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Charter Launches 60 Mbps Service
ndogg writes "While other companies are throttling their services, and capping bandwidth, Charter Communications, the cable company, is launching a 60/5 Internet service, starting in St. Louis, MO. It's certainly not cheap, starting at 129.99 per month (add another 10 if it's not being bundled with television or phone.) Currently, it's the fastest down stream speed available, and being a cable company, they potentially have greater reach than FiOS." However, there may be a risk to putting too much money down on this service; Charter Communications as a company faces some serious financial problems right now. As reader Afforess writes, "rumors abound that Paul Allen may just cut his losses and run," by selling the company. (Allen is the majority stockholder.)
I don't care so much about the download speed of 60 Mbit/s (although it would allow streaming of live HD, which requires 6 - 10 Mbit/s sustained).
What I'd love is the upload bandwidth of 5 Mbit/s. Forget about file swapping: the killer app for the family is video conferencing that works. Can you see me? I'm tired of the pixellized, ugly, breaking video chat on skype.
Of course, I wouldn't trust a soon-to-be-bankrupt provider on anything, especially the promise that they don't plan to throttle the traffic. Yeah, right!
--
5 Reasons You Shouldnâ(TM)t Incorporate Your Business
Just plug it straight into my veins... oh yeah, that's the good stuff.
According to Fawaz, Charter will not impose bandwidth-usage caps on any of its high-speed Internet subscribers. By contrast, Comcast's policies limit users to 250 Gigabytes of data consumption per month.
Nice. Very nice. I guess there are providers out there interested in competing on the technical merits of their service, while giving the consumers what they want.
512 MB RAM, 20 GB disk, 200 GB transfer, five datacenters. $19.95/month.
Charter stock trades at 9 cents a share today. That's up from 8 cents yesterday.
And with what limitation?
If its anything like comcast you can burn thru that in no time. Top speed ratings are worthless if you cant actually use it.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
from wikipedia:
"On January 28, 2009, Charter Communications reportedly filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy."
Charter Communications
We have this via VDSL in several countries in Europe since beginning of last year, for approx. 45-50 USD a month, but with an upstream of 5-20 mbps (depending on linenoise and distance to the DSLAM).
As a previous charter customer, I wont ever re-subscribe to charter if I have the choice of providers. For the first year I had charter latency was worse than dial up. All their customer service would tell us is that "It's a known issue and it's bound to improve.. sometime." No credits, no refunds, just.. that's how it is, deal with it or cancel your account. After they upgraded their backbone, they blocked port 25, 80, 110, and most of the server ports inbound, and their upload speed was really, really poor. (5 mbs service, with 128k upload MAX) I would not want 60mbs internet if they blocked nearly everything I want to do on the internet.
Come to Finland. http://www.welho.fi/homes/broadband/cableandadslbroadbandsubscriptions/welho100m/tabid/72495/Default.aspx We've had that for about a year now. Oh, and look: http://www.welho.fi/homes/broadband/cableandadslbroadbandsubscriptions/welho110m/tabid/72504/Default.aspx
fastest? no.
As an example, there are several providers that have 1Gbps (1000Mbps) service in Japan
here's one
here's another
Maybe the fastest for US cable internet companies thus far but it's nowhere near being the fastest, period.
What is the cap? Can you only get to the max of 60meg in off hours?
Incedently, Charter is Paul Allen's company. They are bleeding money right now with a stock price of... EIGHT CENTS! They've been skirting insolvency for a few years now and the Securities and Exchange Commission is saying that if they fail to refinance some of their debt, they will be forced into bankruptcy.
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/businesstechnology/2008683150_charter29.html
If you want news from today, you have to come back tomorrow.
Fiber! That's what I want and I want it from a real service provider darn it!
I live in San Francisco. It is shocking that there aren't any around. I mean, there are huge amounts of dark fiber under the streets (and they seem to put more in every day).
I'd take 10 Mbps symmetric. I'd pay $100/mo for it and if they were going to do video on demand, I'd go to $140.
