Cable Wants to Cut the Cord

skatephat420 writes "Wired News has featured an article on how "the cable industry wants you to chuck your cable -- at least when you're outside the house. The addition of a fourth wireless component to the cable package is now affectionately known as the 'quadruple play.'" With this addition to the standard package of voice, video and data, how long is it going to take DSL to compete?"

Comments

Re:DSL is still ahead in my book.

[ScytheBlade1]

Here's the thing. Comcast (shut up about what the ToS says, really) allows you to do that.

When they started to crack down on spam, they didn't just kill off :25. They watched the traffic for huge amounts of e-mail, scanned the e-mails, and then cut off the spammers.

They could have shut off :25 in the blink of an eye, but instead they invested actual money into fixing the problem without pissing off their competent user base. I would know, I'm part of that user base. Additionally, I have some friends working Comcast tech support, and they can likewise vouch for what I've said.

Re:Verizon has come out of nowhere

[moosesocks]

Mod parent up!

Verizon has made a tremendous investment into their infrastructure, and is rolling out their fiber network faster than they rolled out their DSL network. I've had FIOS for about 3 weeks now, and I must say that it's anything short of amazing.

Where Verizon has really delivered, though, is on price. Unlike Cable, Verizon actually has competitors. Cable TV loves price-fixing, and it's rare to see a community with more than one cable franchise, allowing the companies to charge exorbitant rates while gouging their customers. The remarkable thing about Verizon's DSL/FiOS offerings is that they're significantly cheaper than anything else out there. I pay $35/month for 5/2mbps fibre, while getting 3/.768 service from my cable co. costs $60/month. The STATEWIDE franchises that the cable companies have been granted are striking fear into the hearts of the cable companies. I fully expect a huge legal battle to come out of this debating the legality of such franchises to begin with -- Cable is and always has been a legal monopoly. Healthy competition (Verizon in this case) drives prices down. Hopefully once FiOS-TV is rolled out, the cable co's will be forced to cut their rates and start expanding their HD offerings -- FiOS-TV is said to have 300 channels, about 75 of which are in HD.

  I suppose Verizon expects a huge return on their investment in the fibre network. It's costing them a mint. A typical fios install takes 3 installers about 6-8 hours per residence just to do the premesis wiring and termination. On the up-side, the new network will cost them a lot less to operate than their old copper network. Reduced power draw, smaller local COs, and increased reliability to name a few, not to mention that they've finally rid themselves of copper wiring.

Hopefully this and satelitte will finally kill off the corrupt cable-tv industry.