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FCC To End Exclusive Cable For Apartments
spiffyman writes "The New York Times is reporting that on Wednesday the FCC will end exclusive contracts to provide cable service to apartment buildings. Commission Chairman Kevin J. Martin is quoted as saying that cable prices have risen 'about 93 percent in the last 10 years' and that the FCC hopes to see more competition out of this move. This is a step in the right direction. In my apartment, for example, I have (dead) outlets for one cable company but am forced to go with the higher-priced firm. Moves like this will help those who live in areas where competition — even minimal competition — exists. The article also discusses the impact this may have on low- to middle-income families, who disproportionately live in apartment complexes."
What do you dislike about Time Warner? Granted, it's not exactly cheap (no cable is!)... but I do like how all non-premium channels are sent in unencrypted QAM (meaning cablecards need not apply). At least, that's the way it is in my area - and it plays really well with my HTPC. It really bums me out that I'm moving soon, and will probably have to get Cox, and will then be limited to OTA HD.
Um, not like I want to defend cable companies and their pricing, but "93% in 10 years" is to my mind an inflammatory way of saying "an average of 6.7% per year over the last 10 years." Given that overall the consumer price index has averaged about a 3% increase per year over that period, cable prices are bad, but not as bad as the quote makes it sound. Then again, entire industries (credit cards, for example) owe their existence due to people's inability to compute compounded interest, so perhaps the wording should be no surprise.
This is a joke. I live in MD near Washington DC and live in an apt complex (I can feel the weird stockers already!). This will do nothing to help the problem. In the handful of places that have more then one cable option fab for them, but almost everywhere in the US the county signs an exclusive deal with the cable people... Not the apt owners.
Until the FCC does something to make it faster for cable peoples to get into an area and makes it so the county can't sign an exclusive deal... Well lets just say I won't be holding my breath.
Pete/Petri "damn, my chainsaw is clogged with 1's and 0's again." --clyde
Though my home is very close to their office, service appointments have been at the end of their window, the last one more than an hour after the window closed. Apparently I'm being scheduled to be at the end of the return to the office. The periods always seem to overlap my recording periods at the end as well, so disruption is maximized. I do like how all non-premium channels are sent in unencrypted QAM (meaning cablecards need not apply). At least, that's the way it is in my area Not true in all areas. Here only the broadcast channels are unencrypted, and it was like pulling teeth to get my first Firewire-enabled HD cable box.
The only competition here is with satellite, with Dish being hawked by the landline phone company and DirecTV wanting to sign you up for 5 rooms or more.
Oh, say does that Star-Spangled Banner entwine / The myrtle of Venus with Bacchus's vine?
Ending these exclusive contracts is a good idea and I'm glad the FTC is doing this. The only problem is I don't see this really having an impact on Cable prices. The problem is a vast majority of people still won't have a choice since cable companies already divide up local areas.
For example the apartment I live in doesn't have an exclusive contract but the ONLY company I can get cable with is Comcast. Same thing is true at my Parent's house and they live 2000 miles away in another state. We won't see cable prices decrease until we start to see multiple cable companies competing for business in the same city. The large cable operators would rather just divide up the country into local monopolies than actually compete on price.
My parents service is another good example of how these companies work. Their cable company Time Warner decided to trade their city for another city with Comcast. Out went their former internet service and in came Comcast with the exact same package only $20 more, with P2P throttling. Their city doesn't have an exclusive franchise agreement with any cable company, and any company would be welcome to come in and establish a second franchise. No one wants to bother since they can all make more being little local monopolies sucking their customers dry.
What are low-income families doing with cable anyway? I don't mean to sound like Scrooge, but it pisses me off when an elementary school kid shows up at school without a coat in the dead of winter because his parents "can't afford one," but they sure can afford to pay the cable bill every month. /rant
My grandmother used anecdotal evidence all the time, and she lived to be 120 years old.
I sure got jerked around by the ISP that had an exclusive deal at my apartment in college. The first year the deal was with a company that couldn't keep the connection up reliably and had very little bandwidth. Then that company went out of business and they went with the local cable company that most people in town were reasonably happy with (Insight Broadband in Champaign). But since they had an exclusive deal on the building they put the screws to us: charged us $20/month per person (I had two roommates, so combined we paid twice as much as we would have normally) and, even worse, put us behind NAT. Yes, that's right, the whole fucking building behind one IP address. I wrote a letter to them (the gist of it being, "If you don't give me an IP address it's not Internet service, it's web'n'email service, which is not what I signed up for"). They didn't even respond.
I blame myself for the first year... I really should have read more closely and figured out whether the company was any good. The second year I really got blindsided, though... the landlord thought the price was $20/mo. for the three of us and didn't find out otherwise until after we'd signed the lease and made our first payment towards Internet service... the NAT thing I didn't know until I booted my computer and saw the dhclient spew scroll by. Ten-dot... hey!
As has already been mentioned, a basic cable connection is often included in apartment prices. When these contracts are done away with, perhaps renters will be able to insist on not getting the connection and can go find a cheaper option themselves. Or, barring that, the apartment complex will be able to offer cheaper packages. Not that they will, but...
Beside all that, there is the simple fact that cable connections are often the only forms of high-speed Internet access available to many families. And it's plain that Internet access is a necessity, or at least a massive benefit, to the children of these families. Sometimes the library just isn't a viable option. So I, for one, wholeheartedly approve of the FCC's action and hope it leads to lower prices for families who need the cable companies' services.
So you can laugh all you want to...
Except if you live here.
We moved in thinking "Hey...what a deal. Cat5 in the walls...great!"
Until we found we couldn't get Cable internet...from anyone. We were forced into the pre-bundled ATT Home Entertainment (and let me tell you, their billing group provided HOURS of entertainment with double-billing, etc.)
The max DSL speed at the property? 256k. And that was on the blink 2-3x a month.
You could get any DirecTV package you wanted...as long as you didn't want to use a DVR or get any of the sports packages.
The phone service...well, it was analog phone, and they couldn't even get that to work well. And a phone line was required in order to use the alarm system and DirecTV pay-per-view.
This ruling DOESN'T affect properties like One Pearl Place - so get it in writing ahead of time. While we paid $100/mo. for our craptastic bundle, the people across the street - fifty feet away - were getting Comcast (and all that entails...like 6Mb peak speeds) along with more and better channels that worked with their DVRs for $70.00 a month.
Nice step forward. Now take the other step - make ANY exclusive Internet/TV/Phone deals illegal.
What's the status of Over-the-Air Broadcast TV? Is that still available? I have cable but I am moving soon and I don't want to sign up for cable but would be happy to get the basic 5 or 6 channels that are supposed to be free. Do the rabbit ears still do the trick? Will I need to upgrade to a "digital broadcast" receiver when the government cuts off the broadcast of TV (which I think is scheduled for 2008)?
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In my area, Cox sends all the broadcast network channels in unencrypted QAM (if it's available OTA, it's available unencrypted QAM). Does Time Warner send HD versions of "expanded basic" cable channels (e.g. Discovery HD) as unencrypted QAM too??
What really needs to happen is that exclusive agrements of any kind for utility providers need to be disallowed. Among others: 1) Electricity 2) Natural Gas 3) Phone Service 4) Cable Television 5) Internet Access Basicly there need to be universal infrastructure installation requirements which would then allow any provider willing to build such an infrastructure to do so without a need for negotiating with every city, town, county and state in the area for permission to do so. Groups of such utilities could also band together to shere the installation costs. Only a full scale measure such as this would allow true and fair competition. The current trend of allwoing unregulated monopolies is completely in the disinterest of the consumer.