I love the 20/20mb/s service i get with FiOS. My friends leech off my FTP at 1MB/s. and for only 70 USD. I wanted the upload, I could care less about down. I do cheer more competition in these speeds that can only help bring prices down across the board.
~
So? In Sweden you can get 60-100/8-10 Mbps for $33.7 per month. Including phone and 10GB online backup.
RIAA/MPAA
Doctors destroy health, lawyers destroy justice, universities destroy knowledge, religion destroys spirituality
Man, that makes my RoadRunner Turbo (22 Mbit down/ 2 Mbit up) look like crap!
This is a cable connection. Sure, they advertise 60Mbps, but your mileage will vary, namely far down. In the evening you will likely NEVER hit that, especially if a lot of people in your neighborhood are online. That'll saturate a shared cable region in no time. That and your latency is probably going to suck. Maybe I'm just bitter, but I just ditched Commiecast 8Mbps service for 7Mbps DSL and I'm happy as hell that I did. No more random connection drops, no more shitty latency spikes, just a clean connection so far. I hate cable.
But call me back when you have 60/60 at a reasonable price.
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
What is the catch behind 60 Mbps service? (Keep in mind, that cable TV itself is a 100 Mbps service.) Are there services that will be lost? Ports blocked? Contracts with MPAA/RIAA under the table? Or is Paul Allen and St. Louis Charter GM Steve Trippe on their way to Barbados with a corporate bonus they do not deserve?
Charter has dropped nearly ALL local public access programming. You want to have a show on public access? Good Luck with that.
Due to conflicts with the Belo Corporation, local CBS affiliate KMOV is still not available in HD as February 17 rapidly approaches.
The Rapture is NOT an exit strategy.
Charter is the cable company in rural areas, while Comcast gets the major cities. This is one of those areas that I don't fully understand the legislation at the state level that would allow this. How does Comcast get Ann Arbor, Brighton, most of the Detroit suburbs and Charter has to handle the rural areas of Livingston, Jackson, Washtenaw, Wayne, etc.
What a brilliant deal for Comcast. They get densely populated areas where their return on infrastructure investments are the best, and where more affluent people live, and Charter gets to handle all the heavy lifting of running a cable network in the hard to reach places.
I always wondered how that cherry-pick arrangement came to pass, if any of you know, please respond because that would perhaps enlighten us as to Charter's financial woes.
On the flip side of that, I visited a datacenter for Charter and it was really nice, obvious they spent alot on it.
Oh, and BTW, Charter filed Chapter 11 yesterday.
Bredbandsbolaget charges 349 SEK for this including telephony (which normally cost 125 SEK by the regular network.)
349 Swedish kronor = 43.616973 U.S. dollars
Normal price is written as 399 sek for 60 mbps, 50 sek for telephony and 100 sek off the price.
To all the people who are going to point out how much better broadband is elsewhere.
How much do you pay for an 1100 sq ft (102 m^2) apartment? How much do you pay for energy? For gas? For food?
Do you REALLY want to get in to a cost of living comparison between, say, Tokyo and here? Because I will GLADLY accept my crappy 12Mbps Comcast internet in exchange for 3-4 times more living space.
And, by the way, "gigabit" Internet service often isn't. My university has "gigabit" Internet service (in that the computer labs are wired with GigE and 10G uplinks), but the entire campus shares 4Gbps of Internet bandwidth. For anything but other universities (Internet2) or Akamai (local mirror), it's not significantly faster than the 12Mbps Comcast I have at my apartment. Of course, the fact that everyone is torrenting probably has something to do with that.
I guess it's just me, or the local market I live in, but I can get 50/5 fiber service for $80/month now. WiMAX services in the area offer up to 150/150 (no, that's not a typo).
Local university speed tests are pushing 90 down and 80 up.
I guess I'm just lucky in my area. Always has seemingly been ahead of the bandwidth curve. Nothing against others offering this, as it's definitely fast.
