Cord cutters

[hobbsyoyo]

The same if not further. Most of the transmitters are in Pasadena and I'm as far south as you can go before heading up into Palos Verdes. Before I lived on the extreme northern end of Long Beach.

 

[civvver]

From what I hear from Americans here and there, Comcast is worse than Rogers (the company that has a monopoly here, who I give money to for cable, internet, etc.)

I don't know, obviously I don't have experience with Rogers, but aside from the price I love comcast. The customer service is fine and very easy to get ahold of. I've never waited more than a couple minutes to talk to someone, they're all US based and you can get to a person with like two buttons from the main menu. The x1 system works fine, every now and then it'll glitch and need a box reset, but it's a very cool system, good menus, search directly by voice or remote buttons if you don't want to browse menus. I haven't used their mobile app to watch tv but I login using my comcast account to fxnow and amc mobile apps. My internet has never gone down and is always fast. The data cap thing is a looming issue but I'm way under the cap right now.

Really the only thing I can fault them on is price. The promo price I'm paying now should really be the standard imo, or don't charge all the equipment fees, let us buy our own boxes or something, don't charge for HD, etc.

 

[warpus]

You are honestly the first person I've ever heard say anything positive about Comcast. Not that I don't believe you or anything, but every single time I hear Comcast mentioned, it's when people say about how they're the worst company in America, etc.

 

[civvver]

Well wait until I have a major issue and I'll let you know. I had a very easy install cus my house was prewired. I had to call them a couple times for I don't remember what. Other than that the biggest issue I've had was a non functioning remote. 5 minutes on the phone, they mailed me a new one cus the pickup center is a good half hour the opposite direction of my work. They tried to charge me $6 for shipping but when I protested they dropped the charge right there. They didn't even want the old one back, I tossed it. I have heard the horror stories though about plenty of incompetent techs and missing their install windows. And my boss at work says his x1 is a piece of crap and never works right. So I have no idea, maybe I'm just lucky.

 

[cardgame]

Internet bandwidth use is only ever going to increase. Data caps terrify me.

I've used 250gb in the past month and I only have a paltry 10mbps, less than 30% of the national average speed.

 

[Bamspeedy]

I agree with warpus as I've never had Comcast, and never heard anything good about them.

Everywhere I've been the choice has been one or two companies. Now for cable/phone/internet it's either go to the company that was decades ago just the 'Cable' company, or go to the company that was decades ago just the 'Telephone' company.

Did have Frontier, which has it's headquarters in NY or something. Call their customer service and told 'we are receiving reports of outages in your area', after several days of this and when I finally get a tech guy to my house he tells me that message could mean there is an outage in another state, 500 miles away. The problem all that time was limited to just my house. They have a building in our city where we could go to drop off payments, but that is now closed to the public, so only used for processing paperwork or something. Glad I could get rid of them for cable and internet, went to the local 'phone' company for my internet access.

 

[caketastydelish]

I pay $280 a month for internet, cable, and home phone. I only have home phone in there so that I could get the unlimited internet bundle. So.. yeah. I actually used to pay more, but I moved my cellphone to another company (and now pay a lot less) and got rid of 2 speciality (soccer) channels that were costing me $40 a month extra.

One day i will cut my cable, but.. I need my HD sports. Hockey and all the different soccer leagues and cups and competitions I like to watch. Streams are sucky, so.. here I am spending a fortune on cable each month.

Mind you my work pays me back for my internet. Every single $ I spend on internet I get back as cash at the end of the year. So that $280 should really be more like.. $180.

With this you raise a valid point. I want to watch football (both the American and British versions) but cutting the cable would prevent this. Were it not for that, I would 100% do it with no hesitation whatsoever.

edit: One thing I'll say in defense of Comcast is that to say they have a 'monopoly' is not entirely true. I do not use Comcast for my television service, and I personally don't know anyone who does. Obviously they are stronger in certain geographical areas than others, but that does not constitute a monopoly.

 

[caketastydelish]

Internet bandwidth use is only ever going to increase. Data caps terrify me.

I've used 250gb in the past month and I only have a paltry 10mbps, less than 30% of the national average speed.

Perhaps you are doing tons of downloading? Surprisingly, gaming takes up almost nothing in datacaps. Downloading is the number one devil. Streaming YouTube/Netflix/whatever is number two. Everything else is insignificant.

 

[Bamspeedy]

edit: One thing I'll say in defense of Comcast is that to say they have a 'monopoly' is not entirely true. I do not use Comcast for my television service, and I personally don't know anyone who does. Obviously they are stronger in certain geographical areas than others, but that does not constitute a monopoly.

They could have a monopoly in certain areas, and not be a nation-wide monopoly.

Even then, it might not 'technically' be true, as there may be other options, but contacting 3 different companies for TV, internet and phone vs calling just the 1 big company that bundles all three, it could feel like there is just one choice.

