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There is probably no reason to block this merger as it would create what is clearly a massive market monopoly. AT&T and Time Warner own pretty much all the cables suitable for communication into people's houses in many areas.

Time Warner, which is what AT&T want to buy, own no cables. Time Warner Cable, which is now a separate company from Time Warner, own cables; they have already been bought by Charter Communications, who also own cables.

I have run test-ipv6.com on my phone & tablet. My carrier being Verizon, while my ISP was previously TWC and now Charter. When I am nowhere near a hotspot and need to depend on my cellular connection, I get a 10/10 score. When I'm near any hot spot, the score is 0/10. Verizon is the only one that seems to have its act together - dunno about Comcast. I've seen the support pages of Charter and TWC on IPv6. Not impressed, given that I couldn't get IPv6 w/ either.

What's truly pathetic is I can't get it from Time Warner Cable on our dedicated fiber (not DOCSIS) connection, despite their claims that it's available to DIA customers. They have been dragging their feet now for eight or nine months, professing that we're the first business in our whole area (~250,000 people) to ask for it, so they don't actually have any experience getting it to us.

That's either complete bullshit (we have one of the largest universities in NYS here, along with major defense contractors and even a Fortune 100) to stonewall my request, or it's actually true and a sad reflection on our complete lack of progress on this issue.

TWC's "basic cable" is $19.99 (for 12 months, then it goes up of course) and includes no internet.
http://www.timewarnercable.com...

not to mention that basic cable doesn't really compare to a streaming service like Netflix. first is that basic cable is SD. then there's the whole "tune it at 9.30pm on tuesdays" problem.

I'm excited. Where I live (San Antonio) there is a choice between Grande Cable and Time Warner. Grande is incredible but only is located in a few places.

I was really sad when I moved to a home where only Time Warner was available. I'm paying a lot more for less speed and I would actually get the speed Grande offered.
http://mygrande.com/internet
http://www.timewarnercable.com...

The maximum speed a DOCSYS modem can achieve is 171/122 Mbit/s (using four channels), just a fraction the 273 Gbit/s (per channel) already reached on fiber.

According to this page, the DOCSYS 3.0 ARRIS/Motorola SB6183 and Netgear C6300 can handle 300 Mbit/s.

The SB6183 uses 6 download & 4 upload channels.

Cable and DSL require a remote.

Bullshit.

There's plenty of cable boxes with an up-down channel button on them. You know, for example nearly every Scientific Atlanta, Cisco, Pace, Samsung and Motorola used by pretty much everyone.

http://ww2.cox.com/residential...
http://customer.comcast.com/he...
http://www.timewarnercable.com...

If I had an option of changing channels on the TV like in the old days I would not worry about a remote either.

It's your lucky day!

Because just going to their web page is hard ...

http://ny-offer.aiprx.timewarn...

You're such a lazy fuck.

Thats $15 for 2Mbps down / 1Mbps up... My internet provider here in Sweden don't event have something that slow.

Because just going to their web page is hard ...

http://ny-offer.aiprx.timewarn...

You're such a lazy fuck.

You don't need any in-depth analysis to figure out what's going to change.

Look at Time Warner's internet service prices:
http://www.timewarnercable.com...

$15/mo for 2Mbps.

Then look at Comcast's internet service prices:
http://www.comcast.com/interne...

$40/mo for 3Mbps.

MORE THAN DOUBLE THE MONTHLY PRICE, FOR JUST ENTRY-LEVEL INTERNET SERVICE.

The competition between cable and DSL has kept prices down for years. But now, with Verizon switching to FIOS with even more astronomical entry-level internet prices, you will have NO CHOICE in the matter, but to pay much more than you do now, for slower service. How many people are going to just go without internet, when they only occasionally browse the web, and their cheapest option is $40+? Comcast is trying to rape my mother...

Oops! I should have used my IPv6 connection to do a search before posting! - http://www.timewarnercable.com...