If they go out of business, then you don't pay.
Most likely someone will buy them the bankruptcy and they will need to honor the previous contract for consumers.
Now, I wouldn't pay any in advance.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
I'd never realized that Paul Allen had anything to do with Charter, let alone ran it. I admit that I did very little homework on them before signing up... just enough to find out they were the only viable broadband option available to me where I live (DSL is too far from a switch and therefore very slow, there are no other cable companies in the municipality because of an exclusivity contract, and there's simply no way I can afford a T# or satellite connection). I also soon found out that they're ridiculously overpriced, have terrible customer support, routinely underserve their customers and can't even manage a channel numbering system that remotely reflects the actual FCC granted channels the networks broadcast over.
It figures that only a company run by a Microsoft exec could actually make my blood boil worse than Comcast.
Try not to take me more seriously than I take myself.
Just FYI, other cable companies are starting to roll higher service plans.
Rollout to major metro areas is spotty, but will continue to spread.
Expect uploads to be on the increase as well
**AA
Check out Pandora by Music Genome Project
I know I'm probably begging to be flamed, but a disclaimer, I work for Charter in the field. The funny thing about this whole thing is the fact that it wasn't rolled out very well. I live in the St. Louis metro area where it's being rolled out, and when I called around to ask where exactly it would be, no one could give me a straight answer. I just want the upload.
Charter's St. Louis backbone to Sprint is only OC-12 at best, so several 60mb users will kill that quick. Since they are going bankrupt, they will cut that backbone down. Don't waste your money. I'd rather have satellite internet.
I had VDSL in the US too (Qwest test market). Max speed available 3 mbps down/1mbps up. Woo hoo! Yeah, right. It's not the technologies used or not used in the US, it's the providers. Apparently the telcos are less greedy and stupid over where you are in Europe. Qwest chose to use the bandwidth to deliver TV service tried compete with the cable company. They pulled the VDSL out a few months ago and switched me to their 7mbps/864kbps ADSL2 service. Much better service (no outages so far, compared to frequent outages on VDSL), and it was a free upgrade to me too. Sadly, I don't think America will ever be "out of the past" on this as long as we have we have the current group of greedy schmucks running the telcom companies.
Money down? I see no mention of 'money down' anywhere except the FUD warning. You pay your monthly fee, and you get your internet. There's nothing to be scared of.
"If you make people think they're thinking, they'll love you; But if you really make them think, they'll hate you." - DM
Shaw is now offering 100 Mbps down / 5 Mbps up in Saskatoon (Saskatchewan) @ $250
http://www.shaw.ca/en-ca/ProductsServices/Internet/Nitro/?WT.mc_id=C53A300S38
To steep for me but glad to see that DOCSIS 3.0 is being rolled out, I am sure prices will come down eventually
A PuTTy ssh session just doesn't need all that much speed.
I am very small, utmostly microscopic.
Just from my personal experience with Charter.. in our area I had their 5MB down service and it sucked bad. I was getting just a tad above 56k modem speeds most times and I called support and lucky me, I wandered into a bunch of script reading droids in India. I got so pissed off, when I went and paid the bill I brought the modem with me and told them I canceled, for good.
I have AT&T DSL service now and I've been happy. (about 4 blocks from the switching office)
Personally they'll never be able to offer that fast of service here.
Life was hell, then I discovered Linux...
standard definition, and high definition programming will still be available after the changeover.
what is changing is the frequencies available to transmit the signal-- and the format of the signal.
the fact that a station is only available in regular resolution does not mean it won't be available on changeover day.
http://www.dtv.gov/consumercorner.html#faq6
If I want a new TV, will I have to buy a High Definition TV (HDTV) to watch digital broadcast television after the transition?
