Comcast takeover of Time Warner Looms

[Milton Kuo]

Re: Comcast takeover of Time Warner Looms

Have they been able to raise the rates they charge for that service at "double the inflation rate" (whatever that is ). Just wondering if the presence of an option (DSL) no matter how limiting, limits the cable company?

My experience is that while prices for cable Internet have risen, they have not risen at anything close to rates of increase in cable television programming. I can think of two reasons for this. For starters, the content creators are constantly raising their prices and the cable companies pass those price increases on to their customers. Cable companies do not deal with increases in content pricing in their ISP businesses.

I believe a second reason why cable television programming increases in price so quickly is because it's so much easier for the cable company to obfuscate the actual price of the product through bundling. Without a la carte pricing, it's easy to convince users that they're getting the same value for their increased monthly bills since they now have access to 100 channels instead of 30 channels. Nevermind that most of those channels aren't worth watching and that advertisements are shown on most of those channels. With the ISP business, it's rather difficult to bundle things because you're really only selling a data connection.

The cable companies are trying their darnedest to hornswoggle people, though, with the various tiers of speed and deceptive introductory pricing. Go to the web site of you telephone company or cable company and try to find out what the real monthly cost of Internet service is sans special introductory rates. If you're able to figure out the pricing within ten minutes, I'd be amazed.

[jk]

Re: Comcast takeover of Time Warner Looms

Have they been able to raise the rates they charge for that service at "double the inflation rate" (whatever that is ). Just wondering if the presence of an option (DSL) no matter how limiting, limits the cable company?

i've had cable internet less than a year, and i booked it as "business class" to get free installation - which involved running a cable underground to my house in the woods- and better service if i needed service. i needed service so often with my dsl that i was worried about that. every time it rained my dsl service would go. then one time there was a bee's nest in a transformer, and so on. anyway, i haven't had any problems with the cable connection so far, and will likely downgrade the service to consumer level when my contract is up. consumer level is just as fast, but worse service if you have any problems. btw, the cable internet installer told me that he'd had a talk with his supervisor about whether comcast was going to get hit by people giving up cable tv to just stream content. his boss said not to worry, they'd just charge them more on the speed of the internet service they would need, so they'd make their money one way or the other.

[Thailandnotes]

Re: Comcast takeover of Time Warner Looms

From wired.com…and the losers are…

“Netflix is in the unenviable position of needing to find ways to get a whole lot of data over these networks to users who are asking for it,” she says. “As Comcast acquires more subscribers, it have more leverage against the content companies.”

"Whereas Comcast runs internet connections to homes, a company like Level 3 runs the networks at the core of the internet. It’s a symbiotic relationship that delivers content to the world’s consumers. In acquiring Time Warner Cable, Comcast would be in a stronger position to negotiate the deals that govern the exchange of traffic with companies like Level 3, giving it even more power to dictate if and when certain traffic is treated differently."

"But in many cases, cable providers and TV channels are ensuring that you can only watch their content online if you pay for a cable connection. NBC’s coverage of the 2014 Winter Olympic Games is a case in point."

[stetts]

Re: Comcast takeover of Time Warner Looms

GRG55,
No. Haven't had it in twenty years or more. I'm 60 miles from the San Antonio, TX, antenna farm and just stuck a cheap antenna on our roof with a piece of coax leading in to the TV. Then got a $30 amplifier that added another 3 stations. One day the guinea flew up to roost and knocked it a-kilter, thus adding another three stations for some reason, so now we get some 25-30 digital broadcast stations. I don't watch at all, preferring the internet. My wife uses it maybe 3-5 hours a week. Actually, we have a couple of pan and tilt monitors in the animal pens and put those live streams on the TV aux input and use it mostly for that. Saves a lot of late night trips to the barn during kidding season. Life goes on and I assure you it is good.
Take care. Stetts

[charliebrown]

Re: Comcast takeover of Time Warner Looms

Of the many benefits that Comcast executives said would flow to consumers from its proposed $45 billion takeover of Time Warner Cable

.

Doing God's work i see. rotflmao

[Andreuccio]

Re: Comcast takeover of Time Warner Looms

So it is not possible to secure ISP from the cable company without also subscribing to a television package?

My very limited experience with cable is something along the lines of 100 channels and still nothing worth watching.