 

[caketastydelish]

What? I bundle internet, phone, and TV. I use Suddenlink, and I'm sure there are others.

edit: Google has MUCH more of a monopoly in the search engine industry as well as video uploading (YouTube). I never see Google getting any heat. I wonder why?

 

[Bamspeedy]

Suddenlink has 1.5 million subscribers to Comcast's 28 million. They are not available in all areas.

True, other areas may have other companies (like Frontier, my area has neither Suddenlink or Comcast), but I don't doubt there may be some areas where there is only 1 choice for bundles*.

*= well, now there is satellite internet that can be bundled with satellite TV, so that may not be true anymore, but whether that is at all competitive in price or speed I haven't looked into.

Maybe it's not so true anymore now that the 'phone' company is up to speed with the cable company and provides the same stuff, but still that leaves many places with 2 choices at most. With only 1-2 competitors, the price of cable TV sure has skyrocketed.

 

[cardgame]

How is it possible that caketrasty has never heard of internet monopolies?

The city gives them a charter for a monopoly to incentivize them to provide infrastructure for the town. A great, great many towns have this kind of deal set up, which is one of the reasons Google Fiber can't be rolled out everywhere. The city council says no, either because they are corrupt to existing ISPs or because they already have a contractual obligation to them to prevent competition (because they're corrupt).

 

[caketastydelish]

There are tons of companies that provide TV besides Comcast. There are tons of companies that provide phone (both landline and cellular) besides Comcast. There are tons of companies that provide internet besides Comcast. Nobody is putting a gun up to your head and telling you you've got to use them.

As mentioned in this very thread there are even more options these days (sling TV, Netflix, Hulu, Amazon Prime). I'm sure Comcast's market share is decreasing (as it deserves to) but don't say that's a monopoly.

 

[caketastydelish]

How is it possible that caketrasty has never heard of internet monopolies?

The city gives them a charter for a monopoly to incentivize them to provide infrastructure for the town. A great, great many towns have this kind of deal set up, which is one of the reasons Google Fiber can't be rolled out everywhere. The city council says no, either because they are corrupt to existing ISPs or because they already have a contractual obligation to them to prevent competition (because they're corrupt).

So is Comcast the only company in the world doing this?

 

[cardgame]

Are you seriously denying these monopolies exist?

https://www.extremetech.com/interne...-americans-cant-choose-their-service-provider

From the New Yorker:

Take the “triple-play” packages—cable, phone, and high-speed Internet access—that tens of millions of Americans buy from companies like Comcast and Time Warner Cable. In France, a country often portrayed as an economic and technological laggard, the monthly cost of these packages is roughly forty dollars a month—about a quarter of what we Americans pay. And, unlike in the United States, France’s triple-play packages include free telephone calls to anywhere in the world. Moreover, the French get faster Internet service: ten times faster for downloading information, and twenty times faster for uploading it.

In Seoul, triple-play packages start at about fifteen dollars a month—yes, fifteen. In Zurich, otherwise a pretty expensive place to live, they start at thirty dollars. When it comes to stand-alone services, it’s a similar story. In Britain, for example, monthly cell-phone charges start at about fifteen dollars; unlimited broadband starts at about twenty-five dollars a month.

 

[Bamspeedy]

'Tons' of companies across the US, true. Is Frontier available in Seattle? Doesn't matter how many companies are scattered across the US, how many can bring service to my house in southwestern Wisconsin?

Most of the time it isn't a monopoly, it's often a duopoly. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duopoly (unless the old 'phone' company and the old 'TV' company are the same)

 

[cardgame]

Most of the time when it is a duopoly, there's one company selling internet service and another selling bullfeathers 1.5mbps connections. The absolute bare minimum to qualify as broadband service.

 

[caketastydelish]

Several problems with that article. First, it said "You can pick any ISP you want... as long as it's Comcast" and then gave no evidence whatsoever to back up that claim.

Second, "30% of Americans can't choose their service provider" is not even remotely close to the same as Comcast owns the entire market.

Third, they seem to believe a wireless internet would be the same as traditional wired internet. I'm a Computer Information Systems student (and I'm about to graduate, by the way) and I'm taking a Wireless class literally right now, and I've taken some before.

Wireless internet technology is MUCH cheaper than wired, both to implement and to maintain, and that's not even including the cost of the materials to make it, which is also going to be much cheaper than putting wires and cables around an entire city.

A city would be out of their mind to give just one company monopoly rights for wireless internet. At least for wired, their was some incentive.

 

[cardgame]

So a 30% monopoly isn't a monopoly?

Tell me you wouldn't describe your town as being in a monopoly if you had one choice for an ISP.

 

[caketastydelish]

A monopoly in one town is not a monopoly over everywhere. edit: and like I said before, I haven't seen any proof that Comcast is the only company doing this.