No. It is important to understand that the DTV transition is a transition from analog broadcasting to digital broadcasting. It is not a transition from analog broadcasting to High Definition broadcasting. Digital broadcasting allows for High Definition broadcasts, but High Definition is not required, and you do not need to buy a HDTV to watch digital TV. A Standard Definition DTV (which is simply a TV with an internal digital tuner), or a digital-to-analog converter box hooked to an analog TV, is all that is required to continue watching over-the-air broadcast television. Digital broadcast television includes Standard Definition (SD) and High Definition (HD) formats. You can watch High Definition programming on a Standard Definition DTV (or on an analog TV hooked to a digital-to-analog converter box), but it won't be in full High Definition quality. It is also important to know that Standard Definition DTVs are comparably priced to similar sized analog TVs.
every day http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random
It's not. Money is just a theoretical construct that helps facilitate trade. It isn't a magical, limited substance that makes something out of nothing. It is just a theoretical notion of stored value.
Thus on large scales it doesn't function as it does in your personal life. You find that situations where everyone spends more money, causes everyone to get more. Everyone does more, so more is produced so everyone has more wealth. You'll sometimes hear this referred to as "money velocity" meaning how fast it circulates through the economy. That is in fact a large part of the current recession: People and institutions are pulling in to their shells and spending less, which slows down the flow of money.
Also there is the fact that military spending has civilian benefits. One of them would be right on topic here: the Internet. It was created by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency as ARPANET. They were researching highly resilient networks for government use, and out of that grew what is now the Internet. As a more directly military application there's GPS. It was developed to let the US military accurately locate vehicles, soldiers, bombs and so on. It is still owned and operated by the military. However since being opened to civilians it has become THE primary method of geolocation for everything. Aircraft, boats, etc all use GPS to figure out where they are and only use other systems should it fail. Maybe some day there'll be a non-military system as well in the form of the EU's Galileo but thus far it has been mired in politics and isn't up.
So it isn't as though military spending is some vast black hole form which money never returns. To look at it that way either means you have never looked at the civilian benefits that come from it (trauma surgery is another), that you don't understand economics on a large scale, or both.
I had Charter for years before Verizon brought FiOS into the area. It wouldn't matter if they had quantum routers that somehow got the internet to me microseconds before someone finished writing it; I am not enough of a sadist to do business with that black hole of customer service ever again.
If Comcast is really worse than Charter as I hear, I literally weep for their subscriber base.
I find it odd that people are rejoicing from the launch of a 60/5, $130/month service in the US when in Portugal we have a 100/10 fiber service which includes a telephone line and free calls for 16 countries (14 EU countries + US and Canada) for $60/month
Onda Technology Institute
My cable company stream comes over at ~18 Mbps, so I think 6-10 would be on the low side of bandwidth required, unless you want to recompress/reencode everything.
I remember all the naysayers about how cable was doomed and that docsis 3.0 was vaporware, FIOS was supposed to be the next big thing. Well it came to my area as one of the first places in the nation and "mehhhh" is all I have to say, but luckily our city council has their heads screwed on straight and demanded more speeds/options for their citizens. FIOS could blow them out of the water, but they hold back or you have to cough up big bucks to get real fiber speeds.
As far as I can see, FIOS has laid down the fiber and they are still withholding speeds in a lot of areas where service is available.
Alone head to head FIOS has faster speeds, but might be a little more expensive and you have to sign a damn contract with them for a couple years.
I found my ping to actually be better on cable than the same FIOS line coming into the home, roommate has FIOS and I have cable internet because triple package is cheaper.
TWC is doing the same thing nationwide with the implementation of docsis 3.0, since they skipped 2.0.
Although to be honest, 99% of the websites/server out there do not even supply the speeds close to max out the connection of fiber. Everyone on FIOS trying to download at max speed will never work, streaming already works pretty good and this will be a glory to P2p/Warez scene.
Nothing wrong with St. Louis.... not sure about a place that charges $105 for a paltry 1.5/0.5 line.. just wonder what else they rape you for........ BTW, I pay $37 a month for my 10/1 meg line.... in St. Louis.. they dont throttle me and use as much of that BW as i can.... need some more hdds. lol
Rural Montana, near Yellowstone. It's unthrottled, and they haven't complained yet about massive up/downloads. There've been times that I've had the connection saturated for weeks at a time.
