Worcester Mass. City Council Votes To Keep Comcast From Entering the Area 232
First time accepted submitter _AustinPowell writes Comcast wants a cable television license in Worcester, Massachusetts. In response, the City Council voted 8-3 to urge Worcester's city manager to let the company's license request die. The deadline for the decision is Wednesday, but the manager is not bound by the vote of the Council. "It's a terrible company," City Councilor Gary Rosen said. "In my opinion, they should not be welcome in this city. Comcast is a wolf in wolf's clothing; it's that bad."
Awesome quote (Score:5, Insightful)
Comcast is a wolf in wolf's clothing; it's that bad. - Gary Rosen, City Councilor
Hitler (Score:5, Funny)
friend of mine posted today:
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Instead of bitching just buy them out. If Kickstarter would go to 5 billion we could do it there but it doesn't. Just get households to spend their $150 a month of stock instead and shut down their account in 2 years at a steady stock price we would own it be able to vote in our own board. If everyone turns off their account it will go much faster and at an increasing rate then BAM! User owned coop. Fuck regulation, it doesn't work. Fuck the FCC. Hate fuck Comcast to death.
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Hitler didn't die, he became a Super Aryan and flew away to fight stronger opponents.
Re:Hitler (Score:4, Funny)
"...Comcast is a bad guy the US army won't do anything about."
That's because if the US Army attacked Comcast, they could have it fired.
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What we should be against is any subsidization, special treatment, or monopolistic practices, always rooted in government. It is a fact, that monopolies can only exist for any great length of time with the help of a government law or regulation insuring their monopolistic status (with only one notable exception: The London DeBeers Corporation) . A mo
Re:Awesome quote (Score:5, Insightful)
No, No No No!!!! It doesn't matter if they are a wolf in wolf's clothing! They have a service to sell, and users should be free to to use it if they so choose.
...
These councils need to get out of the business of "selecting" the internet provider and let the free market run its course. The outcome will always be what the customers choose, which is usually a variety of competitors, and thats a good thing!
Sorry, but just no.
The problem is that the regulators are mis-regulating, and as a result usually consumers have NO choice... they get the one company in their area, and that's it.
It is not reasonable to expect "market forces" to promote competition, when there is no actual market. Comcast and Time Warner Cable have divided up most of the U.S. between themselves, and voluntarily choose not to compete in their respective areas. That's illegal anti-competitive practice, but as I say: the regulators haven't been regulating. Hell, Comcast even practically BRAGGED about it to the FCC, claiming that a merger would not hurt competition because they're not competing anyway.
If you want consumer market choices to choose the winner, the way they normally would, then you must have a genuine competitive market first. End of story. When it doesn't exist -- like today -- Adam Smith's "invisible hand" doesn't work.
In my area, a City committee votes annually on whether to "allow competition" in the cable market. Every year they have voted it down. I am willing to bet there are kickbacks involved, but I don't have proof.
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The problem is that the regulators are mis-regulating, and as a result usually consumers have NO choice... they get the one company in their area, and that's it.
So, of course, it is better for the consumer to have NO company in their area.
Comcast and Time Warner Cable have divided up most of the U.S. between themselves, and voluntarily choose not to compete in their respective areas. That's illegal anti-competitive practice,
No, it is not. They aren't keeping anyone else from competing, they've just made a reasonable business decision that it would not be profitable for one of them to compete with the other in an already built area, or to try building out at the same time. It's not profitable for two companies to build out the same area and wind up with only half the potential customers. Fixed costs are the same, spread over half the customers, mean
Re:Awesome quote (Score:5, Insightful)
It's not profitable for two companies to build out the same area and wind up with only half the potential customers. Fixed costs are the same, spread over half the customers, meaning the prices go up. Your desire to be able to choose would mean that everyone would pay more for the same service, not less.
This is why the last mile infrastructure should not be owned by ISPs. Or, they should be required to lease access at regulated rates.
