Is Comcast Heading the Way of the Dinosaur?

CasualRepartee writes "Comcast has been one of the most successful cable companies in the world; in many parts of the U.S., Comcast sits pretty on huge user bases that don't have many viable high-speed internet alternatives. However, poor customer service, slow speeds and generally poor business practices could make the once-great internet giant another extinct dinosaur, no ice age required. The fact of the matter is this: Comcast is no longer the biggest and the best. Cable is taking a distant back seat to Verizon's FiOS (fiber optic service), which delivers speeds up to 50 Mbps download and 10 Mbps upload speeds. Unlike Comcast, FiOS delivers the full range of bandwidth to each user, whereas Comcast users are forced to share bandwidth with other users on the same coaxial cable, causing speeds to fluctuate dramatically with usage."

Comments

Re:Why censorship?

[stonecypher]

Where do people get the idea that censorship is the sole domain of government? A business/school/church/organization/publication/etc. are all capable of censorship.

No, they aren't. Censorship doesn't mean "we choose not to run your piece." Censorship means "you may not run your piece anywhere." No business, church, school, organization or publication can prevent me from publishing my work; all they can do is decline their own involvement. The word comes from the latin "censura" meaning judgement, and became attached to the judgement of morals and ethics in 1592. The role of censura in Roman government was to evaluate whether or not a piece may be distributed: a publisher would go to the censura, and ask whether they may disseminate the author's work, after they'd decided that they wanted to. This was one of the mechanisms of suppressing anti-governmental or anti-praetorian text, and was frequently the means by which revolutions were crushed.

Of course, given that you're insisting that something you believe is true, ignorant of reference work, I'm willing to bet you're a descriptivist, and that you have no idea what descriptivism is. Giant shock: the language doesn't change just because you're no good at it. You can, in fact, be wrong; just because a group of people misuses a word doesn't mean its meaning has changed.

If what you said about censorship was true, then American censorship law would make no sense whatsoever. How could the government say that censorship would never, ever happen in this country, if any random company could censor?

Where do people get the idea that censorship is the sole domain of government?

From having a familiarity with a word borne of literature, legal context, or just knowing what they're talking about. Where do you get the idea otherwise? Your buddy Stan?

Re:I hate Comcast

[$pace6host]

We had Comcast for years, and they took advantage of their monopoly in this area, raised rates to ridiculous levels, offered poor signal quality, and were slow in improving the infrastructure. My favorite Comcastic tactic is charging your existing customers twice what you charge your new customers -- unless the existing customers threaten to leave. Then they can find it in their hearts to offer an existing customer that price, too. Guess most of their customers don't notice there are two prices. We ended up on DSL instead of cable modem because it took them so long to offer broadband in the area. Now, I won't say Verizon is saintly, at all, but the customer service has been at least equivalent, the picture quality is incredible, we have tons more channels, and we're paying about the same as we used to pay before (for DSL from Vz + analog cable from Comcast). Comcast needs to wake up and smell the competition. We need them to stay around to serve the same purpose to Verizon when Verizon turns around and screws us in a few years. Oh, don't worry, they will. Let's hope the Comcastasaurus can adapt.