Yes, those TWC prices are introductory 12-month prices except for the 2Mbps, and don't include taxes/fees/whatnot.

http://www.timewarnercable.com/en/residential-home/internet/internet-service-plans.html

10-15 Mbps Earthlink (through TWC) is ~$41 all taxes included.

Yeah, I got that message a while back. They claim a 50% boost, but I haven't seen it. Even after resetting the modem and router, everything seems to download at about the same speed as before. I suspect BS (hardly atypical for Time Warner).

Since you don't list what kind of router you have, what kind of firewall rule processing it's doing, and if you're using wireless it's hard to tell who the weakest link is.

I never use a ISP integrated modem/router(/wireless gack), too many of them suck and lock out too many options. If a regular router you can stick your own server on the WAN port and run something like http://www.speedtest.net/mini.php , across the LAN you should see 100Mbps (or more if it's Gb the entire way). If it's slower then 100Mb on wired your routers performance sucks. Test wired first then add your WLAN in, I have seen many wireless setups that where showing a 150Mbps (good) connection not even perform 30Mbps transfers.

Even more advanced tests would be to try to run 2 speed tests locally at the same time. Most equipment will starve one stream (one 99Mbps/one 1Mbps), some equipment will give bad jitter and the total speed will be less then 75% of line speed, and latency will be high, and very rarely the equipment will have decent queuing and the two streams will be close to even at around 95% of total line speed and latency will be decent.

Actually getting 20Mbps+ from the random internet host is not very common. Testing a close, fast host inside the TW network is the best way to tell. This might help.

http://www.timewarnercable.com/en/residential-home/support/speed-test.html/

Now if they can just resolve the CCI-bit issues, those of us that are Tivo users will once again be happy. Cable companies are exploiting customers by not allowing DVR devices to transfer in-between them (CCI-bit 0x02) and cite federal laws for doing so. And yet, they ignore those federal rules in order to offer identical multi-room-viewing products.

TimeWarner and TimeWarner CABLE are two different companies. Notice how the statement you copies says nothing about being an ISP? That is because they are not.

http://www.timewarnercable.com/centraltx/learn/cable/sdv/

Time Warner says they are for bandwidth efficiency. If you are with them, then you are wrong and a liar. If you are not with them, tell me who you are with and I will quote an appropriate page from them with the same claim.

You are a liar and wrong on all points. They claim they are for bandwidth efficiency. You claim that is a lie. You are paying them or another company with the same claims. Thus, you are paying someone you claim is a liar.

Hulu and everyone else starts to put more advertisements on their shows (more likely, but would also probably mean the death of Hulu).

And what are people supposed to be doing instead of hulu.com? Pirating? I don't agree with the excessive punishments that are being doled out to pirates but so long as they are as excessive as they are it seems to me that you're taking an unnecessary risk. I mean, seriously, are you so opposed to the notion of sitting down for a full hour instead of fifty minutes that you'd be willing to take that risk? If you're time is so valuable that you can't spend ten extra minutes sitting down then why are you even watching TV in the first place? Surely the fifty minutes you're willing to spend watching TV could be better spent doing something else?

Or maybe the alternative is paying $600.00 / year for cable TV? At that point, aren't you doing exactly what the advertisers want? Paying money *because of* advertisements? Personally, I'd just assume keep that $600.00 then spend it on something I could have otherwise gotten for free. Heck - I'd rather up and buy a new $600.00 laptop every year then spend that much on cable TV. Or maybe buy $600.00 worth of *commercial free* DVDs of the series' I would have otherwise watched on cable TV.

Do you really think that a significant portion of that bill you pay the cable company each month is going to the individual channels?

Yes and your hand waving did nothing to convince me otherwise. Time Warner Cable's Quarterly report ending Mar 31, 2009says for $2,667 million in video revenue they spend $1,003 million on video programming. Now's your turn to say that's not significant.

Better than what TWC offers here: http://www.timewarnercable.com/cincinnati/learn/bundles/bundles.html

I don't watch much TV, so I'll stick with Cincinnati Bell https://services1.cincinnatibell.com/BundleOrder/BundleAdvisor/bundle.aspx

Competition is great, but I think they are slacking off here.