Re: Awesome quote (Score:5, Insightful)
I have 20+ different companies that I can buy electricity from. They compete on price, incentives, peak/off-peak hours and rates, and efficiency rebates. I have one physical connection to the grid maintained by a highly regulated monopoly utility.
That's exactly how I wish my internet worked.
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That's not true. The wire still handles the same number of bits. It is just different suppliers feeding them into the upstream end of the pipe.
Slashdot just had a story on how this works wonders in Sweden. And if you don't want to click, I'll provide the spoiler: it's not socialist/communist. The internet suppliers are all private companies. It's only the last mile that is owned by city.
http://tech.slashdot.org/story... [slashdot.org]
Re:Awesome quote (Score:5, Insightful)
There's no "business decision" involved in this. In most of the U.S., it's the municipal government (usually city, sometimes county) which awards exclusive cable TV service rights to a single company. Usually it was in exchange for a guarantee that lower income areas would get service (i.e. we'll give you a monopoly, but in exchange you have to provide service to 99.5% of the residences, including lower income areas). But in the last city I lived in it was a straight payola deal. The city let the cable companies bid on how much they'd pay the city per residence hooked up, and the highest bidder got the monopoly.
In the few areas with two or more cable companies, the second cable company usually had to butter up the local politicians ("donate" to their campaigns, aka pay bribes) or even file lawsuits to get rights to provide service. Some courts have ruled that the monopoly contracts the city entered are binding. Others have ruled that the city had no business granting a monopoly, and allowed other cable companies to provide service (that happened in the city I lived in prior to the one getting payola - the existing cable company dropped their prices $10/mo across the board the moment the second cable company announced they would begin providing service).
See, that's the dark side of Net Neutrality, and why free market types (conservatives, liberterians) generally oppose it. It's more government regulation to fix a problem caused by government regulation in the first place. If you're going to award monopolies to cable companies, then you need Net Neutrality. But if like most of the rest of the world you just let multiple cable companies compete freely with each other, you don't need Net Neutrality. Any ISP deliberately slowing down Netflix to try to get Netflix to pay them is shooting themselves in the foot - their customers will flee to other ISPs who don't slow down Netflix.
On a meta level, you initially want competition for cable service. Yes it's wasteful to have multiple hookups, but when the technology first rolls out, nobody is really which which implementation is the best (both in terms of cost and bandwidth). This is the sort of problem markets solve really well. So you want lots of cable companies competing to provide service, so that the ones with the best technology filter up to the top. Once the technology matures though, you want to treat it like a utility. One company is awarded a monopoly for rolling out the cables. But they're prohibited from providing service themselves - instead they must sell at a fixed rate to companies which provide the service.
This is pretty much how it was done with electricity. At first nobody was sure if AC or DC transmission would win out. So private companies implemented both types of systems (Edison backing DC, Westinghouse/Tesla backing AC). Eventually it became clear that AC was better for transmitting over long distances. Most municipalities grant the local power company a monopoly over providing and maintaining the electrical wires, but you can usually buy the electricity transmitted over those wires to your house from dozens of different energy providers. Gas and long distance telephone service works the same way. By this point I think it's pretty clear cable TV/internet is going to all end up with fiber to the home, and we need to transition it over to a utility model.
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Fixed costs are the same, spread over half the customers, meaning the prices go up. Your desire to be able to choose would mean that everyone would pay more for the same service, not less.
You assume the prices of service are based on fixed cost. Profit margins for cable companies are somewhere inbetween 30%-40%.
There are some numbers floating around saying they have a 97% profit margin. This number is wrong as it lacks all kinds of costs, but the remaining 3% is the fixed cost.
If their fixed costs would double, they'd still have plenty of profit margin to allow them to compete.
Re:Awesome quote (Score:5, Insightful)
You think that illegally divvying up territory in an anti-competitive and monopolistic fashion is "simple business economics"?
It is not illegal for one company to decide it will not compete with another in a certain region when the decision is a simple one based on simple economics. The name "Walmart" has come up in other places in this discussion. Walmart chooses locations to build stores based on expected return on investment. It is not illegal for them to decide not to build in an area that already has a large number of other low-price stores, it is a simple business decision based on economics.
