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Power Companies Offering Cable (TV, Net) Service
MankyD writes "CNN is running an interesting story about a power company offering cheap cable and broadband internet to its customers. What's even better is that they aren't looking to make a profit, just break even on the venture. They estimate that they've saved their customers $32 million. Furthermore, it's available in a rural area where the telecomms don't offer service anyways."
now there is a reason to move back to the country...cheap calbe TV and internet access.
I am trying to get my township here to open up the cable market....Time Warner is gouging us...for basic cable and internet I pay 84 bucks....my wifes friend who lives near by in another town has 2 cable companies to choose from and pays $79 for digital calbe, free HBO that comes with the digital cable, more basic channels, and internet access. I looked tha the company website...for whay I have with Time Warner, my wife's friend would pay $54.
I am the Alpha and the Omega-3
I was somewhat disappointed that the article doesn't describe a broadband network over existing power lines - that would really be something! But it is about using lines that were already in place for power-use monitoring, which is nearly as good.
In particular, anything that provides additional connection options for small appliances with embedded operating systems is always welcome. In this specific case there are some protocol issues concerning communication with Glasgow residents of that type - a difficult (for outsiders) "accent" if you will, but one day it will be possible to exchange the latest news and information on toast (just as an example) with one's peers. That will be a good day.
Could I interest anyone in some toast?
Farmers are experiencing problems keeping their pigs penned up. Apparently entire pens are simply floating out into the open air, with no discernable cause. One farmer, who requested to remain anonymous, speculated that some of the new recommendations for pig feed could be to blame, but other than a little different diet, he couldn't find any reason that his pigs should be flying.
IBM had PL/1, with syntax worse than JOSS,
And everywhere the language went, it was a total loss...
My house gets electricity and all the essentials, but no cable and no DSL. My options for internet have always been satellite and wireless. I opt for wireless only because it pings better. Both services generally suck and are subject to many downages and bottlenecks.
If our power company offered us cable internet service I'd be in an eternal bliss, because I could drop my horrible provider. I hope this idea spreads.
You're right, I wouldn't steal a car. But if it were possible, I sure as hell would download one!
Any slashdotters subscribe to this service at all? I'd love to hear some real world stories from the community.
All over-charges, made up late fees FOR AUTOMATIC CHECKING ACCOUNT WITHDRAWL (If YOU are late getting money from my account that I have you permission to access on a monthly basis, how is it MY fault??), rude phone calls, etc will be forgiven if you do something like this.
Your friendly customer.
Anonymous Coward
and shaft the local telcos. They been rippin' me off for too loong now.
think about it...they get everyone to sign up..get a box, have their TV on all the time, get that computer on 24/7 downloading MP3s they get profits from more electricity usage and they are providing a service to their customers at cost over lines they need anyhow.
I am the Alpha and the Omega-3
The company that I work for, Cedar Falls Utilities was a 3 service utility (gas, water, and electric) that started to provide communications services (cable tv, high speed data, and dedicated facilities) in 1997. Broadband Bob has a report from Jan of 1997 here.
Joseph W. Breu
Because the city-owned electric utility provides cable TV and Internet access over wires that also monitor power usage in the town of 14,000. The utility isn't trying to profit from the service -- just recover its costs.
There is no longer anything that can be done with computers that is nontrivial and clearly legal. -- Paul Phillips
If you read the article about Glasgow, KY, the service is being provided by the city, so they have the voters to answer to if the price gets too dear. It makes sense that this would work out well in a small town; the big players may not be interested in serving them anyway. It'd be interesting to see what would happen if power companies all over were allowed to provide cable/internet-- it could introduce some real competition, instead of the oligopoly we have now. Or, at least, it would be an oligopoly with more players.
Always look on the briight side of life! (whistle, whistle)
The utility company is owned by the city, so the money consumers spend stays in the town. The city has "made" $32 million that would otherwise have gone to the cable companies and/or ISPs.
;)
Try reading the article.
Actually, in this case there is no reason for them to do something like that. The company is owned by the town. Many communities all across the country still get their electricity from municipal companies or co-ops. These companies aren't really meant to be "for profit".
Now, what strikes me is that usually a government-owned venture is nowhere near as competitive as the private sector. The real question here is why the heck private companies are charging so much more than these quasi-governmental companies. The private sector SHOULD see very little threat from these ventures. The fact that it can be done this way at so little cost simply reveals how badly we are being gouged by our local cable and broadband providers currently.
Life is short: void the warranty.