I don't understand. What is not clear about this pricing plan? http://www.timewarnercable.com/SanDiego/learn/hso/roadrunner/speedpricing.html

The caps? The fact that you're paying way too much for it because there is little to no competition in the market?

I don't understand. What is not clear about this pricing plan?

http://www.timewarnercable.com/SanDiego/learn/hso/roadrunner/speedpricing.html

"Overage charges will be capped at $75 per month. That means that for $150 per month customers could have virtually unlimited usage at Turbo speeds." -- that's straight from the corporate memo.

I'm one of the fortunate few to be in Rochester, NY and fall under the tyranny of Time Warner Cable. I've talked to their customer service reps. I've read their statements. And yesterday I had the opportunity to hear some of their low-level execs try and defend the plan at a town hall meeting with our congressional representative (who's on our side BTW).

They simply don't acknowledge that access (bandwidth) is not at issue here, limiting the use of that bandwidth in terms of some arbitrary amount of data is the issue.

If you look at their 2008 SEC filings (linked by their corporate site timewarnercable.com then you'd see their costs went down about 12% from 2007 and their revenues and new customers both rose about 10% over 2007. Clearly usage is not really an issue.

The issue they're not admitting to (except in their SEC filing) is Internet video like Hulu and Netflix is their primary threat and the way to mediate this threat is to make it more expensive to watch videos on the Internet than to pay Time Warner for cable and Video on Demand services.

Well, no not really or not all the time. I just saw a time warner commercial that said a specific speed. In fact, from the time warner site itself, you see specific claims to the speed. On that page, I see no reference to up to. However, when I looked at Verizon's speed offerings, it did say "up to".

If they hide the "up to" in the fine print, then it really is the same as I'm claiming anyways. they are representing one thing and selling something else.

Where are people getting 22mbps over cable? Or is it fiber?

No, it's cable. Cable modems support up to 30mbps. For example here a link from what I have with Time Warner: http://www.timewarnercable.com/centraltx/Products/Internet/rrpremium.html

Introducing Road Runner Turbo with PowerBoost. All the features and functionality of Road Runner super-charged with up to 22 Mbps of download speed and up to 2 Mbps of upload speed.

Comcast has 25mbps+ cable speeds in some cities as well.

And why do your parents need that kind of bandwidth? Email? Web Browsing? YouTube? Torrent Seeding?

Downloading and all sorts of things. Why wouldn't they need that speed? My parents aren't computer illiterate dumbasses so they can do with it whatever they please I guess.

And if the extra 256MB keeps XP from paging, it may get you close to 2x.

Possibly, but you are hardly going to get a ton of paging going on at 512 megs that is going to make that big of a difference. If my parents computer can max out at 22mbps with all the crap that is running on it, then you'd have to be doing some seriously memory hogging to get it to get as bad as the stupid stats in the article.

Why are you whining about the "big telcos" when it's Time Warner Cable proceeding with a bandwidth cap?

FWIW, TW is also happy to offer you phone service!

The problem isn't simply the big Telco's. It's lack of real competition even in large areas. The Telcos offer satellite TV, telephone and DSL; Cable Cos offer their TV and phone services as well as broadband. But there's not many choices. For example, not far from Beaumont, Texas mentioned in the story is the much larger city of Houston. Recently Comcast came in and took over a lot of Time Warner, didn't really change anything except raising the prices. The cable companies come in and split up the territory so you've really only ONE company if you want cable and/or cable internet. Because of the pricing structure, if you've already got cable, you're probably going to find it more economical to go with them for your broadband. Your only other choices are DirectTV, which is ridiculously expensive, or the big bell AT&T's DSL. So far it seems to be the lesser of evils. They price by speed and don't seem to have any caps on the amount downloaded--for right now.

What's been uncomfortable is watching AT&T that was split up from it's local phone service for being monopolistic. Then it's once again allowed not only to take back over the local SW Bell again, but grow even bigger and stronger, taking over DishNetwork satellite and Cingular wireless. A lot of people, I'm sure see it as convenient to get everything from one company in a bundle. But it essentially means for broadband or any other home entertainment you're just about down to two heavyweights. I like DirectTV for satellite, but I wonder how long they'll last before one or the other buys them out. Eventually you get down to one dominant company and then they can set prices or impose all the restrictions they want. Becasue the loser will either be unwilling or unable to lower prices to compete.