Second, each company's decision not to compete with the other has no binding on any other company that wishes try to compete. Therefore, it is not anti-competitive. You cannot force a company to compete in a market it does not want to, so you cannot prohibit one from making the decision not to. So, you cannot force Walmart to build in your town to compete with existing markets, and it is not illegal for the other markets to exist.
What WOULD be illegal and anti-competitive would be if Comcast (or TW) decided to drop rates to below cost to drive competitors out of a market they wanted to compete in.
Holy sheet. How much do they pay you, you bootlicking shill?
I'm sorry that your hatred for Comcast blinds you to simple business economics and drives you to insult those who try to educate you.
Re:Awesome quote (Score:4, Insightful)
Even Walmart occasionally competes with other companies. This isn't simple business economics. And you're still a bootlicking shill.
From NYT [nytimes.com]:
Time Warner Cable operates in 29 states, but thanks to the old system of regional and municipal cable monopolies, Comcast and Time Warner Cable donâ(TM)t compete anywhere. Justice Department merger guidelines define geographical markets, which is why regulators weighing airline mergers examine competition on individual routes, not national market share. In New York, Comcast will simply supplant Time Warner Cable in the array of consumer television and broadband options, which include Verizonâ(TM)s FiOS service, RCN, DirecTV and the Dish Network.
âoeGiven that these are local markets, and that Comcast and Time Warner Cable donâ(TM)t overlap, the merger really has no impact on competition,â said Scott Hemphill, an antitrust professor and specialist in intellectual property at Columbia Law School.
Under conventional antitrust standards, itâ(TM)s pretty much an open-and-shut case. But some opponents have seized on the rarely invoked doctrine of potential competition â" the theory that, if Comcast were barred from acquiring Time Warner Cable, it would enter the New York market on its own.
Now, I'm no antitrust lawyer, but the guy they got to comment for the story is. The whole business is fishy as hell. 29 states and in not one single location do they compete. The only reason they get away with it is because they claim that if they were banned from acquiring each other, they would compete. "Sure, we would compete!" They've admitted they're doing it on a technicality--not on simple business economics.
You're the one with the blinders on. Again, how much do they pay you?
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If there were 30 ISPs to chose from, would you give any fucks that 2 of them had decided not to compete? You're fixated on the wrong problem
Re:Awesome quote (Score:5, Insightful)
The whole business is fishy as hell. 29 states and in not one single location do they compete. The only reason they get away with it is because ...
they were banned from entering the market the other company was in when cable franchises were handed out in the first place (well, in most areas, they were banned from entering even the markets they are in, but they bought the companies that had been granted the franchise for that area).
The problem exists because our government created it. The cable monopolies did not start with the cable companies (although they worked to encourage it once it started).
Re:Awesome quote (Score:5, Insightful)
You're a fucking moron. There is nothing even vaguely close to free market capitalism in any part of Comcast. They are a natural monopoly operating as a cartel / oligopoly. Cable companies have a high barrier to entry, they are profoundly non-transparent, they are engaged in rent seeking behavior and they exert undue influence on their regulators. So they are basically the worst aspects of capitalism combined with the worst part of Stalinism.
Basic question if you are the MOST HATED company in America how else could you stay in business except by anti-competitive practices? Most hated. MOST HATED! (Is there anything more yelling than caps?) Oh I know by paying fucking shills to FUD ta interwebs.
Re:Awesome quote (Score:4, Insightful)
the worst part of Stalinism
The worst part of Stalinism was that people who disagreed with him ended up dead. I don't like Comcast either, but this kind of hyperbole trivializes your point. Comcast is not as bad as Stalin.
Re:Comcast is not as bad as Stalin (Score:5, Funny)
They should use that as a tagline in their advertising: Comcast...we're not as bad as Stalin!
Re:Awesome quote (Score:5, Interesting)
How about the markets where they refused to put in fiber, so the municipality did themselves, then they sued them in court to prevent them from offering fiber internet? And continued to not offer fiber, or in certain markets a fiber-like service that was exorbitantly expensive, yet not any faster than higher-end cable options.
