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A Step Closer (Or Not) To Cable ISP Diversity
Tom Veil writes: "Yahoo! posted a story saying that AT&T Broadband and Comcast have both made agreements to work with other ISPs in order to allow them to provide service through cable systems. The Earthlink/AT&T deal appears to be set at this point, but they haven't received FCC approval. Don't suppose this means we'll be seeing free NetZero cable, but hopefully competition will kick in and make things more affordable for cheapskates like me." Bear in mind that both companies provide cable Internet service and are seeking regulatory approval for a merger. They have good reason to sidestep suspicions that the result would be a strangling monopoly.
I currently use Time Warner Road Runner after trying Earthlink's cable over Time Warner's line after being a Road Runner customer previously. "Competition" is about the worst word you could possibly come up with. Let me give some background.
In early 2000 I signed up for Road Runner. I liked the product but not the service, Road Runner customer service was awful. Last year as part of the AOL Time Warner deal, AOLTW had to open their cable lines to other providers, and Earthlink was the one they chose to go with in my area. Since I'd had problems with Road Runner I decided to give the Earthlink over TW cable a shot. I called to make the arrangements.
Signing up was easy enough. Within a week I had Road Runner taken off my cable bill and was going through Earthlink. At first the only difference was a new mailbox and new DNS servers. Then I started getting outages, downtime almost every week. Without failure I was getting days every week when there was simply no cable modem service. When I called up the Earthlink number they said they had no known problems and told me to call my cable company. So when I called Time Warner they didn't even want to talk to me since I wasn't really their customer.
My experience was much worse with Earthlink than with Road Runner. In my opinion, Time Warner was doing something to interrupt the Earthlink service over their cable lines. Earthlink support people were very nice and sympathetic but they literally had no power to do anything about my problem. And Time Warner, well they could give a shit because I was paying Earthlink and not them. They didn't want to help me. While I can't prove it I am positive that it was intentional. Time Warner did something to make Earthlink over TW Cable FUBAR while Road Runner over TW Cable was running OK.
The end result. My connection using Earthlink over TW cable lines was up and down, flaky at best. Outages lasting a day at a time, every week. Earthlink wanted to help but they couldn't, because it was a physical problem with the cable (supposedly) that they couldn't control. But Time Warner DIDN'T want to help because I was Earthlink's customer instead of Road Runner's. I wound up cancelling the Earthlink and going back to Road Runner after less than a month. And naturally I wound up losing money in the deal because I had to pay Earthlink for the full month that I didn't use, then I had to resubscribe for Road Runner.
If you think using another provider over your cable company's cable is a good idea, think again. It's the same shit as DSL. Just like the phone companies make it about impossible to get DSL service from someone else, and just like the phone company and your third party DSL provider keep sending you back and forth when you have a tech problem.. the cable company will do the same thing if you try to get another provider over the cable lines.
Don't bother. It's still a monopoly plain and simple. Offering "competition" is a bullshit guise, because it's still the local cable company's fiber, and if there are physical problems, the local cable co does NOT want to help you!!