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> Comcast wouldn't be able to send anyone out for a month Is there a good explanation for how this can be the case in a developed country?

justin66 6y ago
The invisible hand of the free market did not want anyone there for a month. We all follow the invisible hand (like, instinctively, since it's invisible). You're not questioning the wisdom of the invisible hand, are you?
- bluGill 6y ago
  you can't blame the free market when comcast has a state sponsored monopoly/duopoly (with the telephone company being the other) on fast internet.
  - justin66 6y ago
    You can blame The High Priests of The Invisible Hand for keeping the members of the duopolies astonishingly poorly regulated, to go back to the original point of the grandparent post. As an aside, it's funny, I'm not sure what qualifies for me as "the telephone company" anymore. I guess there probably is one where I live, technically, but it doesn't seem to factor in. edit: this is evidently going to be one of those posts that fluctuates in "points" over time, bouncing up and down. It'd be fun to have a sparkline implementation that illustrates this change over time
  - hannasanarion 6y ago
    "state sponsored" only in the sense that the state hasn't stepped in to break them up. Comcast's monopoly is entirely self-created through mergers and non-competition agreements.
    - bluGill 6y ago
      No, state sponsored - or more likely city sponsored. If you attempt to run wires around your neighborhood to provide TC, Telephone, and internet (you need to do all 3 to have a chance at making money) you will be shut down because Comcast already as an agreement with the city to not allow anyone else to do it. I'm assuming a serious plan to run wires above. That is you have found deep packet backers to fund you; you have found qualified people to do the work; you have figured out all the other details to do this. There are good reasons to stop someone running cat-6 wires everywhere, but here I'm assuming you have figured out the right way to do this - whatever it is.
      - hannasanarion 6y ago
        And what, you think it's a complete coincidence that every single city in broad swaths of the country decided to contract with a single company to run those wires? No, agreements between the companies ensure that only one option is available to each region. My city can offer Time Warner the right to run cable here whenever they want, but Time Warner will refuse to do so, because Time Warner has a deal with Comcast that says they will never offer cable in my city. There is no legal barrier to new cable startups like Google Fiber, only the immense cost of it and the threat of retaliatory blacklisting and throttling from the cable monopolies. That's why the only places these companies compete are ones where the cities have decided to set up a local public broadband to buck the monopoly, or a very well resourced competitor like Google has decided to enter the market and refuses to play their anticompetition game.
        bluGill 6y ago
        Google setup their fiber in the early days based on if they could easily get permission, not where it made the most business sense (they did have some choices, but many cities didn't give them any option).
        soylentcola 6y ago
        Also, in many locations, the incumbent telcos lobby specifically to block any sort of municipal/public broadband infrastructure from being permitted when it is proposed.
- throwaway0a5e 6y ago
  Utility markets are anything but free. They're locally sanctioned monopolies or duopolies.
  - treeman79 6y ago
    They are a good example of why government running things is generally a bad idea.
    - justin66 6y ago
      Regulating an industry is not the same as running it. For an industry to truly not be regulated, it needs to exist in an imaginary space, perhaps next door to physicsland with its frictionless surfaces and spherical cows. At present the only example of governments running - or at least owning - communications utilities in the United States that I'm aware of are municipal broadband [1] providers, which tend to be much more well-liked by their users than something like Comcast. (and bitterly opposed by The High Priests of The Invisible Hand, who want competition but not that competition) Of course, other countries have state-owned communications monopolies, which actually run the gamut in terms of quality and cost. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Municipal_broadband https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Municipal_broadband