In all fairness though, they do offer a 256/256kbps plan for $20/month that's probably good enough for most people.
All these people accessing a shared medium at 60 Mbps? That's not exactly a recipe for success... I know there's acceptable oversubscription ratios, but this has to blow those out of the water.
____________________________________
http://techdojo.org/
To see how much more bang for the buck, uh Euro, the Europeans can get, just check out what is being offered in France:
http://www.free.fr/adsl/index.html
Looking at this makes me feel that my ISP here in Canada, Bell (they aren't any better up here), seem very prehistoric.
Jumpstart the tartan drive.
As an Admin at a college, what you are told and what the Network guys are giving you are very separate things. Plus with 101 bottle necks between you and every other router, yeah, you ain't getting that speed, ever. Plus damn near no one provides that level of upload, so you are doubly FUBARed.
... and I still wouldn't get anything because no one is pushing that hard. With *only* GigE to our campus, we have *never* even hit 10% of capacity, ever. At the same time I have pulled 16M/s from Sun and the U of MN. much better than your 12M (theoretical) home service. In short: Bandwidth != Throughput. You labs are wired GigE, and you see 800M service (async) seems about right to me.
With a few wire switches (and I am talking laid cable/glass - literally plug in/plug out) I could pull GigE to my desk
Slashdot, where armchair scientists get shouted down and armchair theologians get modded up.
Because his phone company was worse. He was paying $40 for a DSL connection that was slower than the 3G service on my iPhone. Seriously, it was no better than the dial up that he left about 2 years ago. At first it seemed fast, but kept getting slower and slower everytime I visited him (about every 6 months).
Finally he had enough and switched to a Charter Bundle and the speed difference was amazing. His videos no longer took 20 minutes to load, instead they took less than 60 seconds.
If you talk with most people, 5/MBs down and even 768k up is plenty for what most people do. And no, slashdot is not most people.
"The problem with socialism is eventually you run out of other people's money" - Thatcher.
I thought Paul Allen was actually Patrick Bateman ...
That's really cheap. It's about what I end up paying per month on my capped 3mbs connection in South Africa, and I only use about 10gig/month! Sigh.
But that's just for us in the industrialized world (Sweden).
News that matter .. more like cash that matters .. nice plug, Slashfuck!
GeoKone.NET
Yeah, but then I'd be living in Finland. Not. Gonna. Happen.
Why not? Don't you like (i) high taxes, (ii) long cold winters, (iii) wierd languages?
At least we've got decent internet access. I've had 100/10 fiber to the house for a couple of years now. No usage caps, no blocked ports, no hassle. And I live in the countryside outside Kuopio, 300km north of Helsinki. (Service is DNA Mediakoti, which includes IP TV as well as internet).
Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities. - Voltaire
We get 100Mps for $25 a month in Japan. I wouldn't accept anything slower or more expensive.
Fastest on where? What is available from Charter? Fastest connection on US? Fastest Cable connection on US/Charter?
My friend buyed last year 110Mbits cable connection and price was 44,90 euros/mm what is under 60 dollars a month. Download speed is almost promised (about 100Mbits) and upload is 5Mbits and its almost promised too (4,7Mbits).
But I dont care about those download speeds if I do not get good upload speed. Thats why I keep my 100/100Mbits connection because I can uload stuff without thinking it. Backups to server? No problem. Sending video file to friend (example to this one 110Mbits connection), no problem.
Even the 4/4Mbits ADSL connection would be nice.
btw, I pay from my 100/100Mbits connection 15 euros a month.
Check out this link. According Azureus, charter already throttles bandwidth. If what this page says is true, you can have your 60 Mbps connection, but don't use it too much!
http://azureuswiki.com/index.php/Bad_ISPs#United_States_of_America
I'm still waiting for my 45/45 M/bit connection that the telcos promised us over 10 years ago after bilking us out of $200 billion.