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You can't use logic and facts with paid shills....
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We can see how that already works out. Roads is something that used to be largely private but now are mostly public. We pay a special tax to fund them.
Now that sounds good until you realize that the funding is not beholden to its intended uses. Highway trust funds get used to fund parks, bike and walking paths where no roads exist, they fund travel lanes that only select people can use ( hov, mass transit only, no commercial vehicles lanes). It is ever used for busy work where the need has nothing to do wit
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Not sure if sarcasm, or if completely oblivious to the currently on
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Natural monopolies acting as oligopolies are anathema to free market capitalism.
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So where is this variety of competitors? My area has one cable company and one phone company, which isn't what I would call a 'variety'. Or are you asserting that all the customers in this area are perfectly happy with one of these two? Because I can tell you right now, it isn't so; I would switch to pretty much anyone but Time Warner in a minute.
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Re:Awesome quote (Score:5, Insightful)
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If you think that there is anything like a free market in providing TV and Internet to consumers, then I have a bridge to sell you. Other countries have forced the owners of the local loops to offer (at near cost) access to alternative suppliers. This has resulted in competition and far lower prices than in the USA.
Cable companies have received both direct and indirect subsidies to build out their infrastructure. The chance of an alternative (other than another incumbent) to that is close to zero.
Why isn't there another company offering to sell electricity or gas to me?
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Being free to join Comcast is like being free to join ISIS, except that Comcast hates Americans more.
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My cable download speeds have gone from something like 10mbps to 60mbps, yet my upload speeds remain at 3mbps. Sounds legit to me.
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If it was me, I would have said "The police have been ordered to shoot any Comcast staff members on site"
What about the off-site staff?
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Heh. I just bought a house in Charter territory. None of their customer service people have a clue about anything. At all. The day before I closed on my house, I stopped by the local office hoping I could get my cablemodem registered so I could just plug it in when I got the keys. "Sorry, we can only activate it once you're in the house. But it's just a quick phone call."
The next day, I called from the house. "You were given incorrect information. We have to send an installer to your house to connec
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Here, enjoy this little bit of information.
You *WANT* Charter's modems. Here's why:
1. First get just the phone/internet service. They'll give you one phone modem. Don't get the ultra/top-tier 'upgrade' plan.
2. Wait a month, use your internet and phone like normal. Call Charter up after that time, and say you want to upgrade your package. They'll say they have to give you a different modem in order to handle the upgraded speeds as the phone modem will not handle those speeds.
3. Installer comes out, hooks up
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When they refer to 'digital' modulation, it really means then when the decoding decision is made, it comes out as a digital word. A commonly used digital modulation scheme is QAM - X (quadrature amplitude modulation, where X is some power of 2). An analog signal is encoded at some phase and amplitude. The quadrature portion of it means that you are sending two orthogonaly encoded sine wa
So competition is bad? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:So competition is bad? (Score:5, Informative)
If you bothered to RTFA, you would know that Comcast is buying up Charter's licenses in central Massachusetts. They wish to buy it for this city too. This does not add any competition.
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and it's not just that... Charter is very competitive. Their rates are usually a lot lower than the likes of Comcast and Time Warner. Don't get me wrong, their service is just as awful as everyone else but their rates are pretty damned good. If they let Comcast come in, their rates would definitely go up. That being said... who's going to buy up the franchise?
Full disclosure: Charter is my ISP
It's not competition. (Score:3, Informative)
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Monopoly player 1 (Comcast) is attempting to purchase the monopoly franchise from monopoly player 2 (Charter).
Neither company has a dejure monopoly. Comcast has already purchased the license.
Unfortunately for them, the city council has a say in whether or not they can do so.
No, if you RTFA you'll see that the city manager has the say and can ignore the council if he wishes.
TFA also says that if the license transfer request "dies", Comcast will simply appeal the decision and will almost ce
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The (as in one) license implies that that there is a monopoly. Dejeure or defacto is irrelevant.
