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Worcester Mass. City Council Votes To Keep Comcast From Entering the Area
First time accepted submitter _AustinPowell writes Comcast wants a cable television license in Worcester, Massachusetts. In response, the City Council voted 8-3 to urge Worcester's city manager to let the company's license request die. The deadline for the decision is Wednesday, but the manager is not bound by the vote of the Council. "It's a terrible company," City Councilor Gary Rosen said. "In my opinion, they should not be welcome in this city. Comcast is a wolf in wolf's clothing; it's that bad."
Comcast is a wolf in wolf's clothing; it's that bad. - Gary Rosen, City Councilor
What the hell sense does this make? I thought the current groupthink is that that these ISP's have monopolies. I fail to see how this helps.
Want to disconnect? Well fuck you, I'm a Wolf!
comcast will likely sue
Comcast may be "a terrible company," but this is still very worrisome.
Any sufficiently unpopular but cohesive argument is indistinguishable from trolling.
and from the article,
- City Manager can ignore council vote.
- Comcast would appeal license denial and apparently would likely win it (why exactly?)
So really, the 'peoples' voice in all this is essentially irrelevant. Why does this sound wholly, unAmerican?
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Well, I was about to post this to the Firehose submission in the hopes that it wouldn't be posted because this is basically a non-story. It means nothing.
As Ars Technica's version makes clear this is absolutely meaningless: Comcast will almost certainly be allowed to take over for Charter over the city council's objections because they don't actually have the power to prevent it. It's local political theater and nothing more.
You are in a maze of twisty little relative jumps, all alike.
Walmart is hated with fury in some towns, and many proposed stores have been shot down because the city council/citizens/etc said no.
It's not a new phenomenon.
Because the decision in question is about whether or not to grant them a local monopoly franchise?
I'd love to see a shared-line law forcing the cable owners to let other ISPs sell connectivity, and when we get that, then the free market can do its business. But the issue is a straight yes or no on whether or not to give Comcast control of the local cable market, for them to abuse as they see fit. "Let the free market decide" is an entirely separate rule that would need to be passed at a higher level.
Monopoly player 1 (Comcast) is attempting to purchase the monopoly franchise from monopoly player 2 (Charter). Unfortunately for them, the city council has a say in whether or not they can do so.
friend of mine posted today:
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
This is on the heels of the City Council in Lexington, KY voting recently to oppose the Comcast/Time Warner merger.
Story on Ars: http://arstechnica.com/business/2014/10/kentucky-city-threatens-to-block-comcasttime-warner-cable-merger/
This act of civil disobedience has been funded by Charter Communications, small town USA's favorite Internet service monopoly.
Serious? Seriousness is well above my pay grade.
I live in Worcester, and have been a Charter customer for five years. When their Internet connection is working it's great. It's fast, and I have no complaint.
This isn't a "bash Charter" thread, so I won't go into the details, but lets just say that the service drops much more than I can sometimes stand. When it does that , there's no telling when it will come back. The reliability of my Internet connection and their poor customer service would have prompted me to drop them by now if I could. I had Comcast before.. they've got their pros and cons too, but I wish I could at least have a choice to leave this monopoly.
Now, this might border on gossip, but I did get chatty with a Charter service tech who visited my home. I was venting to him and cursing the monopoly Charter has in the area. He told me that Charter had a deal with the City where all schools would get free service in exchange for an exclusivity deal. So no Comcast, no FIOS. I cannot verify this, but it is an interesting anecdote given what's going on.
I'm writing this comment over a Comcast provided Internet link, that is supposedly 100Mb, but never gets me more than 6mpbs down, even if downloading from the nearest Comcast hub. Being a Texan with a conservative view, I would like to say it is time to break-up Comcast, and regulate Internet service providers to encourage competition and discourage monopolies.
/.
Charter is actually leaving your area - Comcast wants to buy Charter's exclusivity and the city council would rather they not. No overbuilding will result from Comcast's actions.
Many carriers have such exclusivity deals with municipalities, Comcast included. This is why there's little to no competition in many areas.
Also, I wouldn't get your hopes up with any improved service, though I share your sentiment in simply wanting a choice.
Never start vast projects with half-vast ideas.
Take that most hated company in America! And good for you Worcester! It took a lot to take the crown from Bank of America but you descended to new levels of badness and a customer service experience that made customers want to kill themselves.
