Cablecos, Telcos Working To Strengthen the Duopoly

The LA Times is running a piece on cooperation among cable companies and telcos. No, not cablecos cooperating with telcos; rather, both industries working on industry-wide initiatives aimed at getting a leg up on the other. AT&T, Verizon, and Qwest have been working on a site, Moveroo.com, aimed at easing the pain of people moving within the US — by making it easier for them to hook up with the incumbent telco at their destination, for instance. Odd that there is no mention of which cable services might be available where they are heading. The cablecos are cooperating on a more ambitious initiative to standardize targeted advertising nationwide, using data gathered from the set-top boxes used by Time Warner, Cox, Comcast, Cablevision, Charter, and Bright House Networks. The article quotes a spokesman from a utility consumers' action group: " [The spokesman] said these moves by the telecom and cable industries may be good for the respective businesses, but they almost surely won't be good for consumers. 'All they're doing is creating obstacles to each other's industry from gaining an advantage,' he said. 'That's not competition.' Well, it is. But not the kind that benefits customers."

Comments

Duh!

[zappepcs]

" [The spokesman] said these moves by the telecom and cable industries may be good for the respective businesses, but they almost surely won't be good for consumers. 'All they're doing is creating obstacles to each other's industry from gaining an advantage,' he said. 'That's not competition.' Well, it is. But not the kind that benefits customers."

People have been saying this all along. There is no move by either company that is aimed at achieving anything other than coin for the shareholder. Their level of collusion with the **AA et al is debated, but seems inevitable. We are seeing the beginnings of the next level of content cartel being born. Each is seeking to be the biggest triple or quadruple-play content provider. The rumors that they want to charge you for access to various content on the Internet is not so far fetched as you might at first think. The large ISPs finally figured out that they now own the distribution channel for content in the foreseeable future and want to own it the way that the **AA have previously done.

No, I'm not wearing a tin-foil hat, this is a logical conclusion. Without control of distribution there is no big bucks to be made, no expensive houses, cars, coke parties. Yes, $45 for your standard package, with tiered charges for extra 'Internet channels' like YouTube or Google or MP3World etc.

What they are fighting about now is how to legally divide up the Internet content and not be taken to court. Comcast just lost one of the test battles.

If remuneration for good services rendered were their goal, there would be no court cases. There would be no throttling of traffic. There would be no hints of collusion with the **AA. There would be no one questioning what ISPs should monitor and what they should not.

In an ideal world, a massive boycott of commercial content would put everything in perspective for them. Unfortunately that won't happen. We are all the poorer for it.

What can be done? support independent content makers now. Encourage more bands to use the pay what you like model. Eventually the message that if people won't even pirate your content, you are not worth supporting will become an industry insiders golden rule.

It's time that such a message was sent to those spending money in Washington. Sad that it will never get there.

Big Cable is Wathing You

[overshoot]

Ah, but think of the potential! All of those STBs out there, just waiting to be tuned to ... interesting programming.

The cable company doesn't need to know that the screen is blanked, the audio is off, and you've left for the weekend -- meantime, your STB is religiously searching out reruns of Speed Racer or maybe the original Star Trek. If one person, just one person does it they may think he's really sick and they'll ignore it. And if two people, two people do it, in harmony, they may think they're both faggots and they'll ignore both of them. And three people do it, they may think it's an organization. And can you, can you imagine fifty people a day,I said fifty people a day? And friends they may thinks it's a movement.

Well, Arlo, what if millions -- yes, millions -- of people sold their non-watching cable time to run up the viewership for worthy programs like My Little Pony? Easy enough to coordinate over the internet, after all. Either the producers go into panic mode changing their programming or else they give up on spying on their "customers." Either way, it's all good.