The Broadband Monopoly

azel

azel

CAGiversary!
Here's my situation:

After 7 months of spotty internet and cable tv service, I've decided to abruptly cancel all Comcast services to my home. I've had techs out here 5 times now and there is absolutely nothing wrong with the lines in my home. Every time they come out (which is of course during 9-5 so I have to take off work), there is nothing wrong with my service. The problem is that my service starts cutting out after a severe rain storm or for just no reason in the evenings. Since Comcast is not willing to see my service not functioning (although they have admitted that they can tell my modem has very sporadic connection), they will not replace their defective lines and/or outside box. As far as I can tell, they will just keep setting me up an appointment from 8-12noon or 12-4pm so I can wait for 4 hours of my day and lose wages while I wait for some guy to tell me nothing's wrong.

Anyhow, after a civil, albeit malignant discussion with a supervisor who refused to give me his full name, I said f*ck it. Kill my serivce, now. And have a Director or Manager call me back to see why I'm leaving after nearly 4 years. It's now two days later, and my service has not been disconnected, nor have I received a call of any sort from any level of Comcast employee to discuss my discontent.

I've solved the cable tv replacement, I'm getting Dish Network with a ton of channels and a free HD receiver for less that what I was paying for craptastic crapcast cable.

Now, I need to get some sort of broadband service. So the adventure begins...

There's a local company in Central-VA and the mid-Atlantic called Cavalier telephone. They're tiny in comparison to Verizon and MCI, and they only want $69.99 a month for unlimited long distance and DSL. Not a bad deal, especially for 15mb DSL connection. However, since Verizon owns the lines, they can't give me service. Neither can Earthlink or any other DSL provider. I currently have MCI for my phone and in order to get any DSL I have to get Verizon.

Verizon.

The same company I swore off of much like I have recently with Comcast. Verizon reps barely spoke English, they took forever to hook up my phone service, and when they finally did, they failed to fully hook it up so that it would accept inbound calls. Pretty crappy.

So I'm stuck between a Turd Sandwich and a Giant Douche. Verizon. Comcast. Two companies not even listed in the Better Business Bureau because they're so f'n terrible.

Didn't Teddy Roosevelt do away with monopolies like 100 years ago? Wasn't there some act in '82 that broke up the phone company monopoly? What's going on here?
 
I must be in the extreme minority to SWEAR by Verizon.

They've taken my service from 1.5 down 128 up to 3.0 down and 786 up for the same price within the last 18 months. My XBL gaming has never been better. In comparison for me to get the same upload from Adelphia I'd be a 6.0 down and 768 up for $59.95 a month. I'm currently paying $29.95 for my service.

My total phone bill with DSL, unlimited LD, call features, regional LD etc. is $87. Coming from the day when I remember $200 LD phone bills during summers away from GF and family I feel like I'm robbing the phone company.... for once.

Cable companies are a colossal rip off. I cancelled digital cable and got an expanded lineup for $44.99 when I switched to Direc TV.
 
I don't get cable at all. Try getting some rabbit ears. I currently get CBS, ABC, NBC, Fox, WB, and UPN. All for free. PAD is right - cable companies are a rip-off.

But the $30/month for Verizon DSL is worth it.
 
I haven't had a problem with comcast or verizon (though verizon being just used for phone service). Though, direct tv does have a better selection, it goes out when it rains or when we have other weather issues, so we cancelled it when we had to cut back on our spending.
 
That's rather odd, I actually chose broadband internet because although it costs a little more the connection almost never goes out. With DLS I had problems every couple of days.

Still cable rates are insane, they wanted $60 a month for 120 channels.
 
[quote name='zionoverfire']That's rather odd, I actually chose broadband internet because although it costs a little more the connection almost never goes out. With DLS I had problems every couple of days.

Still cable rates are insane, they wanted $60 a month for 120 channels.[/QUOTE]

Broadband is cable and that doesn't go out, direct tv was satellite.
 