Yes, but what we didn't tell them is that their power consumption increased one hundred-fold...mauhahahaha
There are no shareholders. The power company is owned by the city. Local goverment is running this operation and are going to be their own customers. There's no incentive to rip anyone off.
This is an excellent idea to treat internet and cable TV as what they are - utilities - and charge fairly for them. Bravo to them, I wish I could live in such a town.
I would subscribe to cable TV if I could get it for $17 a month (price quoted in the article). I disconnected my cable TV 2 years ago after the constant price hikes.
As it is, AT&T is now bombarding me with offers for packages that cost $90 a month. NINETY DOLLARS! That is a significant proportion of my disposable income. For something that I'd watch for about an hour a week and is stuffed with commercials? And they wonder why I haven't taken them up any of their offers yet..
unless you're stuck in a massive metro area where it's unprofitable to replace and/or add fiber lines in the entire city.
We had this in another town in Kentucky (Murray, which is probably on par with Glasgow) and were the 2nd town in the US (Canada being one large rural area seemed to have a lot more broadband at the time) back in late 1996, early 1997.
The only notable thing, is that as this sort of thing gets widespread, cable companies will have to either add more value to the service (free PPV perhaps, or more digital channels) or price it cheaper. Competition is a wonderful thing. I paid $25/month for a cablemodem capable of 512k down/256k up in a city that had competing cable tv, internet and even local/longdistance telephone service. The existing cable company (Charter) had to drastically reduce prices, hurry out their digital tier services, and price them competitively, as in the course of a summer the Electric Company had started offering a cable package with 10 more channels than the Cable Company, for around 12 bucks a month, compared to the cable company's 25. They're still fighting and the person who will end up winning, is the consumer.
My cable bill in Kentucky was 55/month. This included digital cable and a cable modem. Now I move to a large city, and I'm paying 50/month just for DSL, cable was just as expensive, and I can't afford the digital cable at all, as that's another 50/month. Things were much different in a small town with two providers, and they're doing very well, and I have hope that the idea will catch on everywhere else eventually and the cable monopoly will get bumped aside in favor of fair prices and better service.
because I don't want ntl: meddlin' with electricity. They're dangerous enough in charge of a cable system.
(UK in-joke, sorry)
I Love new technology, and I think its great that power companies are making the most efficient use of their technologies.
My issue is putting all your eggs in one basket... A few years back when there was a giant ice storm in Quebec, we were reminded of how dependant people have become on electricity. Now lets just say that using the power grid to access information becomes popular- power grids are already very central to survival in the modern age.
if something happens to the grid you're not going to have power, so it wont matter if you can access the net; slowly the infastructure can be repaired and the chances of taking out all power lines at once is very slim. On the other hand if you were to take out a couple power stations you could disrupt the flow of information, as well as disrupt the lives of people for a considerable amount of time. It would be much harder to replace a power plant than wires and transformers.
You apparently have yet to run incident II.
[Set Cain on fire and steal his lute.]
2 years ago (here in Memphis), when getting cable net access, you also got TV cable as well. Well, not anymore. I asked why, and it was explained that back then, the local TimeWarner had no way of offering either net or TV signals by themselves, so they just bundled it. They eventually sorted out the techical problems, and now they can only let you have what you only order.
Your "trick" only applies in areas where they haven't gotten complete control of their system.
When I first read the title I assumed they were delevering the service over the powerlines themselves. This was of great intrest to me as I live 20 miles from the nearest [small] town. From the article they push the content over the usage monitoring lines. Alas, no broadband for this country folk.
This sounds incredibly cool, especially since I'm the one who pays both the Cable and the Electric bills at my college rental, however, at least in our area (University of Michigan) our power is from a huge Detroit conglomerate, DTE Energy, and even getting our electricity taken care when we moved in was more than they could handle. The previous tennants had defaulted 2+ months in a row, and the power company handed us a bill for $414, while a technician went to turn off the juice. Frankly, I would love to pay less for our internet, but I don't trust the power company further than I can spit.
A friend of mine in Braintree had digital cable and internet access from www.beld.net for IIRC ~$50/month total.
:-( ) I pay ~$90/month for Basic Cable (Analog) and internet access from mediaone/attbi/comcast.
3 miles down the road (and not in Beld's area
If that's not bad enough, Beld supplied him with a cable box that had spdif output for decent surround sound (apparantly ATTBI supply a shitty box with analogue stereo output only), and his internet download speeds rocked... consistently ~2.5Mb/s
You know, I'm not *too* pissed off about my internet service at the moment. Mediaone/Attbi have been ok, both from the point of view of performance and reliability. They've also been reasonably friendly wrt running a web server. Yes it'd be nice if it were a bit cheaper, but it's not outrageous. Now Comcast are due to take over, I'm worried about their restrictive AUP, $45/month to be a web consumer is too much..but I digress.