Just last week I decided to switch my ISP from ATT over to Time Warner, despite Time Warner's reputation for poor service. The max download speed ATT iss capable of in my area is 3mbps, which, now that the kids are a little older, is too slow for us with 2 or 3 devices streaming at once. I was paying a little over $80/month, about $40 for phone and $40 for internet.

Time Warner is capable of speeds much faster than ATT. For now, I've settled on a middling plan that gives me download speeds of 15mbps. The plan will cost me $35/month, at least for the 1st year. I was going to stay with ATT for phone service, but Time Warner had a special on phone service at $10/month, again for the 1st year. I was told I'd be able to "port" my phone, so I'll be able to keep my same number. Thus I'll have similar phone service, and internet service with 5x the bandwidth, for $35 less per month.

I've never had cable TV, except for a brief stint while I was living in an apartment complex that required it. While I was investigating all this with Time Warner, though, I decided to try out basic cable service because our reception is poor. This will cost me $25/month, so I'll still be paying less than I was to ATT for just phone and slower internet. It's likely I'll cancel this service, as the limited TV we watch probably isn't worth $25/month to us.

One humorous anecdote I can recount regarding my experience so far with Time Warner:

I live in a multiple unit building, and my address has a fraction in it. A few computer systems aren't able to handle that. Either Time Warner's is one of those, or the guy on their chat service who was helping me out messed my address up.

On Saturday I got a knock on my door. My neighbor also uses Time Warner. They had cut off his service. His address is the same as mine, but without the fraction. Their computer system had assumed we lived in the same unit and that my service would be replacing his. It took us about an hour on the phone with customer service (I think that's a euphemism in this case) to figure that out, and to get to someone who understood the problem and could begin to help us.

Even more amusing was that they wouldn't be able to reinstate his service without cancelling out my order and re-doing it with the correct address, but since I was porting my number over they couldn't do that without risking losing my number. On Sunday, they decided to go ahead and try that, with the hope that by doing it quickly they'd be able to recapture my number before someone else grabbed it. Luckily, it worked, and I was able to get my old number back, my neighbor will get his service back, and I'll have new service installed, albeit a few days later than originally planned.

Funniest part of all, though: after spending 2+ hours trying to get their mistake sorted out, I was informed that instead of paying $14.95 for installation, I would be charged $39.95, since the new order had been set up over the phone and the $14.95 was an internet only special. I love this company.

Of course, I told them I would absolutely not pay the $39.95, and that I in fact expected some kind of credit for all the hassle I had endured trying to fix their mistake. They said they would try to adjust things after the service had been set up, as they couldn't change anything before then. We'll see how that goes. I may end up back with ATT after all. Their service is only marginally bad, and so far seems like German precision when compared with Time Warner's so far.

[BadJuju]

Re: Comcast takeover of Time Warner Looms

How utterly pathetic! The cable oligopoly really needs to die.

[don]

Re: Comcast takeover of Time Warner Looms

Comcast vs. the Cord Cutters


The typical American household pays about $90 a month for cable television service, according to the NPD Group, the market research firm. But according to the research firm of You and Pretty Much Everyone You Know, when you click on your TV and browse the guide, what you often find hardly seems worth $90 a month.

This is the battle hymn of the cord cutter: You are paying too much for television, and you aren’t watching most of what you’re paying for. Over the last couple of years, millions of Americans have ditched their cable plans in favor of online streaming services like Netflix and iTunes. Perhaps intoxicated by the money they think they’re saving, cord cutters tend to be evangelical about their lifestyle, feeding a viral phenomenon that is altering the economics of the cable business.

But can cord cutters truly escape the cord? And are they, in fact, saving much money at all?

Comcast’s deal this week to acquire Time Warner Cable highlights the pickle that cord cutters may soon find themselves in. The acquisition rests on the assumption that as people cut back on their monthly TV plans, the cable lines coming into their homes won’t lose their value. Instead, the more we imbibe of all the glories available on streaming services, the more we’ll need to shell out for high-speed broadband service.

In most American households, the cable cord is the fastest conduit for broadband service. This suggests the canny strategy by which those once-inescapable cable providers might combat the rise of cord cutters: The cable giants will simply become even-more-inescapable Internet giants.

If the big providers can do that, cord cutters’ gleeful self-satisfaction may prove short-lived. Critics of the Comcast-Time Warner deal argue that it will eventually give Comcast the power to raise prices for its broadband and cable TV services and especially to hold its Internet-only subscription prices so close to its TV-and-Internet prices that few people will see much use in declaring their cable independence.

