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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."
Across the road is the company I've wanted. They have excellent packages at good prices, but the one for my block has poorer packages and a poor reputation for service. I'm hoping this means both can compete, along with AT&T, for my block of flats, which should give me better options and service. Though I still smell a fish. There's been competition between cable and satellite for years, but prices are still rather steep.
Cable is such a swindle I haven't give it much thought. The FCC screws up often enough, it's about time they did something right.
ISR TV watches you, &c. &c. &c.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
Comment removed based on user account deletion
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.
But there are a few problems:
1: Areas where these limitations are in effect typically have low competition anyway, due to the stranglehold the dominant company has in the area.
2: Getting landlords and property managers to figure out how to work out the details between different cable/satellite/phone companies will be a comedy of errors at best.
3: Landlords/property managers will come up with (or be told by the existing contracted company) bull such as "You're not allowed to do that because they have to run more wires through the wall" or "You can't do that because you'd have to mount an ugly satellite dish on the exterior of the building" (even if not true).
It's a step in the right direction, though I think they should simply ban the bundling of these services to your rental agreement entirely. Having a choice is one thing, but getting the money back (because you're opting out of the bundled service) is another. How will you know that the $50 you get back on rent every month is accurate?
the next logical step would be the Internet providers...
Since 1996, apartment dwellers have had the right to have a dish installed in an unobtrusive manner. The law trumps all lease agreements and landlord's rules. In my old apartment, it seemed like every other apartment had one installed, either on a pole in the back of a 1st floor unit or on the balcony of a 2nd floor unit.
Bill Clinton: Pimp we can believe in. - The Shirt!!!
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
Just what the world needs, cheaper access to TV ads.
The Generation
I'd say something witty here, but I'm not that bright.
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.
The problem with cable/satellite is not the lack of competition by service providers (though I'm not thrilled by that). The big problem is the lack of competition by content providers.
Back in the 80s, anybody with an uplink could start a cable channel. They still can, but they have no hope of finding any local cable companies to carry them. All their bandwidth is used up by big media companies who have gamed the system so that cable companies have to carry all kinds of crap, and pay premium prices for it. Until that changes, you'll be shelling out.
Or you could just do without. I mean, it's only TV.
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!
What are low-income families doing with cable anyway?
Some apartments come with cable in much the same way that some include certain utilities.
Everything I need to know I learned by killing smart people and eating their brains.
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...
The article also discusses the impact this may have on low- to middle-income families, who disproportionately live in apartment complexes."
Now I hate cable monopolies as much as the next guy (have Comcast because I practically live in a forest that prevents view of satellites). But come on - you don't *need* cable. If people are paying the cable bill over, say, rent, groceries, or health insurance, there's a clear imbalance of priorities here.
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.
I think you missed the point completely.
Internet != basic need. Kids who are hungry, or cold in the winter without appropriate clothing, but who's parents pay for high speed internets rather than a coat are the issue. Not poor people having internet.
...a vast 500 channel waste-land. The best choice with Cable TV is to cancel it altogether.
I work for an ISP (Webpass) that does this exclusively-- we bring a T3-speed (or higher) connection into an apartment or condo building and share it with the residents. We come across all kinds of nonsense with [insert national cable company conglomerate here]. They take up entire backboards in telecom closets. They take our equipment off the wall and leave it dangling. They lock up everyone's termination lines in a box to keep out competition. They pull in-use (and marked) pairs off of phone boards to bring in their crappy phone service. I could rant on and on.
All in all, they suck. We've come across a lot of building managers who actually refuse to let them into a building, due to some dispute. Sometimes they charge up to $30,000 to come into a building, and then demand an exclusive contract. It would be good to see some more healthy competition to keep these bastards from monopolizing.
Elderly and disabled.
"Don't get out much anywhere."
But any adult over thirty is going to find the pickings mighty slim at Blockbuster or the suburban multiplex. You don't feel that your time has been wasted when you come across a series like Deadwood or The Sopranos.
Sports fans.
Tickets are priced out of reach. Transportation is priced out of reach. The Hispanic may want to see some soccer action. The Canadian, hockey.
The FCC should look to end exclusive cable contracts for cities.