- BurningFrog 6y ago
  Don't let the fact that it's incorporated as a private business fool you, Comcast is a government monopoly. A deregulated ISP market would be a huge improvement for this country!
  - gottareply2020 6y ago
    But how would the gov't handle installing all the back-doors?
  - justin66 6y ago
    A system where large corporations handle the backbone and local ISPs and/or municipalities handle the last few miles sounds ideal for the US, but I am pretty skeptical as to whether we would get that if regulations simply ceased to exist. ("regulations simply cease to exist" seems like the casual definition for "deregulation," though the actual process of deregulation is for a bunch of people to pass a new set of regulations and if they're pandering to a certain constituency, they will call it "deregulation," regardless of the effect of the regulations they just passed. See: telecom, the airlines, banking, etc.)
  - kilotaras 6y ago
    ISPs are a natural monopoly [1]. Deregulation is unlikely to fix the issue. Creating (or regulating) a common infrastructure, e.g. poles and/or cable tunnels looks like a better way to induce competition. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_monopoly https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_monopoly
    - ballenf 6y ago
      Not to fight over terminology, but in most of the US, cable companies are given an explicit monopoly "franchise" from the local municipality. There are some areas that might be a natural monopoly anyway due to low density population, but only way you could know is open things up. That's a tough pill to swallow since the franchise "fees" (taxes) are guaranteed so long as the cable company has a guaranteed monopoly. Yes they could pass a generic tax on cable service, but that would be a new tax. I focus on cable companies because that seems to be the most common way to get broadband to many parts of the US.
- generationP 6y ago
  Pointless bullshit that adds no information to the topic while ignoring some that is already there (note the "about 3 months ago" and try to think of what was happening in various fields of work at that time).
EvanAnderson 6y ago
Focusing on new Customer acquisition drives revenue. Likely they're a monopoly or duopoly provider in the area. Theres little danger of losing Customers even if they're extremely dissatisfied, so servicing existing Customers is only a cost center.
ethanwillis 6y ago
I work for a European company and many of my coworkers are remote from around the world. They were surprised by this too. My city also has regular brown outs, power outages, etc. that have greatly inconvenienced my remote work (I have done a lot of work recently over a mobile hotspot). And it's not a HUGE city, but it is sizable (600k metro, ~800,000 in the metro + surrounding areas). But for how this can be the case: It's as another commenter says. The provider is a duopoly in my area so I have no choice. Even worse the provider doesn't have many employees who do this work, they mostly hire 3rd party consultants to do repairs/installations of infrastructure.
reaperducer 6y ago
Is there a good explanation for how this can be the case in a developed country? Since his story is worded as if it happened recently, it could be COVID-related. Back in April I tried to get my cable company to install its home security system where I live. I was told no, because the company wasn't sending techs into anyone's homes until the virus let up. I tried again in August, and was told it would be a very long while, as the service guys were still catching up on the backlog.
- dspillett 6y ago
  > it could be COVID-related This was certainly an issue with BT-OR in the UK for a short while when lock-down first properly started and there was a combination of OR people not being able to work and home users discovering issues (or reporting those that until now had been to minor to care about) as they tried to work from home. That caused quite a back-log of work in some areas.
kayfox 6y ago
It requires a line tech and not an install tech. I don't know why it takes 3 months instead of like a week, but things can get bad when your choices for high speed internet are the phone company or the cable company and they both suck.
aidenn0 6y ago
Comcast has, on occasion, ranked below the IRS in terms of brand popularity...

