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Time Warner Wins Ohio-Wide Cable Franchise
An anonymous reader writes "Time Warner Cable has received a state-wide franchise agreement in Ohio. Time Warner's agreement covers 260 communities in 60 of Ohio's 88 counties, for 10 years. AT&T was the first to earn a state-wide franchise contract, after a law was passed in September that allowed operators to negotiate a single state-wide agreement. In the past operators negotiated franchise agreements at the local level."
...hate living in Ohio. So far this year, they've given my SSN away to crooks, gave the guy that lost it less than a slap on the wrist, then wasted taxpayer money on a 'fix' for it, and now this.
Fortunately, I'm lucky enough to be in a rural area with this excellent local phone company which has just started laying fiber all around town (which provides IPTV). Time Warner has sent a drone to my house three times trying to switch me to their shitty service. One of them actually claimed that I wouldn't be able to use their service because of the digital switchover!
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I think you're onto something here. Rhode Island passed something similar in the past year allowing Verizon to sell FiOS statewide without having to negotiate with each little town. What was happening before was Verizon would have to go kiss every little town selectman's ass handing over fist-fulls of money at a time just to have permission to offer FiOS tv and internet in their town. Negotiations were taking over a year in some instances and ended with Verizon handing over millions of dollars just to be able to offer people faster internet access.
In that instance individual town licenses were a barrier to competition, not an encouragement for it. Somehow the state senators and reps in RI grew big enough balls to tell their local piddly town governments to screw off and they just gave Verizon a state-wide license. Result? Statewide fios deployment in RI.
Verizon's looking to do the same thing right now in Massachusetts. Each town wanted a bigger bribe than the last just to be able to offer fiber optic internet service to the residents. So this past summer, fed up with greedy local governments, Verizon pulled out of all local negotiations in progress and has announced they won't be applying for anymore. They want a state-wide license like time-warner just got here in Ohio and like Verizon already has in RI. Until they get it, no more fios expansion to any new towns in Mass.
There, so now that that's out there now try and tell me how a state-wide franchise is going to hold back progress any more than the old town-by-town franchise scheme. I know Telco companies aren't the epitome of business ethics and they could be upgrading their networks a lot faster but these local town governments aren't exactly making it easy.
Are there any other cable companies right now?
Yes, Wideopenwest is available in some areas. I call them about once every two months to see if they have service in my neighborhood. I had them in the place I lived about 5 miles from where I am now. They were great. The service worked almost all the time, and when it didn't they always tried to be helpful about getting it fixed. For broadband, you bought (or rented from them) your cablemodem, so you had a choice to buy something decent and not get stuck with some used/broken POS. Good luck getting T/W to acknowledge you have a problem that isn't somehow your fault.
This "agreement" seems to suggest less competition - making it even more unlikely for a company like WOW to expand their service area.
There is very little future in being right when your boss is wrong.
Thank you, I was beginning to wonder if I had wandered into bizarro-land or something! I cannot for the life of me fathom the negative reaction to this. Wisconsin is currently passing a similar bill, and I am 100% in favor of it. Previously, when a new provider wanted to enter a community, they wouldn't be able to, because some other cable company was granted an exclusive contract for that community.
Now, if Time Warner wants to compete with Comcast, AT&T, Verizon, or whomever else, they can. They get the statewide contract, and no more messing around with local politicos with delusions of grandeur. It levels the playing field so that anyone can compete.
There's a reason that the cable companies have been running a campaign against such bills... they don't want to have to compete. They like the cushy exclusive local contracts because it means they only have to worry about actually doing enough of their job to make it look good every few years when the contract comes up for renewal... then pay off enough politicians to get them to either be in favor of the new contract without even reading it, or better yet, be 'sick' on the day it's up for renewal.
Yes, but sit back and enjoy as everyone talks about monopolies, lack of competition, etc. As I understand it, the law actually does the opposite. Now the phone company can start to roll out tv services. Yes, there is a plan by some to use this law to do just that.
The world is made by those who show up for the job.