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Comcast Forgets To Delete Revealing Note From Blog Post
An anonymous reader notes that Comcast inadvertently posted a bit too much in a blog post today. Earlier today, Comcast published a blog post to criticize the newly announced coalition opposing its merger with Time Warner Cable and to cheer about the FCC's decision to restart the "shot clock" on that deal. But someone at Kabletown is probably getting a stern talking-to right now, after an accidental nugget of honesty made its way into that post. Comcast posted to their corporate blog today about the merger review process, reminding everyone why they think it will be so awesome and pointing to the pro-merger comments that have come in to the FCC. But they also left something else in. Near the end, the blog post reads, "Comcast and Time Warner Cable do not currently compete for customers anywhere in America. That means that if the proposed transaction goes through, consumers will not lose a choice of cable companies. Consumers will not lose a choice of broadband providers. And not a single market will see a reduction in competition. Those are simply the facts." The first version of the blog post, which was also sent out in an e-mail blast, then continues: "We are still working with a vendor to analyze the FCC spreadsheet but in case it shows that there are any consumers in census blocks that may lose a broadband choice, want to make sure these sentences are more nuanced." After that strange little note, the blog post carries on in praise of competition, saying, "There is a reason we want to provide our customers with better service, faster speeds, and a diverse choice of programming: we don't want to lose them."
This is a goof, but it doesn't reveal anything interesting. The note says that they have to make sure that the number of places where they compete with Time Warner for the same customers really is zero and not just very low.
What is more revealing is the statement which stayed in: that the market is not competitive.
comcast sucks. they lie to people. that is simply the facts. they claim they "nuance the facts", but the facts remain... they lie. they cheat. they steal. when they lie and cheat and steal, and you complain, they ruin your credit. when you complain about that, they ruin it further. they are evil.
FUCK COMCAST.
FUCK TIME WARNER.
FUCK THE DO NOTHING FCC BOUGHT AND SOLD BY THE SAME COMPANIES.
american isn't free. rise up.
Right now the only thing that has pushed the cable companies to innovate are the likes of Google Fiber and Netflix and Amazon. The don't really compete with each other. Fiber threatens them directly on internet while Netflix and Amazon competes with them on content. This merger would all grant enormous market power for one company. Before they might have competed for the same geographic region. Now, not so much.
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
Or someone whose option is that or have no internet at all?
What you hear in the ear, preach from the rooftop Matthew 10.27b
They would lose me in a heartbeat if there was any competition to them in my area (chicago)
AT&T is the only other provider in our area but only for DSL.
I hate Comcast as much as the next guy, but I don't see how this is that bad. They don't think there will be reduction in competition, but they're double-checking to make sure that's true, and if it isn't, they'll have to be less bold with their language. Isn't that the right thing to do?
So, the post got made without double-checking that there was no counter-example to the depressingly likely "Eh, it's not like we were competing anyway?" That's complaining about the wrong part. It's like being upset that the governor misspelled your middle name on the execution notice.
Your ad here. Ask me how!
Why just today, we clicked the wrong button! Instead of deleting Bennett Hasselton's inane ramblings, it got pushed to the slashdice front page! Our bad! We were going to fire samzenpus but it turns out he's just a perl script and the perl programmers we hired from dice.com were actually pearl brogrammers and can't figure out how to fix it.
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Oh. Like you never forgot anything.
- Brian R
"There is no competion, so there cannot be any reduction in competion"
When any company can come in and lay down lines and provide service without having to pay off the City Council/County Supervisors/State Legislatures, THEN there will be real competition.
Render all cable franchise agreements null and void. Let the providers beat a path to my TV/Internet.
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
But...government regulation is bad! Why should the government make demands of cable companies?
Cable Companies: Would you like a piece of candy?
Stewie: I smell death on you
-- Prepared at the direction of, or to be sent to Legal Counsel, in anticipation of litigation. Attorney Client Pri
Yeah somebody forgot to delete a commentary edit in the text. It's like people who ship word docs around. I have more fun scanning through the comments they thought they'd removed. It's all about the message folks and how clean they can make it. I like how they gloss over that they don't compete which again is another reason that this deal should be through down the shitter. Comcast is a pile of shit and now there's serious consideration to let them get bigger? Fuck that.
Harrison's Postulate - "For every action there is an equal and opposite criticism"
they compete for shady backroom deals with city councils.
The First Honest Cable Company(WARNING! NSFW!!)
It seems routine to me that a company such as a Telco or Cableco is making an application for various things and asserting that there is or is not effective competition in a certain market.