"I bow to no man" - Riddick
Completely unsure how Charter is in the rest of the country, but in this part of VA, Charter's a joke. Their pole wiring is maybe up to par with Cox or Comcast like, 15 years ago. They've let the network fall to poo so badly and failed to update the network, that Cox, who bought up a few small change cable systems in the area, won't even touch it because it's going to be in excess of 10 mil just to bring it up to par with the rest of the region's network. Even if Paul Allen shoots magical flying monkeys out of his bunghole, I'll never use Charter for anything other than the punchline to a joke.
Porn tacos. For when you need to finish your meat on the go.
Wasn't Charter the *last* big cable company to get on board with DOCSIS 3? The summary reads like a press release. The reality is that Charter is lagging behind in this area.
I hope to god nobody here drinks any of their kool-aid. When Comcast was sending rst packets, Charter was in bed with NebuAd. It was "out out", except you couldn't really opt-out since it was based on a cookie...all of the data collection on the back end still was going on. The *only* reason they stopped (and even then they almost didn't) was because a couple Senators were beathing down their (and NebuAd's) necks.
I've been trying to get the news out that we have 50mbit fiber (that's 50 up and 50 down) here in Orem Utah for $50/mo.
Let's keep hoping 20/2 FiOS gets to your neighborhood though.
or else!
I have the VDSL "triple play" service offered by Qwest in Phoenix, branded here as "Qwest Choice." Lately, Qwest has been aggressively trying to move all their cable TV customers to DirecTV -- they're encouraging this by not fixing or upgrading the existing copper serving homes with VDSL, and by setting a firm cut-off date some time in 2010 for the Choice TV and online service. The DirecTV rates they can get for their customers (since Qwest is now a DirecTV reseller) are cheaper than what they are currently charging for their Choice TV package.
Qwest clearly doesn't want to remain in the TV delivery business, so they're happy to outsource that part to a satellite provider (DirecTV) and focus on broadband internet.
Like you, Qwest will be offering me a free upgrade for my broadband, though at this point it isn't clear if I'll be getting 7 Mbps, 12 Mbps, or 20 Mbps. Currently I'm paying for 3 Mbps down / 1 Mbps up (and getting about 2.5 Mbps up / 800 Kbps down). I'm told I'll get at least a minimum of 7 Mbps, and that level of service will be had at no additional cost to me; presumably, if the higher tiers are even available, I'll be paying more. The new "fiber optic" service they've told me of (which I assume is identical to the ADSL2 you speak of) also comes in a 1.5 Mbps flavor which is as fast as the VDSL data rate I used to be at. Hopefully I won't get shafted with the switch to the new service and forced to limp along at 1.5 Mbps.
I find it interesting that the Qwest techs I've spoken to are deliberately vague on the details of the transition. They talk about the new system being "fiber optic," but my understanding was that the VDSL system I currently have is fiber-to-the-neighborhood, with the final segment over copper to the premises; the new system, I am told, is fiber-to-the-premises. Did they wind up running fiber to your house?
At any rate, you're absolutely right -- the telcos in the U.S. are simply greedy. Qwest wouldn't even offer me 3 Mbps downstream initially. I discovered this service level was available when I called them for a routine billing or service question, and upgraded. The "upgrade" consisted of them setting a bit somewhere in their system -- no line upgrade required. One can only assume that they throttled back the bandwidth available for Internet communications because they didn't want any competition for their fledgling cable TV business (which they are now abandoning).
The other thing is, after the last two service calls I made to Qwest, their technician quietly downgraded my service level from 3 Mbps to 1.5 Mbps, presumably on the assumption that I wouldn't notice the difference. They even tried to tell me that I requested the downgrade. So after talking to some Qwest employees both on and off the record, I get the impression that it's too expensive for them (read: not profitable enough) to maintain the copper leading to the customer's home, and the equipment ahead of that copper. The new fiber solution is apparently much cheaper and lasts longer. But somehow, I'm still not expecting any great leap in speeds. If the new solution results in fewer outages and no downgrades performed behind my back, I guess I'll consider that an improvement.