This is leftover from the early cable days. In the early days, this was required to get any provider to cover the expense of building a market. The risk was way too high of stringing an infrastructure expecting at least 50% market penetration and having a competitor aim at the same market and also requiring over 50% to break even on buildout, so they underpriced to gain market share, but now need 80% market penetration to break even. This left the first in the market bankrupt and unable to recover costs and pay the loan as they now have 10% of the market.
These exclusive contracts should have an expiration date. Some don't. Those that don't are very hard to get the company to release. Independant homeowners with the option of satelite is the wedge that is breaking up some of these exclusive markets. They have shouted contract violation by permitting residents to use satelite, but the satelite industry has fought back and won.
http://www.csmonitor.com/2006/1023/p04s01-ussc.html
The cable industry is fighting back and convincing cities they are losing tax revenue, so please tax the competition to even back up the playing field. And the fight continues.
http://www.stopsatellitetax.com/
The truth shall set you free!
Yes, you wanted to (well, as much as anyone "wants" to pay anything, for anything, anyway). After all, they didn't call up your work and hold your check hostage unless you paid them $115/mo, nor were they withholding your food, water, air, or even your shelter, if you quit paying. The service was self-evidently worth at least that $115/mo. to you or you wouldn't have been paying it, TV or no TV.
/need/ TV, so it was and is a luxury... a luxury you were willing to spend at least $115/mo. on.
After all, TVs aren't like food, water and shelter, or even like phone service or a car with gas, insurance and maintenance. It's arguable people need those, tho plenty of folks do get by without the latter set anyway. I've yet to see anyone demonstrate they
Note that I haven't had TV in years, so it's certainly doable. Computers took up the time I used to spend watching TV. I "didn't want" to pay the $1100+ I just paid for the pair of dual-core Opteron 290 upgrades I have coming in this morning, either, but it turns out I wanted them more than the money, and more than other stuff I would have otherwise purchased with that money, after all! =8^) It would appear you likewise wanted the service more than that $115/mo, or anything else you could have done with that money, too, so yes, you wanted it, were willing to pay for it, and thru negligence if nothing else, put yourself in a situation where you WOULD be paying for it! All they did is see a mark more than willing to pay that price, and take advantage of that fact.
Duncan
Duncan
"Every nonfree program has a lord, a master,
and if you use the program, he is your master."
R Stallman
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
Show me the kid and show me the cable bill. Then and only then will I mod you up to +4. Ronald Reagan was the past master of the welfare anecdote. What became real to him didn't need any better proof.
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.
Growing up as one of those low-income kids with cable, I agree that many families had different priorities than more affluent families. I always thought that this was one contributing factor that continued the cycle of poverty. However, I would not be too harsh on those families and paint everyone with the same brush.
Since many low-income families typically work more to support the family (especially in a single parent household), cable is seen as a necessity to babysit children while the parent(s) are at work. As mentioned previously, cable has entertainment value that is seen as necessary for an already stressed life.
Also, even in elementary school, kids are group-oriented and clothing choices are just one way to exclude others from a group. Perhaps the coatless child had a winter coat that was dirty and full of holes. Despite the cold weather, some kids would rather be cold than be laughed at. Also, the child may have removed the coat after he left his house. In the winter I had to wear an ugly used woolen cap on my head at the insistence of my grandma. But as soon as I was out of sight, I removed it because I didn't want to be laughed at. Social pressure and fear of embarrassment can be very powerful to young children.
Unfortunately, many families are unaware of the numerous organizations that will provide free clothing for children upon request. Another factor is that some low-income parents did not start off poor. Loss of job, high medical expenses, etc. can cause families to become poor. Some people are too proud to admit they need help. They don't realize that this pride impacts the welfare of their children, but people are not always rational and are sometimes blind to issues right in front of their face.
So don't be quick to judge disadvantaged families. A more helpful approach would be to have the schools work with local charity organizations to anonymously provide coats to children for free as needed. I'm sure there are other ways to be helpful without being condescending. Sometimes pride is the only thing a person has.
Sorry for my rant but I've encountered too many people (even friends) of the opinion that the poor (whether on or off welfare) were lazy, stupid and lacked drive. While this may be true for some, most families were decent hard-working individuals caught up in a bad situation and just trying to make ends meet. I always took the opportunity to inform others that the situation was not always so simple. Instead of criticizing those in need and learning to understand the motives behind people's actions, the needs of others can be tended to more effectively.