have 500 channels there is always something good on TV.

    TechTV.com (good stuff)
  • I think it would be nice if cablecos were treated like telcos, that is they have to rent their lines to other cable companies.

    I agree with the sentiment, but foresee implementation problems. Both the telco and cable co. have fat, expensive cables running along poles. The difference is that the telco's cable contains (typically) hundreds of twisted pairs, each of which is dedicated to one circuit. The cable co's cable contains (typically) a center conductor, insulation, and an outer shield. Although the cable has tremendous bandwidth, RF multiplexing is needed in order to have multiple signals peacefully share that cable.
    What this means is that telephone cables are perfect for splitting up among many vendors. As long as their equipment is FCC compliant, the different vendors can't interfere with each other's signals. The TV cable, however, does not offer this automatic isolation of different signals. Some trusted entity has to be in charge of the equipment that actually connects to the cable.

  • I'm so confused (Score:2)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Okay, so, big monopolistic cable companies are bad... but government regulation is also bad(unless you're British). I'd like to post the typical paranoid anti-establishment rant about the subject, but I'm not sure which one I'm supposed to hate. Can anyone help clear this up for me?

  • > So, were those limits actually doing customers good or not? And will this make high-speed access (even if AOL-TW dominated) available in many places it's not right now?

    It doesn't matter how fat the pipe is, if your not free to put anything you want down it.

    Si

    ps. This phrase applies equally well in other areas 8-)

  • High Speed? (Score:4)

    by quakeaddict ( 94195 ) on Saturday March 03, 2001 @06:19AM (#387694)
    You must be kidding. @home has me capped with an upload speed of about 16 Kiloytes per second. During the evening a 56K modem might be faster for DOWNLOADS.

    The prospect of large cable companies is disheartening. Their customer service sucks because they do not have anything that approaches competition. They think they are entitled to my business and they act like it.

    As soon as I can I am dropping Cable and looking at satellite access for my tv and as soon as DSL makes it here I am making the switch.

  • "if shows continue to be poor people will not watch them."

    HAHA!! Yeah, like American families are going to suddenly realize that they've been staring at crap 4 hours a day.

  • 1. For the majority of people wired with HFC, roadrunner service is superior to any other form of personal isp. 2. The price is not terrible when packaged with their other services (cable/telephone), they do have specials, you know! 3. DSL is lame, the profit line on it, is not as good as HFC-cable modem, for resellers. Wonder why all the big dsl resellers are closing shop? They haven't raised prices, and have exceptional value and stability for the 2 years i've been using it. I have no comment on their cable/entertainment industry. I'm paying like $36+ for basic cable, i think that sucks. Most of the channels are junk.

  • Quality of shows (Score:3)

    by xyzzy ( 10685 ) on Saturday March 03, 2001 @06:16AM (#387697) Homepage
    The quality of the shows has little to do with it, my friend -- remember that AOLTW doesn't produce all the shows, other people have to pay them to get them to carry them. Also, broadband is a significant issue here.
  • Very nice, 'Lord Arathres'.

    Now- care to BET on it? Preferably large sums of money...

  • Correction (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    if shows continue to be poor people will not watch them

    Sure you will. You're not the dumbest nation on earth for nothing, you know.
  • RF multiplexing is needed in order to have multiple signals peacefully share that cable.

    I believe what you are saying make sense for old-style cable systems, but is that really
    the case in these days of fiber optic cables? Why wouldn't it be possible to have an architecture that supported several vendors of TV and broadband services on one optical pipe?


    MOVE 'ZIG'.

  • Monopolies are not bad always. (Score:3)

    by LordArathres ( 244483 ) on Saturday March 03, 2001 @06:22AM (#387701) Homepage
    People have a preconceived notion that large companies are bad. They are not inherently bad for several reasons.

