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Comcast Pays $800,000 To U.S. For Hiding Stand-Alone Broadband
First time accepted submitter vu1986 writes "The Federal Communications Commission has settled with Comcast over charges that the cable company made it hard for consumers to find stand-alone broadband packages that don't cost an arm and leg. As part of the settlement Comcast paid the U.S. Treasury $800,000 and the FCC extended the length of time Comcast had to provide such a service."
Hmm. $800,000 fine. For a company that grossed 4.4 billion last year. If this was an individual making median income (47k USD), then this would be like fining them $0.09. That'll teach them!
#fuckbeta #iamslashdot #dicemustdie
My provider likes to call me every few months and ask if i'd like their telephone service. I keep having to explain to them that me and my girlfriend are in our late twenties, we don't have a landline and we don't want one and even if my cell phone exploded in my pocket tomorrow, i'd probably just use Skype.
Honestly I'm getting tempted to start threatening to cancel the cable too. It's something i've wanted to do for a long time, but being Canadian my options for cable-cutting are quite a bit, uh, shallower. The girlfriend likes certain sports and the occasional fit of channel surfing too (also, she's not very patient with finicky bits of technology), which just makes things even more difficult. If they keep pushing me though, I might just be tempted. The sad part is, I know no matter where I go (and there are really only 3 options where I live) i'd have to deal with the same shit.
Does Comcast have to make it any easier for customers to find the stand alone-packages? I don't see that requirement anywhere in the summary or article ..
It's a settlement. Basically the FCC and Comcast sat down and decided that it would be... cheaper... if they simply didn't use 2 point font to describe the alternatives than to put it through the legal system and an endless appeals process. If you're a conservative, it amounts to a government agency fleecing an innocent business to support their habit of taking businesses to court to enforce arbitrary standards. If you're a liberal, then it's a way of making a monopolistic business play well with others. And if you're politically agnostic, then it's a slow news day and this just confirms your belief that people are stupid and lazy.
#fuckbeta #iamslashdot #dicemustdie
Ask them "Do you offer a phone service that blocks assholes like you from calling?"
To which they reply, if you buy my phone service *I* won't call you as long as you are stay subscribed!
Science advances one funeral at a time- Max Planck
Free-market conservative type of guy here. Just not a dumbass like the ones you conjure up.
*facepalm* The SARCASM TYPE=DRIPPING html tag gets eaten by the editor.
#fuckbeta #iamslashdot #dicemustdie
A reasonable conservative wants .. a reasonable amount of regulation.
Unfortunately for you (and everyone else, actually), reasonable conservatives are a dying breed in many places. You're saying the sort of things that are frequently treated as outright heresy, at least among conservative politicians and media personalities held in esteem in certain parts of the United States. They are perfectly happy to have businesses rip us off in any way possible, under the make believe principle that the free market is a bag of magical fairy dust that can solve any problem that faces mankind. How appropriate or effective a market can be to a specific enterprise is entirely irrelevant, because there isn't any rational thought behind the belief. They literally believe that free market capitalism is Jesus Wizard Sauce that just needs to be slathered on.
If you don't believe these things? More power to you. Don't go running for office anytime in a red state, though. Here in Texas, candidates for most offices only compete on how far to the right they can claim to be and how much they hate Obama (even if they are running for state and local offices and are unlikely to actually interact with him at all during the course of their term). Candidates go down in flames for uttering much less liberal blasphemy than what you've mentioned.
"nobody will proactively offer you the cheaper packages" -- _everyone_ does that if there's even a resemblance of competition on the market...
There is no true 'left' in American politics anymore; there's the Democrats at the center, the Republicans on the right, with a few far-right groups like Libertarians thrown in for good measure.