No, dejure or defacto is quite relevant when talking about whether a government is granting a monopoly or not. Defacto monopolies exist when only one company decides to compete. Dejure means only one company is ALLOWED to compete. If the franchise in that city is exclusive, then there is a dejure monopoly granted by the government. If the franchise is non-exclusive it is defacto.
Not that it matters. The point I was making to the OP in this thread was that there is a monopoly.
Not just that it was a monopoly but a dejure monopoly. As in:
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Defacto monopolies exist when only one company decides to compete.
You might want to re-read your Econ 101 textbook.
The most important aspects of a monopoly is its ability to raise market prices (abnormal profits) and/or exclude competitors.
Technically a company with 50% market share could do this, but for practical purposes, the threshold is considered 70%~80% of the market.
Markets with very few competitors (oligopolies and oligopsonies) can behave like cartels, without any formal collusion, giving everyone a chance to earn monopolistic profits.
Cable tv and utilities (pow
I'm a Wolf, I'm a Wolf (Score:2)
A government picking the winners and losers? (Score:2, Insightful)
Comcast may be "a terrible company," but this is still very worrisome.
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:A government picking the winners and losers? (Score:4, Interesting)
Yea, how dare a city have any say in what goes on within the city!
I think the point is, it should be the consumers who get to decide, not the city government.
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How the Hell are the consumers supposed to decide? "You guys are terrible! I'm getting my internet service from another cable company!"
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Yea, how dare a city have any say in what goes on within the city!
So if a city council decides to issue an exclusive franchise, or to issue only one franchise, for a cable television system they are BAD BAD BAD for creating a monopoly, but if they try to keep the only cable company that wants to be in their town out they are GOOD GOOD GOOD for "having a say in what goes on within the city?" How is the former action not "having a say in what goes on within the city"?
Of course, this city council doesn't have a say, it is the city manager who decides. And he's really got
Re:A government picking the winners and losers? (Score:5, Insightful)
As opposed to when the government gives them a local monopoly?
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As opposed to when the government gives them a local monopoly?
Unless you know the content of the Wooster/Charter franchise agreement, you don't know the government has given them a local monopoly.
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I'm seeing a pattern here.
Somehow, I don't think that the mindset that got us into this mess is capable of getting us out of it.
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If we made every "terrible company" stop doing business . . .
*shudder*
hawk
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The market would open up for less terrible companies to move in?
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The market would open up for less terrible companies to move in?
If I operated a company and was looking at moving into an area, and found out that the local government had the power to shut down companies based on some arbitrary definition of "terrible", I'd think more than twice about going there. Why should I invest in opening a new store if someone can get a bug up their ass and get the local city council to shut me down because I'm "terrible"? Even the best companies have customers who think they are terrible.
The government should not be in the business of defini
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Actually, it SHOULD define terrible quite explicitly so you can judge if you would ever meet the criteria. It is already done to some extent. If you are terrible enough it becomes criminal.
At some point terrible crosses the line to fraud and costs a lot of people a lot of money for crappy service or no service at all. Do you suggest we let every would be fly-by-nighter have at it?
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The government already picked a winner years ago, just like they did with electrical service, natural gas service where offered, and telephone service, when it first allowed a cable company use of the right of way to either bury wires or string them on poles (or bury pipes in the case of a gas company).
Once one company is in that position, the economics of another one coming along and also running wires in order to maybe get some of the first company's customers to switch over is usually considered unlikely
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They do have a choice in not granting what they consider a malevolent hellcorp the license to service their town. That's not The Government picking winners
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There are differences, of course, but they balance out, I think. First, Comcast needs infrastructure across the whole city in order to deliver it's services, and I think that gives the city even more right to decide wether or not to let them do it. They'd be using city owed property and be given rights of way in order to do their business, whereas Walmart only takes a piece of land - generally already zoned for commercial area - and builds where a commercial enterprise was already desired by the city.
So..