What *really* hacks me off is the $45/month for basic cable - considering that nearly all of the channels are commercial-supported, and the amount of commercials seems to increase every month. It's outrageous.
The key word is "well run", which is something that both private companies and governments have trouble doing, especially on large scales. Private companies are immune from having inane and pointless structures that cause tons of waste, just because they're private. The market isn't magical, and it doesn't just fix this. The private sphere and the public sphere both boil down to people, and their motives. If their motives are corrupt (Private corruption "Lets bilk the entire population for everything they've got and we'll be filthy rich!" or Public "Lets just stay in office forever, and never change, I don't like change") then the result will be corrupt. However, if either have good intentions (Private "Lets offer a good product at a decent price, and make a living off of it" or Public "Lets provide something good for the public, to improve their lives") and they allow those intentions to guide them, the outcome isn't usually horrific. No one meaning well intentionally screws over the people they're trying to help.
I think the key to this is the size of the endeavor. A small business that knows its customer base intimately will be much more sensitive to their needs and demands. A large one that must meet a projected profit every quarter will be willing to sacrifice them in order to stay in good with the stock market. Similarly, a large government (ie, Federal in the US) will lose track of its vision in all its complex infighting. However, for a small city to do something like this? They're not going to set up a government endeavor just to screw themselves, since 14,000 people isn't a population worth exploiting to that degree.
To summarize after all that rambling: public ownership is not always evil and inefficient, nor is private ownership always good and effective. Find a balance for the situation that provides the best outcome for society. Its not always going to be the market.
I live in Kansas City, and just about a month ago I got connected to this type of service, thanks to a local company called Everest that is owned by local utility company Aquila.
Things that make this service fantastic:
1) Price. No question. I consolodated my monthly phone bill (~$25) plus my monthly cable bill (~$75 for digital + two premium tiers) plus my high-speed internet bill (I was paying $125 for business-class DSL which was the only service provider with a static IP in my area) down to ~$100/month (in a single bill) to a single company
2) Services available. For $100/month I get 1.5 MB (256 kbps upstream) cable with a single static IP, digital cable with two premium tiers (I selected HBO and Skinimax), plus local phone service with $.10/minute long distance. Everest just released a new feature I'm interested in but haven't yet taken the plunge - integrated PVR service. For an extra $20/month you can get an upgraded box with 40gb HDD and Tivo-style PVR service.
3) Customer service. You can call their support number 24x7 and its answered immediately by a real person. Level-2 tech support people who know what they're doing.
4) Let me ditch a few companies I'm happy not to do business with: Time Warner Cable and Southwestern Bell (SBC).
All great stuff, in my opinion. This type of competition is just what these markets need, in my opinion... especially the cable TV market.
---------
There is no try at jedinite.com
"The worst spacial incident in recorded history occurred less than one day ago and you people are talking about power companies offering cable service?!?! My GOD, people, GET SOME BLOODY PRIORITIES!"
The people that died in the pursuit of science would be honored if we continued on our pursuit of science.
There are many of these systems in place today, not only are they offering cable tv and internet but phone service as well. Glasgow was the model town for motorola to try out some of the new technology. Murray, KY was their next stop and they have come along way in the last two years since the initial install was made. Here is a link to the hardware used. http://broadband.motorola.com/catalog/productdetai l.asp?ProductID=211
I pay about $20 a month for phone service with callerid, call waiting, etc. Another $27 for extended basic cable which is about 70 channels and then $19 for internet access. If I were to go with the competeing companies in town I would be paying $40 a month for cable an additional $40 for cable modem service through them, *ahem* charter *ahem* overpriced *ahem*, plus a phone line and long distance through bellsouth, at least $30 before caller id, call waiting, etc. Did I mention because of this we only pay $0.07 a minute for long distance.
Now many people are seeing this as a very bad deal because the power company is supposed to be non-profit because they have a natural monopoly over the services. Well it doesn't have to be, the way our community handled this is that the electric company issued bonds to the community to pay for the project. In essence the community owns the service, anyone that has a problem with the service are invited to public meetings held about every six months. But the one thing you have to keep in mind is that with your local power company hosting all of your services you also have all your hard earned money going right back into your own community. Sure our previous service was based here but the profit leaves the area and goes to where ever their home office is.