Then, we'll finally hear the complaints about there being a monopoly....

This is a pretty excellent system, I used it myself for quite a while. In my personal setup I've cut out XBMC by running an HDTV as my computer monitor. With the addition of OTA HDTV broadcasts it's a pretty nifty and affordable setup. The only downfall is the inability to watch live sporting events that are broadcast only on Cable, e.g. Monday Night Football.

The obvious way for the cable company to battle back against this is A La Carte Cable. All the programs I want to watch are on 4-5 channels, but to get those channels in HD I'd have to pay at least $60/mo with with 70 other channels that I'll never watch. Add affordable A La Carte programming and the Cable providers have essentially eliminated any reason for me to pirate shows.

Now to the question of what's affordable: Right now Time Warner Cable offers A La Carte packages in San Antonio that work out to be about $0.80 per channel per month. Say more than double that for the ability to choose exactly what channels you want, and my 5 cable channels cost me $10 / mo. Piracy problem solved. I get to watch what I want and the Cable company gets my money.

I'm sure there wouldn't be subsidized DVR's and the like under a system like this, but I'd want a cable card in my PC anyway. Though I suppose a fully functional cable card is another pipe-dream.

• First of all TiVO's main gripe here is the introduction of Switch Digital Video (SDV) by the cable industry breaks their product. SDV, in a nutshell, is a technology that increases network efficiency by monitoring when people are watching a given show. If no-one is watching the bandwidth is allocated to another show that is being watched. Sort of like IP multicast, where you use IGMP to sign up for a multicast group, the router streams as long as you're signed up, but when no-one is signed up it doesn't bother broadcasting the stream. The part the breaks TiVO is the program is no longer broadcast on a stable frequency and PID on the network so TiVO can no longer tune reliably. SDV is not an cable wide standard and therefore TiVO is left out in the dark unless they implement drivers for every provider in the country. Assuming they can even get the specs. It has been suggested that switched digital video support be moved into the Cable Card specification to resolve this problem, but that's all still in the works.

  Note the big driver for freeing up bandwidth is HD content. HD requires 3x to 4x bandwidth to broadcast over a standard def channel. This incurs substantial cost to the cable company in terms of content revenue per bandwidth unit. One might give a nod that broadcast providers are trying to help us out here and make that shiny new HDTV in our living rooms even better. Even satellite is making this move - though they can't do switched due to their restricted 2 way capability, and instead had to launch a few new satellites and work other magic to increase their bandwidth.

  An alternate to SDV would be to increase plant bandwidth like the satellite guys and add additional channels. This requires substantial capital investment whereas switched is primarily a software solution and therefore significantly cheaper. Like order of magnitude cheaper. I guess in a way you can thank Wall Street for SDV because the investors really love this stuff and it makes stock prices go up.

• Second - somebody dragged in Cable Cards and said something about cable cards only being 1 way. WRONG! Time Warner Cable is deploying 2 way cable card devices in major markets such as NYC right now. http://www.timewarnercable.com/Corporate/Products/ CableCard/CableCard.html. Comcast does not offer two way service as of yet. But the spec is complete and available on the CableLabs website.

• Third, and slightly off topic, but the word monopoly irks me to no end; somebody said cable companies are monopolies. Strictly speaking - WRONG! Cable companies have to sign franchise agreements with every city, and may be fined, or even kicked out for violating those agreements. However ANY company is free to come in and compete. Verizon FIOS and AT&T are doing just this. DirectTV is there with Satellite. The main barrier to competition is cost. And the cost to build a network and maintain it is staggering.