[quote name='alonzomourning23']I haven't had a problem with comcast or verizon (though verizon being just used for phone service). Though, direct tv does have a better selection, it goes out when it rains or when we have other weather issues, so we cancelled it when we had to cut back on our spending.[/QUOTE]

You fucking kidding me? Dish has the absolute LOWEST price for a channel package and the channels for that aren't bad plus they're the cheapest between DirecTV and it AND Dish has some good Public Interest channels. Their HD package INCLUDES TNT-HD as well as 10 extra VOOM's you can add along with Showtime HD and HBO HD(not entirely HD though). The ONLY problem here is that Dish doesn't carry Cinemax HD, Starz HD,
TMC HD, INHD1 and 2 or ESPN2 HD. For these channels DirecTV doesn't carry.
 
Welcome to the new America.

Walmart, Microsoft, diamond cartels, the big 5 music labels, Exxon - get used to it, as long as we keep electing idiots into office, we will continue to vote away our consumer rights.
 
Interesting comments. I think I'm basically coming to the conclusion that large corporations don't suck so much as they are the sum of their parts. Meaning, Verizon may be great in PGH, but it happens to suck in Richmond. Even though it's the Verizon brand, it's a Richmond office that's a small representation of the company as a whole. Since Verizon is a billion-dollar corporation and a giant Cthulhu with many tentacles pointed all over the central to eastern part of our country, it will not go out of business because one market sucks. Especially when one doesn't have the choice of anything truly better (Crapcast).

Again, the real point of my post is that I don't have a choice. It's like the f'n post office. I'm stuck. DSL is the PO Box address I can't send to unless I go Verizon.

I heard a report on NPR about a county in Texas that is offering its citizens a new technology called broadband over powerlines. Since the locale owns the power lines (unlike the other monopoly here in VA called Dominion Power), they are able to cheaply and unobstructively send 10-15mb broadband through the rural county. It sounds like great technology to me, I remember the college radio station at my school would do something similar with their radio broadcasts. Too bad that Crapcast and Verizon are fighting desperately to lobby against the technology...

As long as money talks and representative government is at the mercy of lobbies, there will truly be no free market I suppose.
 
[quote name='azel']I heard a report on NPR about a county in Texas that is offering its citizens a new technology called broadband over powerlines. Since the locale owns the power lines (unlike the other monopoly here in VA called Dominion Power), they are able to cheaply and unobstructively send 10-15mb broadband through the rural county. It sounds like great technology to me, I remember the college radio station at my school would do something similar with their radio broadcasts. Too bad that Crapcast and Verizon are fighting desperately to lobby against the technology...

As long as money talks and representative government is at the mercy of lobbies, there will truly be no free market I suppose.[/QUOTE]

Of course. A while ago, Phily wanted to setup wireless internet access for everyone in the city, at a cheap price. Of course big business lobbyists squashed it (with a few boondoggling trips for the ol' polititcians)

Why spread information to the masses, when it can be hoarded by an elite and only made available for a princely sum.
 
[quote name='Sarang01']You fucking kidding me? Dish has the absolute LOWEST price for a channel package and the channels for that aren't bad plus they're the cheapest between DirecTV and it AND Dish has some good Public Interest channels. Their HD package INCLUDES TNT-HD as well as 10 extra VOOM's you can add along with Showtime HD and HBO HD(not entirely HD though). The ONLY problem here is that Dish doesn't carry Cinemax HD, Starz HD,
TMC HD, INHD1 and 2 or ESPN2 HD. For these channels DirecTV doesn't carry.[/QUOTE]

Did you bother to read the post? What's the point in having dish if it keeps going out everytime it thunders, rains, snows etc.? Then we'd have no tv.
 
[quote name='camoor']Of course. A while ago, Phily wanted to setup wireless internet access for everyone in the city, at a cheap price. Of course big business lobbyists squashed it (with a few boondoggling trips for the ol' polititcians)

Why spread information to the masses, when it can be hoarded by an elite and only made available for a princely sum.[/QUOTE]

I thought the Phily thing was a good idea, but there's still something wrong with the government (even the local gov't) controlling services like that. You have another monopoly on your hands. Even if it's free, it may be free and suck ass just like the big corporations. And since there's no competition (hard to sell stuff when ppl are giving it away for free), the corrupt city council and mayor of Phily control the market. Just thinking about the mayor of Richmond (Doug Wilder) and his cronies putting their clamp down on any market makes me shiver.
 