What ever you do if you hear that your local electric company is considering this goto their board meeting and hear them out. It will come to a vote eventually and your vote could be the one to make it happen for you as well.
A few random points that poped in my head after reading this:
1) The telecom companies may have a point in their claims that it's anti-competitive. I mean, no private company would go into business with the goal of "breaking even". How is this much different from a monopoly selling their products at cost to drive out competition?
2) That being said, the power companies have great potential in the telecom business if, as mentioned in the article, cable/internet could be offered over power cables. The network in the article is run over power-monitoring wires, and i'm not sure how widespread this type of wire is... Cable (and broadband interenet to a lesser extent) are so widespread now, that it may not be a bad idea to offer them as city-sponsored commodities, like power, and hopefully even run them over power lines.
3) This is going AGAINST the trend of privatization of publicly owned ventures. That means that the only reason that this is cheaper is that the prices set by cable/telecom companies are inflated. This could lead to a huge drop in cable/internet prices... and the telecoms are trying to fight this through legal means. Fighting a new distribution model through courts - **AA anyone?
The big brother argument (municipalities cannot control digital content) by private telcos is pure drivel. If big brother (CIA, NSA, FBI, etc.) really wants to monitor your usage they'll walk into your ISP with a carnivore system and log your activity.
Everyone knows how cheap fiber and net access REALLY are... Cents per gig.. or pehaps fractions of cents. Consumer net access is currently overpriced, overhyped and slow. If local Hydro can provide cheap, fast internet to everyone with power, let them!
" Among its contentions: Municipal telecoms hurt a town's tax base and may violate the First Amendment by placing the distribution of media content under government ownership. "
Violate First Amendment by placing distribution of content under government ownership? Aren't libraries city-owned?
Its sad how hard business owners will try to keep hold of their profits rather than doing what's right for society..
It's basically city-subsidized bandwidth. I got 2048x256 Mbit cable for $25/month, and later bumped it up to 4096x512 (basically uncapped) for $80. When I had to move up to Seattle for work reasons, this was one of the hardest things to give up (since I'm now paying the same price for 768x384 DSL - granted, Speakeasy encourages their customers to run web servers, etc, and I get 2 static IP's).
For businesses, Click! offers extremely competetive rates on connections up to an OC-48, and you can get one just about anywhere in the city. They're also expanding (slowly) into nearby cities, too (Tacoma has had a lot of internal neighborhoods become incorporated, so it's unfortunately not like they're expanding very far).
Do you really need reason for beer? Wingman Brewers
This is great on paper, but the future implications are there for the company to make money off of the service. There will be a point where the company could make a profit right now, and as costs go down then they will grow ever closer to turning around this 'break-even' enterprise to a profit making division of it's company.
The rules of business are not being ignored, it's an investment for the future.
Oh know, someone is trying to provide a service for the community without gouging the community, quick call the guys from Enron.
You know not everything is about making money (I know its shocking isn't it), from the sounds of it, these people have the right idea, invest in cheap broadband access for the community and the payback could very well be a much bigger and better educated community for the future.
You know what founded the US? It was justifiable anger at taxation without representation, thats what led to the American Revolution, not capitalism.
Oh and one other thing, any organisation that exploits third world labour - often under age - is an evil organisation in my books.
It's good you considered this, but given this is being used for last-mile internet (as opposed to actual infrastructure, such as backbones), this isn't really an issue. Besides, if you disrupt power, you're going to take out most people's ability to access the network anyway.
Those who have backup power (and need it) ought to have concern for this, of course. They will probably not be using this as a solution anyway. (Probably should not.)
Don't think of it as a flame---it's more like an argument that does 3d6 fire damage
I was just out visiting in Provo, Utah and they are just starting to roll this out. The power company, Provo Power, is owned by the city (and Provo has well over 100,000 residents, unlike many of the other cities that are doing this.) (Check it out at iProvo.org)
The thing that is really nice about this is that a very large percentage of Provo is populated by students. Brigham Young University (30,000+ students) is in Provo and Utah Valley State College (~25,000 students) is 5 minutes down the road in neighboring Orem. They're actually going around and putting fibre into entire apartment and condo buildings. If that isn't great enough for college students, they're going to be running everything (power, phone, cable, internet) and all at a very nice price. There's several different options for cable and internet, depending on your requirements, and they are all nicely priced.
One cool thing I read is that if you live in Provo and have a business there as well, you'll be able to connect to your business online at something like 50 Mbps.
