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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."
No, No No No!!!! It doesn't matter if they are a wolf in wolf's clothing! They have a service to sell, and users should be free to to use it if they so choose.
What we should be against is any subsidization, special treatment, or monopolistic practices, always rooted in government. It is a fact, that monopolies can only exist for any great length of time with the help of a government law or regulation insuring their monopolistic status (with only one notable exception: The London DeBeers Corporation) . A monopoly exists and extorts their customers by jacking up prices, or delivering goods and services of a less than desirable quality. Barring any regulation preventing new competition, a competitor will always enter the market; because someone will have a business plan to either lower the cost, holding the quality constant, or raise the quality, holding the cost constant. In the US, capital is not a barrier to entry, as some investment house, or other financial mechanism is always looking to exercise their capital on a solid business plan.
That is how free markets work. When there is good competition, you have the highest available quality, and the lowest cost, the market will bear.
Choice is good, so long as the costs are realized, and not passed on to tax payers, who are then forced to be come a customer (via a lack of options, or because their taxes have already paid or partially paid for a good or service).
These councils need to get out of the business of "selecting" the internet provider and let the free market run its course. The outcome will always be what the customers choose, which is usually a variety of competitors, and thats a good thing!
Yea, how dare a city have any say in what goes on within the city!
I think the point is, it should be the consumers who get to decide, not the city government.
If I can be modded down for being a troll, can I be modded up for being an orc, or a balrog?
The problem is that the regulators are mis-regulating, and as a result usually consumers have NO choice... they get the one company in their area, and that's it.
So, of course, it is better for the consumer to have NO company in their area.
Comcast and Time Warner Cable have divided up most of the U.S. between themselves, and voluntarily choose not to compete in their respective areas. That's illegal anti-competitive practice,
No, it is not. 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. It's not profitable for two companies to build out the same area and wind up with only half the potential customers. Fixed costs are the same, spread over half the customers, meaning the prices go up. Your desire to be able to choose would mean that everyone would pay more for the same service, not less.
Hell, Comcast even practically BRAGGED about it to the FCC, claiming that a merger would not hurt competition because they're not competing anyway.
It is not bragging to state a simple fact, which arose not because of some conspiracy but because of simple business economics.
In my area, a City committee votes annually on whether to "allow competition" in the cable market. Every year they have voted it down.
Your city council is an ass, and it is your responsibility to get them voted out if you don't like them.
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.
Since running wires in an area is phobitively expensive and takes peoples property.. Why not let the government run the lines and the people pay for it then.. let internet providers compete for your service on that line.
The alternative is [some telco] will come in and run the wires and limit who can use them to themselves. It costs XX dolars to run lines in a town. Regardless of if Comcast does it, the government does it, or third party contractors do it. In the end the townspeople pay the same amount in all of the situations. Comcast is not running them for free. I'd rather pay to have them run and then have a choice of different providers to choose from.
How about the markets where they refused to put in fiber, so the municipality did themselves, then they sued them in court to prevent them from offering fiber internet? And continued to not offer fiber, or in certain markets a fiber-like service that was exorbitantly expensive, yet not any faster than higher-end cable options.