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Time Warner Boosts Broadband Customer Speed — But Only Near Google Fiber
An anonymous reader writes " Rob is a Time Warner Cable customer, and he's received two really interesting things from them lately. First, a 50% speed boost: they claim to have upgraded the speed of his home Internet connection. That's neat. Oh, and they've also cut his bill, from $45 to $30. Wow! What has prompted this amazing treatment? Years of loyalty and on-time payments? No, not exactly. Rob lives in Kansas City, pilot site for Google Fiber. Even though they have shut off people in other states for using too much bandwidth. Is Google making them show that it's not that hard to provide good service and bandwidth?"
I was one of the first Road Runner customers in the RTP, NC area. I've been a good customer. TW recently upped my rates and their remote is terrible. Unfortunately for TW, some real competition recently showed up for what once was a monopoly. I switched and just got off the phone to tell them that I am canceling. Amazingly, some promotions, that I was previously unaware of, became available to me. No way. A little competition can be a good thing.
The funny part is that how much government is involved with a particular part of infrastructure is based directly on how old that kind of infrastructure is.
Roads, water/sewage, and postal service? Those date to at least the Roman Empire, so of course they're run directly by the government as a general rule. The Post Office is specifically enumerated in the U.S. Constitution, and "Postmaster General" used to be a cabinet level position.
Electricity? Heating gas? Ah, now we're only going back a little over a century, so we have heavily-regulated private companies providing the infrastructure.
Telephones? Less time still, with a commensurately less-regulated industry.
Cable TV? Even more recent, very little regulation. And, of course, residential Internet access is done on the incumbent phone and cable networks, so it ends up there on the spectrum.
Cell phone service? It's completely Wild West, with the government just divvying up spectrum. Is anyone surprised at predatory contracts and usurious rates and terrible service?
Here's the revelation: you go on that list in reverse order, newest and least regulated first, and I bet you're reading it from worst customer service to best. I've literally never had problems with my water utility, and rarely had problems with my electric service, but Comcast and Sprint? It is to laugh.