    1. Large companies are not bad if they are not hurting people or other businesses. Who says that by having a large market share is bad, only if you hurt consumers.
    2. Large Companies are not bad if they are properly run and offer their services at the lowest cost to consumers.
    3. The Bigger the company the more capital it has to expand to areas that they would not normally go to becuase of the cost to do so. Companies will offer services to people even if they lose money just to GET customers and know they will keep them. Small companies cannot do this.
    4. AOL/Time Warner has the capability to become the consumers best friend by expanding broadband and expanding its cable and fiber optics to areas that cannot get them. If they do so and offer their services at a reasonable rate then they are helping consumers not hurting them.

    I will agree 100% that if a company does hurt consumers and does hurt other competing business they should be find and or broken up by the government. Government is here for the People, By the people.

    Let AOL/Time Warner expand and let AT&T expand and see what happens. If they do good, than things are ok, if they dont we have a recourse later.

    Lord Arathres
  • Here in Eastern Ky,the cable people have no competition,lousy service and piss-poor customer service.Now the courts say they can gain a bigger monopoly? Has the entire court system's advailble brain-power turned to cream-of-wheat,or am I missing something? Does not affect me,since I stay on this computer 90% of the time,but to the rest of the family,it does. Looks I am going to revamp the old TV antenna 4400ft.up the mountain.
  • Actually, this is very arguable. One reason poffered for the quality level of current TV shows is that the resources are spread so thin by trying to provide content for extremely narrow interest TV stations. Just one look at the line up for the Food Channel (which I became aware of only because of /. references to the Iron Chef) will show that people are trying *way* to hard to come up with something entertaining...

    "The Naked Chef?" (yes, it's on the listing)
    I'm out of here....

  • NY times log in (Score:3)

    by Other1 ( 154501 ) on Saturday March 03, 2001 @07:08AM (#387704)
    name: allyourbaseare password: belongtous make your time....
  • It seems to me that the products that cable companies offer, i.e. broadband, broadcast and in some case phone service are all offered by alternatives, i.e. DSL, satellite and the phone companies.

    I think it would be nice if cablecos were treated like telcos, that is they have to rent their lines to other cable companies.


    MOVE 'ZIG'.
  • Pay for the modem, pay for the multiplexer, pay for local service DSL, and then connect to your friends without actual mainstream internet access.
  • Well, having grown up in a rural area and having very little choice or access to things like cable and internet access, I only hope this means that they won't be afraid to give better service to people in all parts of the country.
    Perhaps even expanding cable internet access to us...mmm...cable modem.... :)
  • Folks,

    It's all these complaints about lousy cable service that is driving people to buy satellite dishes on a large scale.

    No wonder DirecTV and Dish Network receiver sales are going strong lately; for the price of basic cable per month in most of the USA you get frequently two to three times the basic channels available with a DBS system compared to most cable providers.

    DBS systems have far more pay-per-view movies and sporting events than any cable system, too. And you can get multichannel versions of HBO, Showtime, The Movie Channel and Cinemax that even digital cable systems mostly don't offer.
  • So companies have to constantly expand to stay in business? Are they just doomed once they're selling their products to every single person on the planet? (Positive) Inflation means that an individual dollar has less buying power now than it used to. Raising your prices at the same rate as inflation means you're charging the exact same price in terms of actual value. By the way, government has the "power to thell them HOW MUCH they can expand" through the Antitrust acts. You may have heard of some companies that were investigated under these regulations: AT&T, IBM, Microsoft...
  • You are absolutely correct in your assesment of Slashdot community social and political inclinations.
    My hope is that one day most of them will grow up , have kids and simply blend in into society.
  • Heh, you are trying to by funny ,right ?
  • It is capped. From the @Home website: ...with upstream data transfer speeds of 128Kbps... And that too, is bits (Kbps), not bytes (KB/s).
  • Of course, even with a monopoly, prices can't go arbitrarily high--it depends on price elasticity of demand. Nevertheless, having a monopoly will generally lead to higher prices than having a competitive, efficient marketplace.

    There may be benefits to monopolies. For example, AT&T invested so much in research only because they had a monopoly; since that was broken up, their research labs have steadily declined. But that was, in part, due to close government scrutiny and other idiosyncratic factors. I don't expect AT&T research to go back to the old days--I think you can be pretty sure that any profits they get now will be transferred to stock holders one way or another.