It is used as justification on the application to allow the Telco/Cable company to do things they might not be allowed to do otherwise.
If there is effective competition in the market; they can essentially raise rates and do a number of other things however they please. If there is not effective competition in the market, then those things are more restricted, but they can essentially acquire other companies in the market however they please without objection (since there is no competition, the other Telco/Cable co. in the market must not be a competitor).
Example: 3/29/13 Comcast Cable Petitions for Effective Competition, Pennsylvania.
I am not aware (though undoubltly there are some places) where there is cable yet no POTS. My POTS carries a 20Mbps downstream connection, which while not as fast as Comcast, means I don't have to deal with them.
The cheapest offer of "broadband" to my father who is outside of a 40k population town by 6 miles is 180 per month satellite with a 2GB per month limit at 3mbps speeds. You're very wrong.
Okay so we have noticed that we do not overlap TW in any nontrivial location so your bribes will only INCREASE since you will be getting a LOCKOUT!! bonus. So when are you up for reelection again??
ComTimeWarnCaster is reporting nearly double the amount of subscriber loss than they had a year ago.
From TFS:
If Comcast's customers aren't happy with the company's customer service, speeds, programming, etc., where else could they go? It's not like most people have a lot of options to begin with. And if Comcast is allowed to expand it's empire, that will only ensure that US consumers have even less options in the future (for cable providers anyway). You can't lose a customer if you're the only viable game in town.
Obligatory South Park reference
42
that they take their regulators and public statements like they take their customer complaints... with a wave of the hand, and "Bah." all they want is negotiable checks, and everything else is crap to ignore.
if this is supposed to be a new economy, how come they still want my old fashioned money?
Government Regulations CREATED the Monopolies for Cable. The suggested fix of MORE regulations to fix the problems created by the initial regulations should be flat out rejected, and a whole new model that removes the regulations that created this mess, needs to be found.
My solution, which will work for most places, is to build out LOCAL infrastructure to a COLO facility where the companies such as Comcast, TimeWarner, Cox and anyone else can compete for the last mile. This would cause innovation and competition and reduce costs in such a way, that it would be a boon to customers.
AND there would be no monopoly.
Agent K: A *person* is smart. People are dumb, stupid, panicky animals, and you know it.
Yay free market!!!!!
You have attributed the poor work and product of two distinct government granted monopolies (your incumbent phone company and your cable company) to the "free market." You have done this in the context of a story about a monopoly cable operation attempting to convince a government (as opposed to customers, investors, or some other "market" based entity) that there is no competition; i.e. an absence of market force.
You appear to be capable of ascribing effectively any grievance imaginable to the "free market," complete with lick-spittle evoking exclamation points!!!!! You're training as a "free market"-hating malcontent is now complete.
So mod the parent up please, as it represents an essentially perfect Slashdot group-think post.
Well just so you know, I tried DSL via POTS and gave up (with full refund) because I couldn't get more that a few hundred kbps. I have no other cable internet vendor option other than comcast. So I'm in that category of "competition will not decrease" because there currently is no competition. (Actually the FCC probably counts my neighborhood as having DSL access, but it is a fiction.)
False equivalency. The latency over satellite internet makes it entirely not equivalent to wired internet.
Is I've pointed out this conspiracy of corporate interest and "government" agencies before, it's blatantly obvious when you consider what Wheeler used to do. /. doesn't, see and point out the obvious quid pro qou.
And yet I always get modded down, is it the word "conspiracy"? Do Comcast trolls wander the boards getting rid of this sort of thing? It puzzles me that a community (what's left of it)) like
"If any question why we died, Tell them because our fathers lied."
i'm very wrong because your father has a very affordable and very usable service available to him?
i pay $180/mo for wired internet. not from comcast or timewarner. i also have a hughesnet dish on the roof, but i don't use it, but very easily could switch.
your father does have the option.... he chooses not to exercise that option. your father is very wrong, and has raised a child who grew up to be very wrong as well.
you're both idiots.
But...government regulation is bad!
1. Government regulations that interfere with fair and competitive markets are generally bad.
2. Government regulations that support fair and competitive markets are generally good.
Although most government regulation falls under #1, regulation of monopolies falls under #2.
Why should the government make demands of cable companies?
Because they are monopolies. If you don't like NN, then advocate a better way to promote a fair market.
Can you please tell me why I should be angry and where you keep the pitch forks?
You know that the regulations were written by industry lobbyists, right?
"We're not the corrupt ones! It's the legislators who took our bribes who are corrupt!"
You are welcome on my lawn.