  Remember the whole point of business is to make money while moving toward the best solution by virtue of competition. Not to give stuff away for free because it makes a company feel warm and fuzzy. You vote with your dollar be it buying stocks, paying taxes to support public infrastructure, or paying for goods and services. If you don't like cable go sign up for something else. Each broadcast technology has it's pros and cons, pick what works for you. If you're not happy with anything then cancel and get outside or take up a hobby. Hell start your own broadcast video company. Just no more whining!!!

I'd say mod parent up but it is already. I find this very suspicious, not just a little. TFA states that TW has announced, if they have announced it there would be something more, like a posting of the info on their press page. http://www.timewarnercable.com/InvestorRelations/P ressReleases/TWCPressReleaseList.ashx

I really don't think they would announce it in one email to one person, not something like this.

Just my $0.02

How Would You Deal With A Global Bandwidth Crisis?

It bugs me that when I buy bandwidth, I don't really get bandwidth. It's like the airlines used to be: oversold, on the assumption there will be no shows. But when there aren't, the people who've paid for a service don't get it.

So I guess you could have a mode where it told you there was a shortage and asked for volunteers to get bumped for a few days, perhaps in exchange for free bandwidth later (or free porn or whatever it is that people want to trade for in order to get them to voluntarily stand down). But that sounds like it still relies on someone to be willing to give up. If they're expecting to die of bird flu tomorrow, you might find a lot of people who want to watch YouTube or some porn site today before it's too late and don't really care to trade it away.

But I think a better solution would be to have selling someone bandwidth really mean selling them bandwidth. Stop all these stupid clauses in access providers saying you can't resell bandwidth (because those are just there to keep you from exposing the overselling of bandwidth they've supposedly promised you anyway and it should be your right to resell what you've legally purchased). Create large monetary penalties for any provider who sells you bandwidth and doesn't really reserve it for you.

No, I'm not anti-capitalism. I don't mind someone selling the notion of gambling on getting bandwidth and getting a cheaper price. I just don't think that should be sold by saying you're getting x bandwidth. It should be like on credit cards where you have to disclose the info in a manner plain for anyone to know, not hidden in terms of service that the gigantically fonted numbers about how fast the connection will be is not necessarily reliably there... and certainly if you're going to be in trouble for trying to use the capacity of what you're given, that should be in big letters, too. Just like the credit cards have the Schumer Box, broadband agreements should expose things like: what's the worst case? how much is it oversold? will it go down if everyone uses it at once? will it go down if more people in your neighborhood buy? under what circumstancse do they commit to increase bandwidth? With proper labeling, I have a lot fewer objections.

But also, if after proper labeling I find there's no one in my area who will sell reliable bandwidth and everyone will only sell me probabilistic bandwidth, that's significant, too. Right now, a lot of places probably figure they have broadband reliably available when really they have it only probabilistically available (that is, oversold).

It seems to me the reason bandwidth might fall short in an event like a bird flu emergency (if it might--and that's hard to know) is that there's no serious recourse to the consumer if it does. And so what's the motivation for vendors to even care?

RCN itemizes the resale of what you've paid for in bandwidth as Theft of Service.

Comcast restricts you from offering the service to others, as well as telling you that even if you use it for yourself, you (not they) are responsible for making sure your use is within the scope of what you were sold (as if the typical Joe Sixpack is going to know how to assure his use of YouTube is within such bounds) and warns you that if you exceed your quota, they can shut you down at their discretion

Time-Warner Cable has similar restrictions.

Verizon is alleged to be quite overly strict in similar ways. They make a point of noting that Verizon advertises itself as offering a service

I've moved around a bunch and I have found that the cable company you don't have is always better then the one you do have. I have time warner but would love comcast. I would love just to watch fox once in a while. http://www.timewarnercable.com/northwest/moscowkay u.html I agree, choice would be great. When I lived in Northern Virginia, choices were there, Cox Cable or Verizon FIOS, both offered, phone/cable/internet. Service was vastly improved with just two competing companies. I think if all areas had three companies competing, prices would be drastically lower and customer service would have to improve, since it would be so easy to jump ship.