  • Cable modems have a shared uplink of about 400Kbps (bits, not bytes)

    That, of course, depends on the type of cable modem used. My ISP (Chello, in The Netherlands) uses Terayon (TeraLink S-CDMA) equipment which has a shared uplink of about 3-5 Mbit/s (depending on distance to the headend and quality of the cable infrastructure). Even so, uplink is capped at 128 kbit/s to keep people from running servers on their connections. Problem with this is that TCP connections are not that happy with asymmetric bandwidth, so the downlink suffers a heavy penalty when the (capped) uplink gets saturated. A better solution would be to create a limited data uplink in concert with an unlimited (or less severely limited) control uplink. The latter would only be useable for 'traffic control' type of traffic (SYN/ACK/RSET/etc, ICMP, ...) and limited to a small ( 100 bytes?) packet size. I recently had a somewhat heated discussion on this with some people from an organisation which claims to represent customers to the ISP, but in reality often seems to represent the ISP to customers...

  • The above password and username do work. Now use them.
  • So, the big-bad corporations are going to lock up the cable & satellite market.

    Well, are there any TECHNICAL solutions around this problem? Something which can be implemented in a distributed fashion, so that each individual doesn't have to pay too much, but where the whole solution can "route around" the control of these monopolies?
  • They probably avoided being a content company because it didn't make business sence, strikingly this is the exact same thing some analysts have been saying about AOL-TW. Content is invairably a risky business and consequently can bring great rewards, on the other hand telecomunications is for the most part a pretty safe bet

    Maybe. But have you looked at AT&T's stock [yahoo.com] lately?

    It seems that the biggest guarantee in business these days is end-to-end control. Look at the wireless phone companies; they control distribution of phones, service, data content, etc. Same with ISPs like AOL; the only ISP who's really making money is the one that provides most of the services. These could both be bad examples, but it strikes me that any company with such broad control of copyrighted content and distribution channels is going to be at a major advantage over other content-only or distribution-only competitors. Apparently the FTC and FCC have felt the same way, as prior to this decision they have placed a lot of restrictions on these businesses.

  • I dont agree with the statement that "if shows continue to be poor people will not watch them. Companies need to compete with the viewer more than the other companies."

    This boils down to the core problem with the media conglomerates: are you getting what you like, or liking what you get? I would argue the former, though i think neither are inherently bad or good. THe problem is that you have no say in what you get, but the advertisers do. Advertisers will not want you to be pressed to stand up for your view, unless they can sell you something to support your view. It can even be anti-corporatism if it means buying cute t-shirts and cool soda (think sprite ads).

    But we like this, because ads and consumerism are fun and even easier than supporting your political ideas. So no one will ever really feel such animosity to any corporation which brings you the things you like so much. Giving them more coverage only pushes this phenomenon further, because they can expand their advertising and expand their reach into even more of your everyday items that you prefer to use. I love my whitening tartar-control gel better than a hippie concoction anyday, so i'll continue to support them, because their aren't any other viable options. This is the problem.
  • monopolies breed on indiffence, mediocricity
    and shortage of innovation. Innovation, whereever
    it is, means expenses, and it does not bode well
    with short sighted PHB type individuals that run
    the companies.
    A monopoly does not have to have negative
    connotation. If company strives for bettering of
    the world around them and they do have effective
    100% control of the market, that may be a good
    thing for a while. But people will come and go,
    and eventually lazy, incompetent and power hunry
    types would make their way up the ladder and spoil
    it all.