The reliability of my Internet connection and their poor customer service would have prompted me to drop them by now if I could. I had Comcast before.. they've got their pros and cons too, but I wish I could at least have a choice to leave this monopoly.
Nothing will change except Comcast with be the monopoly instead of Charter. I would not expect anything else to change except possibly the price. There will be no competition.
Next they'll complain that there isn't enough competition in the market. Whatever Comcast may be, if you haphazardly keep companies you don't like from competing, you'll also drive away companies you might like, because no business likes that kind of uncertainty.
> Why not let it in so that the market decides?
Because, however incredible that it will be to many, not everybody has a blind faith in the efficacy of the market to solve such type of problems.
I live in the next town over, Paxton, and Charter is fvcking awesome compared to Cumcrust. I've had Charter service about 1 year, never had any outage or downtime and when it's late at night I actually get faster than the 30mb I pay for if I download from a fast server.
The problem is most likely infrastructure in Worcester, both the city and Charter sharing the blame.
If you want the best service in the area then move to Shrewsbury who have their own town ISP which is fast, cheap and awesome.
Yeah, sure, Charter has it's share of idiots when you call them but at least they're not the infuriating Indian idiots of Verizon with their garblespeak or the condescending lying cocksvckers that work for the worst company in the USA.
None of these companies would be in business if there was actual competition, meaning an open market where any company could be a choice. And my choice would be VTel (Springfield,VT) which offers gigabit internet for something like $35/mo.
in a few days...
worcester, mass. city manager renews comcast franchise agreement for ten years...
two weeks later...
worcester, mass. city manager announces retirement.
three days later...
former worcester, mass. city manager moves into new beachfront property in exclusive cape cod neighborhood.
This sounds to me like a case of two competing corporatocracies that both want exclusive control of a market. There are no 'good guys'.
My other UID is three digits.
As Worcester goes so do the communities around it. I used to live in a near by town, and their cable contract was heavily influenced by whatever Worcester did.
Seriously, this town should approach Google or WOW and push to have one of them come in.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Some years ago I learned the issue seems to have conform to the same rule that cable and telcos do: the states broken into smaller areas: as new service provider, you have to guarantee service to 98.? percent of the area they want to go into. Can’t just go slow. The law worked well for MaBell but too well for the daughters of MaBell.
My first thought was, "if the problem is a monopoly, how does keeping a competitor out of the market help?" But then I read the article. Comcast isn't coming in to compete with existing cable and phone services: instead it's doing a deal to swap customers with the existing provider (Charter). Worcester customers will still only have one possible cable provider, it's just going to be Comcast.
This is such a blatant anticompetitive cartel arrangement that I have no problem with local government blocking the deal: it's the only way customers can have any voice at all.
They aren't keeping anyone else from competing, they've just made a reasonable business decision that it would not be profitable for one of them to compete with the other in an already built area, or to try building out at the same time.
What you are describing is called a natural monopoly. They tend to exist in markets like wired telecom or power delivery to homes. That said, your comment that "they aren't keeping anyone else from competing" is complete nonsense. If that were the case then there would not be agreements with local governments across the nation granting them monopoly rights to deliver cable TV and other services. In a lot of places a company could not deliver the same services even if they had the financial backing and desire to do so. The only reason AT&T and Verizon can get around this is that they already have a wire to your home.
Your desire to be able to choose would mean that everyone would pay more for the same service, not less.
That's very likely not true because you are presuming they are selling their product for a minimal markup. You only have to look at the Income Statement from Comcast to know that they will probably make about $10 BILLION in profit this year. (insert Dr. Evil pinky quote here) They can do this because in a lot of markets they can charge monopolistic pricing. There is plenty of fat in Comcast to be cut before we should expect consumers to bear any cost increase from competition.
I'm not saying comcast is the answer, but government replacing them is not really the cure.
Why not? I know it's all fashionable to claim that governments cannot do anything efficiently or competently. (Even though that is demonstrably not true) But you are taking that as an axiom when you shouldn't. Yes governments sometimes make bad choices. Guess what? So do corporations and corporations are ultimately less accountable to the electorate. Corporations do NOT have the best interests of consumers in mind. We only end up with that result either through competition or (gasp) government regulation. We use government for a lot of critical functions, particularly when there is a market failure and there is a market failure in telecom delivery because it is not a competitive market in most places.