justin66 6y ago

The invisible hand of the free market did not want anyone there for a month. We all follow the invisible hand (like, instinctively, since it's invisible). You're not questioning the wisdom of the invisible hand, are you?

bluGill 6y ago
you can't blame the free market when comcast has a state sponsored monopoly/duopoly (with the telephone company being the other) on fast internet.
- justin66 6y ago
  You can blame The High Priests of The Invisible Hand for keeping the members of the duopolies astonishingly poorly regulated, to go back to the original point of the grandparent post. As an aside, it's funny, I'm not sure what qualifies for me as "the telephone company" anymore. I guess there probably is one where I live, technically, but it doesn't seem to factor in. edit: this is evidently going to be one of those posts that fluctuates in "points" over time, bouncing up and down. It'd be fun to have a sparkline implementation that illustrates this change over time
- hannasanarion 6y ago
  "state sponsored" only in the sense that the state hasn't stepped in to break them up. Comcast's monopoly is entirely self-created through mergers and non-competition agreements.
  - bluGill 6y ago
    No, state sponsored - or more likely city sponsored. If you attempt to run wires around your neighborhood to provide TC, Telephone, and internet (you need to do all 3 to have a chance at making money) you will be shut down because Comcast already as an agreement with the city to not allow anyone else to do it. I'm assuming a serious plan to run wires above. That is you have found deep packet backers to fund you; you have found qualified people to do the work; you have figured out all the other details to do this. There are good reasons to stop someone running cat-6 wires everywhere, but here I'm assuming you have figured out the right way to do this - whatever it is.
    - hannasanarion 6y ago
      And what, you think it's a complete coincidence that every single city in broad swaths of the country decided to contract with a single company to run those wires? No, agreements between the companies ensure that only one option is available to each region. My city can offer Time Warner the right to run cable here whenever they want, but Time Warner will refuse to do so, because Time Warner has a deal with Comcast that says they will never offer cable in my city. There is no legal barrier to new cable startups like Google Fiber, only the immense cost of it and the threat of retaliatory blacklisting and throttling from the cable monopolies. That's why the only places these companies compete are ones where the cities have decided to set up a local public broadband to buck the monopoly, or a very well resourced competitor like Google has decided to enter the market and refuses to play their anticompetition game.
      - bluGill 6y ago
        Google setup their fiber in the early days based on if they could easily get permission, not where it made the most business sense (they did have some choices, but many cities didn't give them any option).
      - soylentcola 6y ago
        Also, in many locations, the incumbent telcos lobby specifically to block any sort of municipal/public broadband infrastructure from being permitted when it is proposed.
throwaway0a5e 6y ago
Utility markets are anything but free. They're locally sanctioned monopolies or duopolies.
- treeman79 6y ago
  They are a good example of why government running things is generally a bad idea.
  - justin66 6y ago
    Regulating an industry is not the same as running it. For an industry to truly not be regulated, it needs to exist in an imaginary space, perhaps next door to physicsland with its frictionless surfaces and spherical cows. At present the only example of governments running - or at least owning - communications utilities in the United States that I'm aware of are municipal broadband [1] providers, which tend to be much more well-liked by their users than something like Comcast. (and bitterly opposed by The High Priests of The Invisible Hand, who want competition but not that competition) Of course, other countries have state-owned communications monopolies, which actually run the gamut in terms of quality and cost. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Municipal_broadband https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Municipal_broadband
BurningFrog 6y ago
Don't let the fact that it's incorporated as a private business fool you, Comcast is a government monopoly. A deregulated ISP market would be a huge improvement for this country!
- gottareply2020 6y ago
  But how would the gov't handle installing all the back-doors?
- justin66 6y ago
  A system where large corporations handle the backbone and local ISPs and/or municipalities handle the last few miles sounds ideal for the US, but I am pretty skeptical as to whether we would get that if regulations simply ceased to exist. ("regulations simply cease to exist" seems like the casual definition for "deregulation," though the actual process of deregulation is for a bunch of people to pass a new set of regulations and if they're pandering to a certain constituency, they will call it "deregulation," regardless of the effect of the regulations they just passed. See: telecom, the airlines, banking, etc.)
- kilotaras 6y ago
  ISPs are a natural monopoly [1]. Deregulation is unlikely to fix the issue. Creating (or regulating) a common infrastructure, e.g. poles and/or cable tunnels looks like a better way to induce competition. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_monopoly https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_monopoly
  - ballenf 6y ago
    Not to fight over terminology, but in most of the US, cable companies are given an explicit monopoly "franchise" from the local municipality. There are some areas that might be a natural monopoly anyway due to low density population, but only way you could know is open things up. That's a tough pill to swallow since the franchise "fees" (taxes) are guaranteed so long as the cable company has a guaranteed monopoly. Yes they could pass a generic tax on cable service, but that would be a new tax. I focus on cable companies because that seems to be the most common way to get broadband to many parts of the US.
generationP 6y ago
Pointless bullshit that adds no information to the topic while ignoring some that is already there (note the "about 3 months ago" and try to think of what was happening in various fields of work at that time).

EvanAnderson 6y ago

Focusing on new Customer acquisition drives revenue. Likely they're a monopoly or duopoly provider in the area. Theres little danger of losing Customers even if they're extremely dissatisfied, so servicing existing Customers is only a cost center.

ethanwillis 6y ago

I work for a European company and many of my coworkers are remote from around the world. They were surprised by this too. My city also has regular brown outs, power outages, etc. that have greatly inconvenienced my remote work (I have done a lot of work recently over a mobile hotspot). And it's not a HUGE city, but it is sizable (600k metro, ~800,000 in the metro + surrounding areas). But for how this can be the case: It's as another commenter says. The provider is a duopoly in my area so I have no choice. Even worse the provider doesn't have many employees who do this work, they mostly hire 3rd party consultants to do repairs/installations of infrastructure.

reaperducer 6y ago

Is there a good explanation for how this can be the case in a developed country? Since his story is worded as if it happened recently, it could be COVID-related. Back in April I tried to get my cable company to install its home security system where I live. I was told no, because the company wasn't sending techs into anyone's homes until the virus let up. I tried again in August, and was told it would be a very long while, as the service guys were still catching up on the backlog.

dspillett 6y ago
> it could be COVID-related This was certainly an issue with BT-OR in the UK for a short while when lock-down first properly started and there was a combination of OR people not being able to work and home users discovering issues (or reporting those that until now had been to minor to care about) as they tried to work from home. That caused quite a back-log of work in some areas.

kayfox 6y ago

It requires a line tech and not an install tech. I don't know why it takes 3 months instead of like a week, but things can get bad when your choices for high speed internet are the phone company or the cable company and they both suck.

aidenn0 6y ago

Comcast has, on occasion, ranked below the IRS in terms of brand popularity...