“Comcast and the new, giant Comcast are going to do as much as they can to stop you from unbundling,” said Craig Aaron, president of Free Press, a consumer advocacy group. “In order for you to get content you like, you’re going to be pushed to pay the cable bill, too.”

You can get a hint of such a future in Comcast’s current price structure. Today, its cheapest Internet service — a plan that a cord-cutting household might select — goes for $40 a month for the first year. It offers download speeds of up to 25 Mbps, which means it’s fast enough to stream two or three videos simultaneously — say, a FaceTime video chat in the teenager’s room, an episode of “Scandal” in the living room and “Adult Swim” in the man cave.

Here’s the twist: Comcast’s cheapest TV-and-Internet plan goes for $50 a month for the first year, or just $10 a month more than the cord cutter’s plan. Subscribers to the bundle get the same streaming speed as the Internet-only plan, as well as basic TV service that offers a handful of local channels. Comcast also throws in its service for watching TV shows on your mobile devices. More enticingly, the plan includes access to HBO and its streaming service, HBO Go, which — unlike Netflix and Hulu — isn’t available to cord cutters who lack a cable TV subscription.

None of the prices quoted here include taxes and fees for extra equipment. Comcast also notes that prices may vary by location. Considering these caveats, it’s likely that your bill for these plans will be higher than the quoted prices. Still, it’s instructive to note the very small price difference between the cord-cutting plan and the TV-and-Internet plan.

Cutting the cord, in Comcast’s universe, just doesn’t save you very much money. Comcast has carefully set up pricing to get you whether you watch shows the old-fashioned way, on a boob-tube fed with a cable, or whether you prefer to veg out with Netflix on your iPad. Either way, you’re probably paying hundreds of dollars a year to maintain your vital hook to the outside world. And if you consider the added costs of Netflix and streaming rentals, it’s possible that the cord cutter may be paying more, over all, than someone who subscribes to cable.

Whether and how Comcast’s bid for Time Warner Cable will further shape pricing will be a matter of fierce debate before regulators sitting in judgment of the deal. In its presentation announcing the bid, Comcast argued that because it doesn’t currently offer service in markets served by Time Warner Cable, acquiring it won’t reduce competition in those markets.

The company also points out that it is now bound by consumer-protection conditions that the Federal Communications Commission applied as part of Comcast’s acquisition of NBC Universal in 2011 — protections that Comcast is willing to extend to Time Warner Cable’s customers. Among these protections are “open access” rules, also known as network-neutrality provisions, which prevent Comcast from favoring certain content over its network.

For instance, the rules would prohibit Comcast from slowing Netflix streaming unless Netflix paid Comcast an extra fee, a model that has been floated by some in the television industry. Because a federal court struck down a more widely applicable set of open-access rules in January, Time Warner Cable is not bound by any similar provisions. Comcast’s acquisition, then, would technically extend the rules to cover more Americans.

Critics note that the F.C.C.’s neutrality conditions expire in 2018, after which Comcast would be free to start new, network-neutrality-violating business models for its services — perhaps, for example, charging Netflix a fee to get a faster network speed.

More immediately, they point out that while Time Warner Cable imposes no limit on how much data its Internet subscribers can download, Comcast would probably impose its data cap of 250 gigabytes a month on Time Warner’s customers. That number is enough to stream dozens of high-definition movies a month, so it shouldn’t be a problem for most customers. But a few of Time Warner Cable’s most active cord cutters might feel the pinch.

There is also the matter of network performance. According to data published by Netflix, subscribers who use Time Warner Cable experience streaming speeds that are about a third faster than those on Comcast. When those Time Warner users are switched to Comcast’s infrastructure, they may find that “House of Cards” takes a little bit longer to start playing.

Which is not to say that striking down the merger would lead to some kind of cord cutters’ nirvana. Americans pay far more for broadband and TV service than people in most other industrialized nations. According to data collected by the New America Foundation, in Los Angeles, the cheapest monthly television, phone and Internet service costs about $80. In Paris, a similar bundle sells for $32, and in Seoul, it goes for $15.

Broadband markets in most other countries generally operate under tighter rules than those in the United States. Nonetheless, the F.C.C. has attributed those high prices to a lack of competition in local broadband markets. Most American households are served by only two high-speed Internet providers, and some have only one or none. Even in markets with two providers — usually a phone company and a cable company — prices tend to rise.