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There are differences, of course, but they balance out, I think. First, Comcast needs infrastructure across the whole city in order to deliver it's services, and I think that gives the city even more right to decide wether or not to let them do it. They'd be using city owed property and be given rights of way in order to do their business,
A very nice argument, but completely off the mark. Comcast isn't asking to build anything, they're buying the license (franchise) from Charter who has already done all of that. It will be very hard to justify not allowing the transfer based on anything you've said.
So... on the outside, it seems like Walmart would have a better case for suing.
I live in a town that tried to keep Walmart out. As long as the land use laws are being applied evenly and fairly, Walmart had no grounds to sue anyone. What they wound up doing is following the land use laws and building one of their "local mar
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What, did Walmart breed or cloned these people? Did they raise their own food and make their own stuff before and stopped doing this when Walmart came to town? Surely these people were shopping somewhere before Walmart came to town. So, is your complaint is that "Before Walmart, these people stayed on their side of the tracks where I couldn't see them"?
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Happened where I live. Hell, at one point there was a sign up "Walmart, coming soon to this location" and then the sign came down. Turns out, a selection of the local 'elite' pushed the city council into doing *something* and now the closest walmart is over a 2 hour round trip. Much to the annoyance of just about anyone under the age of say, 25.
The problem is, with WalMart on your doorstep, the surrounding economy turns into one that can only support jobs whose pay is suitable for someone under the age of 25.
In short... (Score:3, Insightful)
and from the article,
- City Manager can ignore council vote.
- Comcast would appeal license denial and apparently would likely win it (why exactly?)
So really, the 'peoples' voice in all this is essentially irrelevant. Why does this sound wholly, unAmerican?
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the 'peoples' voice in all this is essentially irrelevant.
Vote with your money.
Re:In short... (Score:5, Insightful)
Yep, that's the current system. Of course, since 1% of the people have 90% of the money, most likely your vote doesn't count for much.
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Yep, that's the current system. Of course, since 1% of the people have 90% of the money, most likely your vote doesn't count for much.
So you're saying that the evil rich 1% of the residents of the city who would "vote" for Comcast and keep the service they have would be enough to keep Comcast in the area? They'd have to buy an AWFUL lot of cable services to do that. While Comcast's prices for service are high, I don't think a 1% saturation would keep them in the black.
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No, silly, they don't buy "cable service," they buy stock and politicians and end up with more money than they started with.
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They'd have to buy an AWFUL lot of cable services to do that.
No. They would instead invest into the company and then shove AWFUL service down your throat to turn profit.
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Vote with your money.
Yes, that's exactly what Comcast is going to do -- by giving a bunch of money to the only person who really matters in this whole thing -- the City Manager.
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City manager can be fired by the city council. Problem is most councils dont have the balls to do it.
City managers are low skill people that cant make it in the Corporate world. They are a dime a dozen.
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Um. No. My town, pop. 13k, had a really great town manager who retired. I know she was really great because I saw what she did. Replacing her was hard. And that's a small town. City manager is a hard job. Of course, you can get a corrupt city manager who does a bad job, but to do the job well requires a lot of skill and dedication.
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and from the article,
- City Manager can ignore council vote.
- Comcast would appeal license denial and apparently would likely win it (why exactly?)
So really, the 'peoples' voice in all this is essentially irrelevant. Why does this sound wholly, unAmerican?
The law allows the city to block a license transfer (that's what's happening here) only if the city can make the case that the transferee (Comcast) doesn't have the capability or resources to run the system. In other words, if Charter wanted to transfer the license to Bob's Cable Hut and Bait Shop, which had total financial resources of $83 in a checking account and had only Bob as an employee, the transfer could be blocked. While people may not LIKE Comcast, there's no doubt that they are fully capable o
No, they didn't (Score:5, Informative)
Well, I was about to post this to the Firehose submission in the hopes that it wouldn't be posted because this is basically a non-story. It means nothing.
As Ars Technica's version makes clear [arstechnica.com] this is absolutely meaningless: Comcast will almost certainly be allowed to take over for Charter over the city council's objections because they don't actually have the power to prevent it. It's local political theater and nothing more.