    Let me see, if the company is superpowerful and
    trying to move itself as fast as it can with
    encouraging others to do so, it is a good company.
    If company is trying to presevrve status quo they
    have acquired in the market place, whatever they
    call it, research for just enough info so they
    can patent it, FUD etc. They deserve to be
    disciplined, or dissolved.
  • This is not a limitation of the technology, these networks were designed this way on purpose. The goal that the owners of these networks have is to use them to deliver content to consumers, not to have consumers be able to deliver content to each other. Why would AOL/Time Warner want you to be able to compete with them? They are not interested in being a provider of bandwidth, they want a delivery system for their content. They wanted a crippled network and that's what they built.
  • I live in upstate New York, Time Warner land. We're all stuck with dialup aound here. Not even good dialup (as I sit on my 31.2k connection). Starband is an option, obviously, but the outrageous pings make it useless for online gaming. I won't even get into the Radio Shack and MSN tie-ins. There's also a bit of wireless microwave access dotted about, but the rolling terrain doesn't allow many people access to the towers. ISDN is available, but difficult to get. It's hardly worth the money anyway. 2 years ago we were told we'd be getting cable access in 2008 and DSL in 2010. With the AOL-TW merge, we'll now be getting cablemodem this year. It's rumored that DSL will be arriving sooner also to compete with cable. In this case a monopoly has not only helped the consumer, but also CREATED competition. As long as AOL-TW doesn't require you to have Cable TV with your Cablemodem and doesn't require you to use AOL as your ISP (which they already announced they wouldn't), I don't see the problem here. No matter how many times you say it, people don't seem to understand that being a monopoly isn't illegal... abusing your monopoly is.
  • Yes, breaks would have helped... an omission I discovered only AFTER submitting. Why doesn't Slashdot allow editing? - yeah yeah, I know there's preview, but it doesn't change the fact that I should be allowed to fix my mistakes when you are too impatient to go through the extra step!!

    Now, as to your points:

    1. My point was simple, I'm not allowed to view supposed "local" stations via Dish Network (see item 2) so why am I blocked out from watching the game on my digital satellite service?
    2. No, I CAN'T get local channels. I can't get regional ala carte. This isn't Dish Network's fault, either. I don't qualify, yet I'm only 30 miles away from many of the stations I would get if I qualified. This is the feds fault... they are the ones who've backed up the cable companies with law and the courts. Further more, the government continues to screw dish owners [dishnetwork.com]....
    3. Why? Because even though I'm only 30 miles from the signal, reception is horrible here. Too many hills and poor atmospheric conditions. Nobody uses antennas anymore, or else they get three or four stations.
    4. Is this better? I often post to a Web Crossing forum, and I forgot that Slashdot handled HTML (the Web Crossing forum I frequent turned that off)


    Now, as for "tiny brain" and "right-wing propaganda", get real. Our government, left and right sold out its people years ago. Only someone with a "tiny brain" would think that government regulation does no harm.
  • First I'll mention that over 100 comments have been posted so far and not one of them mentions the phrase "open access" [mediaaccess.org], nor the Consumers Union press release [consumersunion.org] on the decision.

    In its decision [uscourts.gov] the court in part agrees with Time Warner's contention that the rules violate its First Amendment rights. I just finished reading the excellent Rich Media, Poor Democracy [uillinois.edu] by Robert McChesney, which contains a chapter entitled "The New Theology of the First Amendment: Class Privilege over Democracy" devoted to this subject. McChesney criticizes the invokation of First Amendment rights to protect anti-democratic control of the media. He notes that if the purpose of the First Amendment is to protect citizens from the government's control of speech, it is unfortunate that it is being used as a weapon by corporations to do just that.

  • Only someone with a "tiny brain" would think that government regulation does no harm.
    The governement inspects meat. That is regulation. How is meat inspection harmful? Is it less harmful to have no meat inspections? Can you trust Ronald McDonald not to serve you e-coli laden beef if they can make a buck by selling it instead of throwing it away?
    --
    You think being a MIB is all voodoo mind control? You should see the paperwork!
  • Don't complain. I have Charter Communications in Western Mass... I pay 45/month for basic cable..

    If they raise it more.. I'll seriously consider switching to Dish (It will suck losing the ability to watch cable on my PC but thats life)

  • And the government can inspect your e-mail. That is regulation. Do you like that?
  • First of all, you're wrong about costs rising. Generally speaking, business costs decline over time. It's called technology.

    Your information is about 30 years out of date, and only applies to small manufacturing firms nowadays.

    We're talking about huge corporations here, that aren't involved chiefly in manufacturing.

