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Prying Open the Cable Market
garzpacho writes "In an interview, FCC chief Brian Martin discusses his efforts to make it easier for new entrants--especially telecoms-- to compete with traditional cable and satellite companies in delivering video services. The focus of this effort seems to be in addressing local franchising authorities' current bias towards incumbents. He also talks about current congressional efforts to enact national franchise legislation."
I already hate their phone service enough! I don't want them encroaching on my television. At least maybe we'll get the cable and satelitte companies to start offering local and long distance packages in all markets.
Then we can have a competitive playing field.
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I work for a cable company. Television signal and advanced services (VOD, PPV, High Speed Internet) are all distributed from the headend (Our satellite base station). There is really nothing to be gained by sharing the lines from a services standpoint, as the incumbant is already trying to build service capacity/line quality so we can compete with telcos in the telephony field and high speed internet. The reason CATV companies are pushing for this is that the bandwidth required for these services are very cheap and represent a high yield of return. I cannot see how the price would improve by sub leasing the lines either, as the incumbent pays Franchise fees to the local municipality for the privelage of doing business in the area, these fees would also be passed along and the equipment/manpower utilized would likely be the same techs/contractors who are accustomed to working for a certain wage. I could be wrong and I am not in the business aspect, so I dont know what our markup is.
Beware the fury of a patient man
- John Dryden
My experience (in central Iowa) is that the cable companies have been upgrading their systems for the last 5-7 years. They're spending millions and millions to upgrade their own networks. They've obviously been planning on offering new services (cable modems, VOD, more channels, more ppv, hdtv, VOIP, ...) for quite some time.
Why haven't the telecoms be doing the same? Why didn't they push this issue earlier? As far as I can tell, Verizon is the only telco that is really serious about upgrading and using fiber to the doorstep.
Nick
"A plan fiendishly clever in its intricacies"- Homer Simpson
1. Have the government install it [by it I mean fibre or pipe to door] and companies are taxed, e.g. 1% or something to support it
... hmmm 800kbit modem vs. 9.6kbit cell ... hmm ... which costs more...
2. Have one company install pipe, own it, do whatever it wants
3. Realize that the CUSTOMERS are paying for the pipe and ultimately they should have a say on how they use it [e.g. comcast could stop screwing vonage users for instance]
I mean they put a coax from the box to my house once, like five years ago. Why would [or should] I pay a monthly fee for what amounts to 20 minutes of time and five dollars worth of cable?
As for the miles and miles of cable that joins up the infrastructure I'd like to think that decades of paying stupidly high charges would have covered that.
The problem is they say "the cable is worth 389 million" so every year they tell the customer they have to recoup that when the cable has long since been bought and paid for.
Now on the other hand if we just had the government maintain it and fairly lease it out to bidders [that being the gotcha] we wouldn't have these problems. As for the "let capitalism run its course" folk look where we are at now.
Why can I send 20 gigs of data ten thousand miles for 30$/month when I can't make a phone call [which is scratchy and all] overseas for anything less than 3 dollars a minute [on my cell].
Telcos and the like can shove their heads up their collective asses.
Tom
Someday, I'll have a real sig.