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Re:No, they didn't (Score:4, Insightful)
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Meh, this is modern America. If you work in the public sector and don't plan your retirement by working for corporations you helped secure contracts, you aren't planning for your future.
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The city most certainly can define who has access to city owned utility poles. Siply a fact...
Yes, and they've already defined that a cable company called "Charter" can have access. Comcast is buying that franchise, not trying for a new one.
Following in Lexington's Footsteps (Score:4, Informative)
Story on Ars: http://arstechnica.com/business/2014/10/kentucky-city-threatens-to-block-comcasttime-warner-cable-merger/ [arstechnica.com]
This act ... (Score:2)
This act of civil disobedience has been funded by Charter Communications, small town USA's favorite Internet service monopoly.
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I really doubt it, given that Charter is the one SELLING the system to Comcast.
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It was a joke. I would have used a different company, but a quick search showed them be the only broadband provider there.
I live in Worcester and would welcome competition. (Score:5, Interesting)
I live in Worcester, and have been a Charter customer for five years. When their Internet connection is working it's great. It's fast, and I have no complaint.
This isn't a "bash Charter" thread, so I won't go into the details, but lets just say that the service drops much more than I can sometimes stand. When it does that , there's no telling when it will come back. The reliability of my Internet connection and their poor customer service would have prompted me to drop them by now if I could. I had Comcast before.. they've got their pros and cons too, but I wish I could at least have a choice to leave this monopoly.
Now, this might border on gossip, but I did get chatty with a Charter service tech who visited my home. I was venting to him and cursing the monopoly Charter has in the area. He told me that Charter had a deal with the City where all schools would get free service in exchange for an exclusivity deal. So no Comcast, no FIOS. I cannot verify this, but it is an interesting anecdote given what's going on.
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Many carriers have such exclusivity deals with municipalities, Comcast included. This is why there's little to no competition in many areas.
Also, I wouldn't get your hopes up with any improved service, though I share your sentiment in simply wanting a choice.
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From Texas with Love (Score:3)
You tell them! (Score:2)
Take that most hated company in America! And good for you Worcester! It took a lot to take the crown from Bank of America but you descended to new levels of badness and a customer service experience that made customers want to kill themselves.
next up (Score:3)
Next they'll complain that there isn't enough competition in the market. Whatever Comcast may be, if you haphazardly keep companies you don't like from competing, you'll also drive away companies you might like, because no business likes that kind of uncertainty.
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I understand what you're saying but on the flip side if enough communities say "The Consumerist says you're the worst company in America and we don't want you here" at some point the board of directors and upper management or even the franchise authorities, state and federal consumer watchdogs or other regulatory authorities will take notice and say you guys need to shape up. I swear that every three to six months I find my bills going to by some $2 or $4 charge and my choices are limited as the only other
Re: (Score:3)
RFTA (I know, I know), but this is NOT about adding competition, it is about Comcast taking over the current Charter franchise, giving Comcast the monopoly on cable service.
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The primary effect of keeping big box retailers out of an area as far as I can tell is that people drive to the big box retailer and eventually just move away entirely. As a consequence, the area either goes downhill, or it gentrifies and become a playground for the spoiled upper middle class.
Approach Google or WOW (Score:2)
Allowing Comcast doesn't increase competition (Score:2)
My first thought was, "if the problem is a monopoly, how does keeping a competitor out of the market help?" But then I read the article. Comcast isn't coming in to compete with existing cable and phone services: instead it's doing a deal to swap customers with the existing provider (Charter). Worcester customers will still only have one possible cable provider, it's just going to be Comcast.
This is such a blatant anticompetitive cartel arrangement that I have no problem with local government blocking the
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
Because the decision in question is about whether or not to grant them a local monopoly franchise?
I'd love to see a shared-line law forcing the cable owners to let other ISPs sell connectivity, and when we get that, then the free market can do its business. But the issue is a straight yes or no on whether or not to give Comcast control of the local cable market, for them to abuse as they see fit. "Let the free market decide" is an entirely separate rule that would need to be passed at a higher level.