    Their people's salaries go up. The costs of their replacement machinery go up. The costs of their replacement computers stays static, but they have continuing upgrade costs for software if they use Microsoft products.

    -
  • In essence, the courts are giving a greenlight to AOLTW or to AT&T-BB to carve out cable empires in the United States. Since the cost of entry into a major cable market is exorbitantly expensive (requiring permits and billions of dollars to tear up city streets) they will be assured of little competition for the forseeable future provided they are willing to not compete with each other. They'll be like mini-Microsofts, collecting a toll for every broadband access you make, while MSFT collects a .NET toll for OS/Productivity licensing. Expect your cable bills to keep creeping up.

    (Digressing a moment, do you think that Microsoft's productivity software is going to be any cheaper on the pay-per-use model? Excuse me while I laugh.)

  • If we could have the *choice* of the big company or the local provider.

    Right now, my local cable company has the monopoly (for this area) on both cable tv and my cablemodem access. I'm required to have cable tv service (even though I don't watch much tv!) just to have my cablemodem...but that is beside the point.

    Lately my service has been pretty bad. My cablemodem lost block sync for 6 hours last night, and did the same thing last week. This has been happening more and more frequently lately. This is a very bad thing as I host the mail lists for my local endurance racing club.

    Of course, my choices are deal with it, or go back to a 56K modem. Neither are good. It would be nice if I could tell the incompetent broadband provider and my cable company to fsck themselves and go with a different provider.

    Perhaps having the choice of the big guy will force the local cable operators to get their shit together.

  • The limit on market share was supposed to protect the little companies from being hedged out by bigger companies that offer better products. That's a bad thing because it means being forced to stuck with MaPaSux Cable. It also creates a government mandated non-competition clause which I believe is ultimately illegal.

    The bad side is that when a big company takes over completely, they can control the entire nation's cable content and advertising. Then the government can break them up into little MaPaSuxes. The prices skyrocket (read: deregulation) due to overhead costs of keeping track of who's using what wires how often. Then the process starts all over again.

    Talk about no-win scenarios.

    ----------------------

  • Re:I'm so confused (Score:3)

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday March 03, 2001 @06:34AM (#387731)
    Okay, so, big monopolistic cable companies are bad... but government regulation is also bad(unless you're British). I'd like to post the typical paranoid anti-establishment rant about the subject, but I'm not sure which one I'm supposed to hate. Can anyone help clear this up for me?

    Yes. This is a common problem, not knowing which of the evil entities to blame, but wanting to post something suitably enraged at the injustice of the world.

    The solution is instead of targetting either party involved, to instead set your sights on Microsoft. For example, a good response to this article might start something like this :

    "So now there's nothing to stop Microsoft from starting a cable television company, taking over the entire market and making it a condition that everyone installs Windows if they want to watch television?"

    You'd need to pad it out a bit but you get the general idea.

    HTH
  • Here is a short set of slides [drexel.edu] explaining why natural monopolies exist in the States, and why they are not always bad..


    ----------

  • here [nytimes.com]
    Or you could use the classic slashdot2000/slashdot2000 username/password pair
    On an OT note, how long do you think it will be before NYT catch on to this and eliminate it?
  • It strikes me that the real damage is done not by removing the cable-system ownership caps, but by the portion of the ruling that allows cable companies to broadcast more of their own programming. This is obviously V-day for AOLTW; now they have a green light to pursue their full strategy of owning everything from camera to TV (or computer, radio, print, etc.) With a single gesture, the courts have severely endangered producers of independent programming, as well as internet content-producers (ironically, the people who were once thought to be the antidote to big-media domination.)

    I could really care less whether we have dozens of independent cable companies, as these companies don't actually compete against each other. But it seems to me that this decision opens the way for a few companies to exert even greater control over what we see, read and hear. AT&T seems to have been much more sensitive about this, perhaps due to their previous run-ins with the law. They have thus far specifically avoided becoming a content company to avoid conflict (which may have been a disastrous decision, considering this ruling.) But they, along with the other major media and content providers will now begin looking to consolidate. Within a few years, we're going to have a very different competitive landscape.