There's all sorts of cool things about doing this. I can't wait to get back to school!
Well, despite being marked as flamebait I'm going to bite and take your message as sarcasm instead.
The simple fact is that in some cases natural monopolies will occur. Electric service is the classic example of this. My dad worked for a local power company for years. Trust me, the idea is NOT for them to be a non-profit. They are allowed to make a modest profit-- and they DO! It's not Microsoft or Enron style profit, but it's a good clean simple profit that keeps the shareholders happy.
A utility is in the business of providing a service for a reasonable price. If they don't have a reaosonable price, people start voting politicians out. Politicians don't like that, so they make sure the rates are reasonable. And you know what.. it has worked JUST FINE for around a hundred years! At least, until the politicians started deciding to deregulate-- which combined with some other bad decisions allowed Enron to happen.
Think about our phone systems. Great, we now have all these baby bells that have remerged into 2 or 3 big ass companies. None of them are in the business of providing services for a modest profit, they are in the business of gouging their consumers (note: not customers) for as much money as they can! It was mentioned on Slashdot not even a month ago that with the advent of digital telphone switching and IP telephony it has become a LOT cheaper to operate a telecommunications company.
So why are we still paying high prices? Yes, they are lower than years past, but given the decrease in maintenance costs they should be about 10 times lower than they are now. Well, we're still being gouged because we are willing to pay it. We pay what the MARKET WILL BEAR. Telephone service is another natural monopoly. It's easier to just have one company handle it and to simply keep a leash around their neck. This is what AT&T was-- a GOVERNMENT GRANTED monopoly whose rates WERE determined by the government. The government COULD have chosen to simply regulate the shit out of AT&T. What exactly was so bad about them? They spent that money keeping people like Dennis Ritchie, Keith Thompson, and Brian Kerningham working! Working on things that (go figure) actually paved the way for IP telephony and other modern telephone systems as well as helped the entire computing community. Specifically BECAUSE AT&T didn't want to sell it because they had the telephone monopoly, they gave it away.
Shit, they were already on track to turning the telephone system into an entirely digital one. Why? Simple, because their rates were regulated and thus if they could provide the same service for less money then they'd make KILLER profits-- at least until the regulators caught up with them.
So someone please remind me why we're supposed to deregulate everything and allow the next Enron to happen? Why can't we simply learn from history. And just so you all know.. I consider myself to be a conservative. Not the religious zombie head-up-ass conservative that is so prevalent in politics these days. But hmm.. if we think about it.. isn't it actually the democrats that wanted the deregulation? AFAIK, Clinton was praised for his great energy policy which eventually led to Enron. And Reagan didn't make many friends keeping IBM together.. but look where we are today! IBM evolved into a company that makes a killing AND helps the computing community! Isn't that what business is SUPPOSED to be about?
-Dave
Tokyo Denryoku, the country's largest power supplier, currently offers 100Mbps fiber connections for home use in the Tokyo area for around $US50 a month.
It's a local government, not a company. And a town of 14,000 is not rural.
Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
This (AP) article on CNN.com is exactly the sort that could benefit from being on the web. As it is, it is not much more than an electronic reprint of a newspaper-style article. The only "improvements" made are that it is heavy on cruft, what with the ads, partner tie-ins, subscription offers etc..
There's a little generic warning and associated icon at the bottom: "All external sites will open in a new browser. CNN.com does not endorse external sites." That might be helpful if it referred to a practice that was actually being used somewhere on the page. But the only "external" links seem to be to affiliates and advertisers. I guess the old media paranoia about letting us get away is still pretty strongly in effect.
Sorry, that's enough *vague* bitching. Here are some specifics:
What I really want to complain about is that there quite a few interesting details that were merely summarized, and not further explored; and that there were any number of jumping off points that could have been made active.
How about at least a link to the American Public Power Association, or one of the utilitis mentioned as an example? Or better yet, fill in some of those details. Which eleven states prohibit public power companies from offereing teleco services, or force them to charge artificially high rates. (If I live in one, I want to start writing letters!) How about a list (with links, maybe?) of the "511 publicly owned utilities now provide telecom services" mentioned in the "fact box"?
So much potential in this web medium is still wasted. Most news stories on the web just look like a slightly slicker and more colorful version of 1994, back when "old media" "didn't get it".
In a related story, the IRS has recently ruled that the cost of Windows upgrades can NOT be deducted as a gambling loss.
if for no other reason than the simple fact that I hate Verizon and Time Warner. My electric company on the other hand has always been on my good side.