I just want to be able to watch FOX http://www.timewarnercable.com/northwest/moscowkay u.html

VCR is dead anyways and they stopped really selling them on the shelves by the masses so the whole vcr argument is really minute. My other box has a DVR on it and it has complete scheduling of recordings. Just press list on the changer and it list all the stuff I programmed to record in the future and much other stuff which I can all catagorize it in many ways.

There is live tv guide so you can select everything in the future. It works, provides plenty of content and is cheaper than before with triple play.

http://www.timewarnercable.com/corporate/products/ digitalcable/

It seems that my local cable company has it on thier webpage[1], and it is only $1.75 a month[2].

I am guessing if people want to use custom boxes cable companies will find a new way to make a profit.
when cable ready television came out cable companies said you still needed a box for pay per view, and later digital cable.

From what I have noticed cable companies have no problems raising rates, if the loose enough income from the box you rent they will raise prices everywhere else.

1: http://www.timewarnercable.com/columbus/products/c ablecard.html
2: http://www.twcol.com/products/get_services.asp?cf= 1&noerr=1#385

Not later, not after they have managed to buy enough govies. Right now.

Comcast:
http://www.comcast.com/Localization/Localize.ashx? referer=/Support/ContactSupport.asp

Road runner:
http://www.timewarnercable.com/Localization/Corpor ate.ashx

Even if you aren't a customer, start calling them periodically and showing up on their call center bill.

It would behoove someone to make an app to provide times to call and numbers to call to keep the overall volume up so it shows up on managements radar.

From the Time Warner Acceptable Use policy:

The ISP Service may not be used to breach or attempt to breach the security, the computer, the software or the data of any person or entity, including Operator, to circumvent the user authentication features or security of any host, network or account, to use or distribute tools designed to compromise security, or to interfere with another?s use of the ISP Service through the posting or transmitting of a virus or other harmful item to deliberately overload or flood that entity's system.

You'll notice, like I said, that there is no provision for "unless he asked for it".

It's just called Time Warner "Digital Phone". (Web site)

It's the same company, and will be the same service. It's now just pointed/marketed towards AOL users and I'm guessing a few DSL users too. (I've got to add that I hate Time Warner after getting cable. I've only had it for 2 months, but their whole purpose for having a cable tv business is to put Time Warner commercials 25 hours a day! I've already got the service, quit trying to make me a fanboy.)

My company already offers the cable card.

Time Warner seems to be a pretty good company all around. My internet access is awesome, the dvr is awesome, and they haven't ever gone up on my rates.

This is why the CableCard is so important, so that multiple devices can operate like the company provided boxes. I have a cable company dvr, and it is really awesome, but if I wanted to use a brand name TiVo, I would be pissed at having to use IR blasters.

As far as I know, there's no cablecard equivalent for satellite boxes, but there should be. Ahh, the incredible balance between freedom and regulation.

If I was paying for a subscription service to a company that is supposed to let me have tv listings and then the hardware sits there recording, I would be infuriated if they wanted to slap pop ups on it too.

I have 2 cable company(TW) dvr's and even they aren't that evil. I love my DVR, but I guarantee that if they start putting ads in the UI, I will switch to MythTV instantly.

If I was paying for a subscription service to a company that is supposed to let me have tv listings and then the hardware sits there recording, I would be infuriated if they wanted to slap pop ups on it too.

I have 2 cable company(TW) dvr's and even they aren't that evil. I love my DVR, but I guarantee that if they start putting ads in the UI, I will switch to MythTV instantly.

I recently signed up for basic, cable ready TV only service from my local mom and pop cable shop. Because of this I see 4000% more cable TV, cable Internet and cable phone service commercials than ever. In fact, I've got CNN on and they've run one commercial since I've started typing this (1.2 minutes thus far).

In these commercials for Cable phone (VoIP) service they do what that cable company does best: lies about phone services (Internet and Phone, their DSL commercials should be investigated by the FTC!!). They say that once you get the total cable package you don't need a phone. Bad idea, because people don't understand 911 doesn't work for people who can't provide an address and so forth. I suspect that is a universal problem with VoIP.