[quote name='azel']I thought the Phily thing was a good idea, but there's still something wrong with the government (even the local gov't) controlling services like that. You have another monopoly on your hands. Even if it's free, it may be free and suck ass just like the big corporations. And since there's no competition (hard to sell stuff when ppl are giving it away for free), the corrupt city council and mayor of Phily control the market. Just thinking about the mayor of Richmond (Doug Wilder) and his cronies putting their clamp down on any market makes me shiver.[/QUOTE]

The government already takes care of most physical transportation infrastructure (roads, rail, etc). Information flow is becoming just as important to our economic well-being as physical travel, perhaps it is getting to be time to start granting information access to all, thus avoiding a digital divide and bolstering our free markets/society with more frank exchange of ideas and opinions (similar to the idea behind the Ben Franklin sponsored system of public libraries, or our system of public schooling). Copyrights have gone copywrong, it's time to revise the bureaucratically entrenched and corporate-laywer dominated system of patents to allow for more innovation and technological advancement.

I agree that government services generally suck, but perhaps a government regulated city-wide wireless network, contracted out to the best private enterprise bidders, could work.

Besides certain services just don't work properly yet under a completely capitalistic market (just ask anyone in California who was getting their electricity from Enron a while back)
 
[quote name='azel']Here's my situation:

After 7 months of spotty internet and cable tv service, I've decided to abruptly cancel all Comcast services to my home. [/QUOTE]

Their lose. Same thing happened to my parents and now to myself I believe. My cable modem always goes down during the day but then works during the evening. But it seems to work when they come out. Its as if they pump the signal right before so that nothing can be wrong. Well after 4 visits I am thinking of what to do next.

Funny though because I came across this article just yesterday:

http://www.philly.com/mld/inquirer/business/12419993.htm

Posted on Fri, Aug. 19, 2005
Comcast falls in customer survey

What's America's biggest cable company to do?

Philadelphia's Comcast Corp. has a companywide initiative called Think Customer First that ties managers' bonuses to gains in subscriber satisfaction. It has hired an outside company to provide monthly measures of its customers' happiness.

Still, in the widely observed J.D. Power & Associates 2005 Residential Cable/Satellite TV Customer Satisfaction Study released yesterday, Comcast found itself even further below the average than it was last year.

News of the survey results came just a day after the company announced that it had fired two customer service employees in the Chicago area for changing a woman's name on her August bill to "Bitch Dog" after she repeatedly complained about poor service.
 
[quote name='Nematode']
News of the survey results came just a day after the company announced that it had fired two customer service employees in the Chicago area for changing a woman's name on her August bill to "Bitch Dog" after she repeatedly complained about poor service.[/QUOTE]
:rofl: Oh man, wtf were those managers thinking?
 
I find it funny that AOL still tries to charge 19.99-24.00 a month for dialup. I have SBC DSL which it runs me 14.95 a month, and I am consistently getting a 1.5mbps connection. It's not blazingly fast, but it's exceptionally faster than dialup and keeps my phoneline clear.
 
[quote name='guardian_owl']:rofl: Oh man, wtf were those managers thinking?[/QUOTE]

Would have loved to see her face though. :D

I'm not so jaded against Comcast that I don't know that some customers prolly deserve the name.
 
[quote name='camoor']Would have loved to see her face though. :D

I'm not so jaded against Comcast that I don't know that some customers prolly deserve the name.[/QUOTE]
Bitch perhaps I can understand, but unless they had verified her dogginess by visual confirmation, then they don't have much of a leg to stand up
"whiny bitch"
"bitch ass"
"stupid bitch"
"fucking bitch"
"bitchly bitch"
"bitch of ages"
"Her Majesty, the queen of the bitches"
"Bitch van Winkle"
etc, etc, etc, those I could possibly understand the managers using.
 
Yeah the VErizon Line do kick ass but not everybody has access to IT. I also have Comcast and i agree their service sucks.
 
[quote name='Kastides']Yeah the VErizon Line do kick ass but not everybody has access to IT. I also have Comcast and i agree their service sucks.[/QUOTE]

Speak of the devil. Past 3 days I have had no comcast internet and they were supposed to come out yesterday to check in on it and here comes the shocker....they didn't show. Of course they didn't show.
 
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