"We're not the corrupt ones! It's the legislators who took our bribes who are corrupt!"
Pretty much the Republican Party platform when you get right down to it.
... is to be disbanded.
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
i'm very wrong because your father has a very affordable and very usable service available to him?
...
AC industry shill. Color me surprised.
$180/month for a 3mbs link is a monthly charge of $60 per mbps. The EU average for this service unit is $3.50. Also a 2 GB monthly cap is "very usable"?! The average home use consumes about 25 GB of bandwidth monthly, the average mobile phone user is hitting 2 GB/month right now.
So the AC Shill, paying 17 times a competitive world service rate for only 8% of what a typical American consumes in bandwidth is "very affordable and very usable". But to anyone not taking industry astro-turf cash it is a rip-off.
Second class citizen of the New Gilded Age
comcast does not even have CSN+2 HD and they own part of it. Both att and directv have all CSN chi feeds in HD.
Also comcast does not have any of the BTN alts in HD.
Who is the head of the FCC? And what Republican put him there?
Wake up, dude.
I actually prefer the way it happens in Japan.
Basically, a single company (NTT) has laid down the infrastructure to every neighborhood. Then, they basically open it up and make it available to anyone who wants to start an ISP. NTT, of course, offers their own ISP, but their ISP portion still has to lease the line from the parent company. Essentially, the ISP pays a set amount per customer that is signed up with the service for the rights to use the backbone. Then, the individual ISPs compete based on services offered. They also compete on price, but most of the prices are within a couple hundred yen of each other (couple dollars).
Each ISP hosts their own authentication servers, email, website, etc... The customer plugs in their username and password to the modem (user@ispname.ext). NTT runs the PPPoE server, but each ISP has their own RADIUS server. So NTT receives a login request from bob@fiber.marley.jp. NTT looks up fiber.marley.jp and makes sure it's a registered ISP. If it's ok, then NTT forwards the radius request to the fiber.marley.jp auth server hosted by the ISP which then authenticates the account and allows or disallows the connection. If the auth goes through, the user is allowed access to the network, ip address is assigned, routing is set to pass them their dns, gateway, etc...
Then you're on the backbone and you can do what you like.
Cool thing is, there's only one network to maintain/upgrade so when NTT upgrades from say, 100Mb/sec fiber to 1Gb/sec fiber, all the ISP has to do is set up a new service and subdomain for auth and the user can use the new service in the method described above..
You can also subscribe to regular phone service, tv service, and they also have a VOD service available.
Anyways, it's a good system and it works great. There's tons of competition and the backbone owner still gets a cut of every connection based on subscriber rates per ISP.
"Freedom in the USA is not the ability to do what you want. It is the ability to stop others from doing what THEY want"
You are correct. Sadly, Democrats have become nothing more than Republicans without the bigotry.
You are welcome on my lawn.
Affordable and useful? You're joking or in your words "wrong" and an "indiot." Thanks for never reading this.
Hear hear
Actually the average home use is now up closer to 50GB/month.
the above is my personal opinion and does not necessarily reflect that of the little voices in my head
Does anyone else think this article stinks of being posted here by Comcast?
Or, we can just have one cable, and everyone provides their own packet framing. Oh wait, I think that was what net-neutrality was all about, wasn't it?
You are correct. Sadly, Democrats have become nothing more than Republicans with different bigotry.
In America?
Exede (a Satellite provider covering North America with several reseller brands as well) is a lot cheaper than $180/mo for a lot more than 2GB. I've used it at my SO's parents house in rural Michigan and for satellite it doesn't seem to be too bad.
Founder & COO, Hayai India (hayai.in) / USA (hayaibroadband.com)
Ouch, sounds harsh.
When I got cable installed at my house in small-town Illinois in June, we got TV + 50mbit/s Internet with a 350GB FUP for about $62 with modem rental.
I've since purchased my own (better) modem and dropped the TV in August (after about 3 weeks of putting up with ads, we stopped bothering and didn't even turn the cable box on), so I now pay $54.95 for 100mbit/s down, 10mbit/s up with a 1TB FUP, and I am able to exceed this (my record is about 120mbit/s down/17mbit/s up I think) most of the time.
All things considered, it's not too bad, but I'm probably extremely lucky because I'm not with Comcast or Time Warner (or even my own company because we don't have our infra here yet). I'm a little bit scared to move to another state for fear of being forced to subscribe to and/or battle one of those 2... I may have to choose my next residence based on my current provider being available there!
Founder & COO, Hayai India (hayai.in) / USA (hayaibroadband.com)