Well, in Ohio (my state) you can still call 911 from a dead phone. If you don't pay your bill the phone company must let you dial 911. Thus, if you canceled service and got VoIP then you could still use 911. I suspect also that Texas doesn't have this.

This could be solved if they, VoIP services provided a direct connection to your 911 service. Route your "9-1-1" call to your local service and pass the info, in standard form, to your service. Anyone can do this, including wireless services provided they can track (triangulate?) a user.

Another option is to just create a national law that any landline phone wire must be able to dial 911. As long as that connection is made behind a demarcation point, it will be identified at the correct address. Weird addresses, and buildings are corrected usually at the 911 service center.

I imagine that if I could somehow watch nothing but HiDef DVDs for a month, I would find it hard to go back to regular DVDs.

I imagine that if I could somehow watch nothing but HiDef DVDs for a month, I would find it hard to go back to regular DVDs.

And what led you to believe that? It can record the unencrypted HD cable signals straight up, right from the cable or antenna. If you have an encrypted stream, you'll still need to decode it with your normal HD cable or HD satellite receiver. This card can then record it via its S-Video line-in.

Just in case redigitizing the S-Video isn't good enough, there's Yet Another Standard looming out there, the so-called CableCARD. A CableCARD-ready TV has a legitimate cable decryption unit built into it. You simply plug your cable company's CableCARD (probably just a smart card-like device containing your decryption key) into your TV set, and now your TV is (mostly) cable ready, including premium channels. I can easily imagine a new release of the pcHDTV card being made CableCARD ready.

Oooh we dont have comcast.. just time warner :( ~Tad

It looks like Time Warner has it too, at least out here. I think Vonage costs less though.

Dude, my wife and I use VoIP as our landline. Our regular phones plug straight into the phone wall outlets and in every respect act just like regular phones...except that calls to the US and Canada are completely free. Long distance calls are also dirt cheap, to China for 15 cents a minute! 15 cents a minute! I remember when that was a tag line for long distance in the US!

We use the VoIP service from Time Warner Cable in NC.

It's just a little black box plugged into a dedicated cable line and then into a phone wall jack. With the box hidden away, we can treat the wall phone jacks as if the phone company had set them up.

In case you can't tell, we are extreme advocates of the service. Having family spread across the country (and the globe) makes for expensive phone contact, but not for us :-).

I think that depends on the feature set that's important to you. For me, perfect picture quality from my TV provider is really quite important. In which case the DirecTiVo is the clear winner. No F/OSS PVR can currently offer that. Hopefully, when CableCARD is implemented everywhere, that will change.

Free maket? In my area there is only one cable provider (Bright House Networks (formerly Time Warner),) and they are c*cky as hell. A few months ago, I switched to satellite for lower monthly costs, and a low cost TiVO. Right before I canceled my cable TV service, I received a letter stating that the rates were again going up. The justification? They were going to add some channels aboutr which I couldn't have cared less. I wonder if they will lower rates when they remove channels (e.g. when the TechTV/G4 merger is complete. I'm willing to bet that they won't. For the most part my cable modem service worked fine, but when it did, and I was a direct customer, they had no tech support outside of business hours. Near the end, I switched to Earthlink cable modem through the same cable company, $5 cheaper per month ($25 cheaper for the first 3 months,) and tech support was available 24/7 via Earthlink. When I made the switch, all of my hardware stayed the same but the cable company charged me $9 to switch the billing record. What a bunch of crap. The cable companies know they have people by the balls, and they take advantage of it.

I have heard as much. And I have experienced Time Warner Cable / Roadrunner in Austin, TX doing the same to their customers infected with MyDoom, Blaster, and other nasty remote exploits and trojans. Apparently their engineers pulled the plug on everyone in the area (Buda, Georgetown, Round Rock, Lake Austin, etc.) at once after theyd completed scanning for the exploited.

I know because in that 'pulling of the plug', certain blocks went down completely. Their tech support center was frickin slammed by incoming voice calls. A tech commented that upwards of 95% of his calls were people who complained theyd been cut off, and upon his inspection of the blacklist, were disabled due to vulnerabilities or exploits.