According to a report by the research firm SNL Kagan, Comcast’s price for its basic Internet tier in Philadelphia and Atlanta rose more than 50 percent from 2009 to 2013. In each of these markets, Comcast faced competition from phone companies — but those high-speed providers raised their prices more than 30 percent over the same period.

The steady price increases in broadband rates cast a pall over any cord cutter’s dreams. It’s possible that you might still save money now by cutting off your cable. But if you plan to watch a lot of TV over the Internet, don’t expect to save money forever.

[jk]

Re: Comcast takeover of Time Warner Looms

i kept my phone at att when i switched internet to comcast. i lose power often enough that i appreciate the fact that the landlines still work in that situation.

[Slimprofits]

Re: Comcast takeover of Time Warner Looms

Close to, if not everything produced by both of these companies amounts to nothing more than noise and bullshit that everyone on the planet would be better off ignoring.

I applaud this merger, as it simply means Comcast would be that much closer to imploding and we all know how much fun that would be to watch. The bigger they are, the harder they fall.

[don]

Re: Comcast takeover of Time Warner Looms

i appreciate the fact that the landlines still work

Me too. Hope to always have one. Better sound and easy to record phone interviews which are a regular part of my work.

Phone note: all the phones were down here after Wilma except the payphone at the supermarket. It became very popular.

[Milton Kuo]

Re: Comcast takeover of Time Warner Looms

i kept my phone at att when i switched internet to comcast. i lose power often enough that i appreciate the fact that the landlines still work in that situation.

And in a pinch, you can siphon electricity from the telephone company if the mains go out. The amount of power you can draw from a phone line is quite surprising.

I really like land lines and gladly pay the money to have a high-quality, reliable phone service (which cellular networks in the U.S. are not.) The sound quality is very clear and, unlike VoIP solutions, the lag is imperceptible.

And now AT&T is trying to push legislation to kill its land line service: AT&T Move Signals End of the Copper-Wire Era

[BadJuju]

Re: Comcast takeover of Time Warner Looms

Google Fiber expands to more cities:

https://fiber.google.com/newcities/


shiny lives in Phoenix, doesn't she? If so, bring on the fiber.

[lektrode]

Re: Comcast takeover of Time Warner Looms

Google Fiber expands to more cities:

https://fiber.google.com/newcities/


shiny lives in Phoenix, doesn't she? If so, bring on the fiber.

wondren what it'll take to get this rollin - one can imagine what could happen if the goog endeavors to hookup all the cities they have on that map - hell, just hookin up provo to SJO would be like 'the 2nd coming of the golden spike'

but then... theres this:

http://www.droid-life.com/2014/01/21...le-everywhere/

Verizon Acquires Intel’s TV Division, Could Make FiOS Available Everywhere

It looks like the cable TV market was harder to crack than Intel thought: Verizon finalized the acquisition today of Intel Media, the chipmaker’s research group dedicated to the development of internet-based “Cloud TV”. In a press release, Verizon CEO Lowell McAdam said the company intends to use the division’s intellectual property, products, and employees to improve its FiOS TV service.


Under development for several years, Intel’s project, tentatively named OnCue, aimed to simplify the IPTV viewing experience. Features like easy search and the apps, along with the integration of live programming and on-demand content, were the highlight of the company’s set top box, which was announced in February of last year and rumored to have been tested in the homes of Intel employees.


Intel’s inability to secure content ultimately killed the project. Despite offering to pay significantly more than cable competitors for programming, the company failed to land a single deal. Verizon hopes to fare better; by relying on content deals the company has in place, Verizon could conceivably expand its TV offerings to new markets via the internet. That vision may take time to fully realize, but the acquisition definitely signals a challenge to cable incumbents like Comcast and Time Warner.

Via:

Intel

[shiny!]

Re: Comcast takeover of Time Warner Looms

Google Fiber expands to more cities:

https://fiber.google.com/newcities/

shiny lives in Phoenix, doesn't she? If so, bring on the fiber.

Missed it by a hair, darn it. I live in the Phx metro valley but not in Phx, Tempe or Scottsdale proper, which are the three cities they're considering here.

Do you guys trust google? Not like I wouldn't like fiber but Google is becoming more and more like the Borg all the time... all your data is belong to us. It feels wrong to willingly submit to the Google/NSA Borg, no matter how pleasant Google might make it. How much data will they be mining from their fiber subscribers, and to what end?