Actually, Charter has been quite good for me for internet service. It's faster than AT&T and it has had very good uptime.
I don't want AT&T. Too big of a monopoly. I want Charter to stay alive. Because once the competition is dead AT&T will screw us harder.
I did have a few customer support issues a few years ago. Once, I had an apartment and my service went down in the middle of the day when everyone else around was at work. I called Charter after going outside and seeing a bucket loader with a cable laying on it's bucket. They told me they couldn't do anything until someone else in my area reported a problem too. Damn, that's stupid.
One other time they had their servers screwed up for a while. That was probably 8 years ago.
Anyway, since then, they've been very good.
Now, here's the problem. They're trying very hard to distinguish themselves in the marketplace. They're pushing the bundling of the phone. And now super high speed. Don't get me wrong. I absolutely love my speed. It's very good.
I don't want their stupid phone. I will never have there phone. Don't penalize me for not taking your phone. It will never ever ever happen. I have friends that lover their Charter phones. I don't care. I don't want it.
But, give me some cable content that's good. They have so few stations compared to satelite and so few stations compared to U-Verse. Hello. You're a cable company. Give us some stations without screwing me. They had the lead on everyone.
I keep thinking of switching to DirectTV.
But yet, there is this high speed thing. AT&T goes up to something like measly 6 Megs / 768 upload and they're talking about capping monthly transfer at 5 GIGs on lower packages unless you pay more. HELLO. That's life with AT&T.
I'll stick with Charter because of the internet connection, but it's too expensive. They would have rocked the house if they had added more HD stations and got the price down some. As it is there's little HD content. They try to make up for it with video on demand. OK, but that doesn't let me watch what I really want which is spoon fed stuff from someone who is paid to try to entertain me.
I've had an HD TV for 2 years and haven't even bothered with their service because it's so lame I won't justify the extra money for it.
Please come out with a nerd package. I don't want HBO, Cinemax, Showtime. It's all repeats, all crap, all the time.
G4 is pathetic. Give me Tech TV.
Give me a bunch of real science or something channels. I have to pay 10 more for Smithsonian if I want that.
It's something like 12 channels aside from locals and that's over 2 packages.
Oh, well, this post is getting too long.
I'm going to drop TV altogether before long anyway. The channels like History turned their promise of interesting educational content into this ghost-hunting, over-the-road-truckers-falling-through-ice, boats-dumping-dumb-ass-crab-fisherman, nostradamus-worshiping, UFO-tracking bullshit.
Then we have the MTF or VH1 idiots with shows like parent sitting around with kids bf or gf watching them with another. Give me a break what kind of dumb ass watches this shit.
I think the solution for me is keep Charter internet, dump the cable and add DirectTV. I stay out of AT&T land and get better television than what I currently have.
Sounds like a plan
...is thick in the air on the first page of comments.
If /. had been around in the 60s, the Randroids would have been howling about seat belts in automobiles, heath warnings on cigarette packages and how thalidomide had been unfairly pulled from the market before the Invisible Hand had been allowed to work it's miracle.
After all, all those kids with flippers could find honest work in a carnival side show.
Oh, and they certainly would scream bloody murder about this "ARPAnet" thing the Feds were wasting THEIR tax money on. Just so a bunch of eggheads in their ivory towers can TYPE at each other!
The very idea!
Come on, President Obama! Fiber to EVERY dwelling in America, with equal access to the Internet "dial tone" via any local ISP, and free, uncensored public Wireless access points on every Federal, State and City/Town owned building while you're at it.
Randroids, you will have the liberty NOT to use any of this if you so desire.
All the more bandwidth for the rest of us rational people.
Guaranteed! This comment 100% Anthrax free!