The government doesn't actually have to physically do the work - governments usually contract that sort of stuff out anyway and that is fine. Your local government doesn't build the roads - they just contract with the companies that do. But they could and should take a more active role in being an advocate for their constituents. Some governments (like the one in Worcester) seem to grok this.
Disclosure: I'm a certified accountant.
There are some numbers floating around saying they have a 97% profit margin. This number is wrong as it lacks all kinds of costs, but the remaining 3% is the fixed cost.
No company or any meaningful size has a 97% profit margin, net or gross. Comcast's fixed costs are considerably higher than 3%. In actual fact the vast majority of their costs could reasonably be classified as fixed. They don't sell products on a unit cost basis which is what defines variable costs. It is only a variable cost if it fluctuates directly based on the amount of product produced in the short run. Otherwise it is a fixed cost.
If their fixed costs would double, they'd still have plenty of profit margin to allow them to compete.
I think you misunderstand what fixed costs are. Fixed costs are costs they will have to pay (in the short run) regardless of how much product they sell. They have to pay for utilities, salaries, maintenance, rent, contractual payments for content, etc. The vast majority of the cost to a big company like AT&T or Comcast will be fixed costs. Unless the cost directly fluctuates due to production/sales, then it is generally classified as a fixed cost.
If their fixed costs doubled they would be losing money and lots of it. Building and maintaining the amount of infrastructure any telecom or cable company has involves enormous fixed costs.
This is actually a factor in my decision to move elsewhere. I've been super happy with Charter, our current ISP, and everyone here is dreading Comcast moving in. My girlfriend was at the meeting when they voted. I guess there were representatives from Comcast, and they were total jerks. They kept giving smug, noncommittal answers, basically getting across the point that they were there as a formality, but the vote wouldn't change anything. They refused to make any binding agreements, shiftily saying they were 'working on' improving customer service. Not a good start to their relationship with our city.
It's "Woostah".
the contract should not be exclusive.
It should go past this and spell out that other companies and municipal broadband will not be opposed.
Attempting to block competition should be grounds for invalidating the franchise without cost.
They should use that as a tagline in their advertising: Comcast...we're not as bad as Stalin!
-- sudon't
Air-ride Equipped
If anyone was curious, the original quote was Michael Scott saying Hilter, Bin Laden, and Toby the HR guy, he'd shoot Toby twice.
I used to work for the City of Worcester's school system IT Deparment. Helped run and manage all the schools/related locations. It was a while ago but I can veify what you say is true- Charter prvovides free interconnectively for Worcester's school system- both to the internet and on their own private MAN. Other city services (such as the police deparment) where included as well in this but I didn't manage their network(s).
They are constantly floating with bankruptcy yet offer commerial mail discounts so steep that postage to send a lettle or post card by a private citizen has almost trippled in my life time.
The post office has a variety of problems. Commercial mail discounts are not the most significant among them and in fact an increasing amount of their business comes from junk mail overall. On an operational basis the USPS is profitable. The biggest problem they face is that mail volume has fallen by 20% in the last 10 years and is showing little sign of stopping. People simply don't send as many letters as they once did thanks to email and other new technologies. The USPS is a shrinking business but since they in actuality are a government agency they aren't truly given the freedom to behave like one. They are forced to serve unprofitable locations, they cannot close unnecessary post offices, they are limited in their ability to reduce their workforce, etc.
Regarding your comment on postage rates:
The increase in postage costs in the last 25 years is roughly the rate average rate of inflation (~3%) over that time. It's taken since 1991 when the price of a stamp was $0.25 until today ($0.49) for the price of a first class stamp to double which is pretty much exactly what you might expect. With a 3% inflation rate prices double roughly every 25 years. That means in inflation adjusted terms a stamp costs almost exactly the same as it did 25 years ago.
Yes government can be part of the answer. But government owning the ISP is not.
It's not that government "can be part of the answer". Government HAS to be part of the answer. I agree that except on very small scales, government owned ISPs are probably not the best idea. But large ISPs without any government oversight is probably an even worse idea. There are certain industries (postal services, utilities, infrastructure, communications services) that simply will not work effectively on a large scale without a significant amount of government involvement and oversight.
That said if the citizens of my local town wanted to have municipal gigabit ethernet controlled by the local government and collectively voted to indicate they were fine with the cost of doing this, I cannot think of a logical reason to prohibit it either. If the local telecom/cable monopolies aren't providing what people want they should be able to utilize their government to make it happen.
...but instead I'll just say "fuck comcast". Terrible company run by terrible human beings.