  • Well, at least in my town... my local cable company was all set to implement cable modems over 2 years ago, according to a tech I talked to back then. I immediately ordered digital cable, which used the infrastructure and basically meant my own home should have no trouble running a cable modem. UNFORTUNATELY - Charter BOUGHT my local cable company just before the modem rollout!!! Now we are still looking at another YEAR before they roll out... over a 3 year delay!!! Not to mention that the Digital cable selection stagnated under Charter. Thy got rid of one of the two Fox affiliates (leaving 3 PBS affiliates for some bizarre reason) and our digital channel selection never grew under Charter. Now I'm running Starband 2-way satellite, and except for the ping times, I'm VERY happy with it. I also ditched the digital cable and now run the full premium Dish Network package. Even keeping the local cable channels (since the Feds have screwed up satellite access to local channels) I am still CHEAPER than paying for digital cable/phone line/ISP and have TWICE the regular and premium digital channels. Charter does indeed suck. So do the Feds. BTW: I think it's interesting that recently, they blocked out a hockey game from my satellite feed, due to a local station carrying it, but oddly, the Feds say I'm not REALLY local to the station, because they won't allow me to carry ANY Metro-Detroit stations!!!! Luckily I kept the local stations form Cable, but it still sucks. I'd prefer my digital satellite feed to the crappy analog cable feed. Satellite services have been raped by our government, thanks to big money from the cable companies. That's the legislation that REALLY needs to be struck down!
  • F*ckin' frog.
  • Just remember: in terms of television, you are the product, not the consumer.

    As more of the population is pacified by television, the IQs of those who elect to leave the TV set off have nowhere to go but up.

    --
    EFF Member #11254

  • Why would AOL/Time Warner want you to be able to compete with them?

    Good point. But if that's true, then it was a bad miscalculation on the part of the cable companies. AOLTW isn't the only service provider offering DOCSIS compliant cable-modem service. There are others, and not all of them offer internet content. It seems odd that cable-modem providers would deliberately hamstring themselves with this decision when the designs were being considered, knowing full well that this would seriously weaken them in the business market. Meanwhile many DSL services offer relatively fat uplinks (and last I heard DSL was outpacing cable-modems in deployment.)

    It seems reasonably likely that most US cable companies just figured that 400kbps would be plenty for your average person, back several years ago when they first started deploying networks. Given it to do all over again, they might think differently...?

  • Freedom of the press is the freedom to operate one without government control of what you publish, not the right to use someone else's press.

    And democracy is not liberty; being given orders by by a mob is still being given orders.
  • When more than one company collude to control production or prices, it's called a cartel. An example is OPEC.
  • Meanwhile many DSL services offer relatively fat uplinks

    Consumer grade dsl is ADSL (A for asymetric :), usually capped at 128kbps upload. Business grade SDSL with a fat upload costs quite a premium. This shows that consumer DSL providers are just as disinterested in providing fast uploads to consumers as the cable companies.

    Why? Because they want to be the content delivery system for the big media producers to the consumers. Or in the case of AOL/TW they want to own the whole shebang. They did not miscalculate in designing the networks, they asked the media producers and the advertisers what they wanted. Ultimately, their goal will be to make money not by selling bandwidth to consumers, it will be the access to those consumers that they give to those same media producers and advertisers.

    This is an open access [mediaaccess.org] issue. Pushing the ownership limits from 40% to 60% is right on schedule for ATT's recent acquisitions...
  • The FCC ruling doesn't say you can put up an antenna anywhere.

    Over 66% of the US population gets their TV exclusively over cable. You don't think those folks would want to change to something, anything else? I surely would.

    The fact of the matter is you have to have access to a private area. Unfortunately, those of us who live in shared dwellings, apts, condos without balconies, etc. don't usually have a private area to put up an antenna. Most rental agreements specifically state that you can't modify the outside of the building in any way, and if you don't have access to the roof, you're shot.

    This is why you'll see many condo dwellers mounting their dish in a cement block in the middle of their balconies, because they're not allowed to mount it to the rail or have it extend past that point.

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