7 ms·
What competitors? In many areas, they are the only broadband provider. The next-closest providers are typically DSL. Consumers are going to get screwed on the
by erichurkman 13y ago
What competitors? In many areas, they are the only broadband provider. The next-closest providers are typically DSL.
Consumers are going to get screwed on the front & back end of this.
- steveplace 13y agorun a search at broadbandnow.com, see what you get
- JohnTHaller 13y agoYeah, my building here in NYC, I can get Time Warner or DSL (Verizon or from a reseller). That's it. Lots of us are stuck with 1 or 2 crappy options. I have overpriced Time Warner and a Verizon hotspot as a backup because the TW cable connection goes down about once a month. The other option is DSL which is too slow to do work and was down a week of my 30 day trial when I checked it out years back. Keep in mind that this is New York City. You'll have lesser options in many other places in the US.
- gonzo 13y agoI'm in Austin, TX. We have two FTTH providers (AT&T, Grande). Grande offers 1Gbps now, AT&T is 300Mbps now, 1Gbps this summer. Time Warner offers 300Mbps now (DOCSIS). Google fiber is being deployed this year (1Gbps).
- twistedpair 13y agoThe terrible consequences of competition.
- krschultz 13y agoAustin is the best case scenario in the country.
- ploxiln 13y agoYeah, funny world - once one decent internet provider pops up in an area (Grande, presumably, and now the thread of Google Fiber too), all the other classic providers seem to provide the best service they offer throughout the country. AT&T doesn't offer that in 95% of their territory in the US (so like 99% of the US can't get it), and the same goes for Time Warner. If any area has decent internet options, it's not because of a classic / well known broadband ISP, it's only because of some small independent ISP that forced a local market to be competitive.
- rdtsc 13y agoI did this and keep doing it periodically. I only have 2 (but and I feel lucky). I keep bouncing between them to get "new customer" promotions for 2 years or so. Then I quit and switch to the other one. Sometimes talking to the "retention" department results in some minor bill reduction. But no, there are no 10 companies to choose from and picking the best one.
- georgemcbay 13y agobroadbandnow.com isn't fine-grained enough to be trusted. For my zip code they list AT&T UVerse, AT&T DSL, Cox and Time Warner. The reality of my actual address is that my only options are Time Warner and AT&T DSL (old school fully copper DSL, not UVerse). I'm positive these are my only wired options because I have researched this extensively (including actually calling the companies, not just relying on bad Internet data) due to being unhappy with my two options, and I continue to look into it about once every 6 months but nothing ever changes. Both AT&T UVerse and Verizon FiOS seem to have gone into deep slumber mode when it comes to service expansion. The really sad part is that I've been using AT&T DSL for the past two years because while it is significantly slower than Time Warner cable in the bandwidth department, it has been far more reliable. Cost-wise both are a complete rip-off already, and if the government doesn't step in on the ISPs soon, I expect that the cost issue is going to get a lot worse, not better.
- gnoway 13y agoYes, this site says I have Cox and Comcast in my zip code. I can assure you that Comcast is not doing cable internet business in my zip code or anywhere near my zip code. I don't believe they have a presence anywhere in the county. Also the information blurb at the bottom says I have a fiber provider, but none are listed. Finally, it's missing some local providers which I am positive exist; our local power/water provider also provides Ethernet to local business and some residential areas, but it's not listed.
- aleem 13y ago> Consumers are going to get screwed on the front & back end of this. Netflix is network heavy and competes with Comcast offerings using Comcast's own network. That was the key motivator here. Even if Comcast has a monopoly in select areas, it cannot do price differentiation in just those select areas. IANAL, but that sounds illegal.
- betterunix 13y ago"Netflix is network heavy and competes with Comcast offerings using Comcast's own network" Funny, back when I was a Comcast customer, I do not remember paying for "Comcast Network Access." I remember paying for "Internet Access;" sure, I went over Comcast's network, but I (maybe naively) thought that such distinctions were irrelevant on the Internet (that was kind of the point, if memory serves).
- rayiner 13y agoIts silly to pretend that the abstraction is the reality. There is no Internet, just a bunch of private networks connected together. No amount of wishful thinking will change that underlying reality. Now that real money is in play, the fiction of the internet is crumbling and the physical nature is becoming exposed.
- betterunix 13y ago"Its silly to pretend that the abstraction is the reality" No more silly than pretending the the abstraction of "files" and "directories" is reality. No more silly than pretending that your computer is running a Python program, when in reality there are sequences of machine language instructions being run. Computers are useful because of abstractions. "There is no Internet, just a bunch of private networks connected together" You might have missed the definition of "an internet:" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internetwork https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internetwork There is, in fact, an Internet that we use every day. The overwhelming success of the Internet is due to the abstraction it presents, which is best-effort routing of packets from one host to another -- without regard for what networks the hosts are connected to, what arrangements govern their connections to those networks, and perhaps most important of all, what applications those hosts are running. On the scale of positive improvements to human communication, the Internet is up there with the printing press and written language. "Now that real money is in play, the fiction of the internet is crumbling and the physical nature is becoming exposed." No, what we are seeing is the impact of years of systematic attacks on the Internet by companies that are desperate to protect obsolete business models. Comcast is worried about the imminent demise of cable TV and all the power and profit that came with it. AT&T is worried about the demise of long distance fees, roaming charges, SMS charges, and all the power and profit that came with controlling the phone system. The recording industry and movie industry worked hard to leave the Internet divided into "consumers" and "services," even though the system itself was designed to be far more general. In short, had we told these companies to adapt or die rather than tolerating their efforts to roll back the clock, we would not be in the situation we are in today. This has nothing to do with leaky abstractions, physical limitations, or the design of the Internet. It is just a power grab, a systematic effort to destroy a good thing that threatened the entrenched players.
- rayiner 13y agoEven after TWC and Comcast combine, they will be the only wired TV choice for only 9% of customers.
- nitrogen 13y ago9% of 300 million is a freaking huge number.
- rayiner 13y agoMy guess is that in a true free market, a big chunk of those households would have no cable service at all. That is to say without the franchise agreements that gave them quasi monopolies in those areas, providing service wouldn't have been attractive in the first place.
- nitrogen 13y agoRemember when there used to be five different cable companies listed in the weekly TV listings? Maybe you never saw that in your area, but when I was growing up in a semi-rural suburb, there were many cable TV competitors. Surely they didn't all require franchise agreements to want to enter the market. Further, assuming franchise agreements exist and were necessary, consumers and municipalities should expect better from their franchisees than abuse of monopoly.
- 13y ago