Slashdot Mirror
Internet Customers Surpass Cable Subscribers At Comcast
mpicpp notes that for the first time, the country's largest cable provider has more internet subscribers than cable subscribers. The Internet is taking over television. That shift is occurring at Comcast, where the number of people who subscribe to the company's Internet service surpassed its total video subscribers for the first time during the second quarter this year. Announced in an earnings call on Monday, the development signals a major turning point in the technological evolution sweeping across the media business, as the Internet becomes the gateway for information and entertainment. Comcast, the country's largest cable operator, abandoned its $45 billion takeover of Time Warner Cable last month after the deal drew regulatory scrutiny regarding concerns that the combined company would have too much control over the Internet. Comcast is already the country's largest broadband provider, with more than 22 million high-speed Internet customers. Brian L. Roberts, Comcast's chief executive, said in the call that the company was disappointed about the collapse of the deal but had moved on. He said that Comcast's top priorities now were to advance its existing business and improve its poorly rated customer service.
I'm a Comcast customer. Despite the horror stories they've largely been fine for me and I haven't had any major issues. I have their 100Mb service and consider it on the high end of being a reasonable value. I only subscribe to one of their low end TV packages (costs about $35/month) because their TV offering are WAY overpriced for what you get. There are about 10-15 channels I give a crap about and I'm not willing to pay more than I am now. I've thought about dropping the TV altogether but I do like to watch some TV now and then. TiVo makes it bearable to do so. A package with more channels would double the price I pay and I'd get maybe 3-5 extra channels I might watch. Just not good value.
Basically I'm waiting for ala-carte TV or a service through our network connection that provides basically the same thing. (No Netflix, Hulu, etc aren't there yet) I consider TV a frivolous luxury and I'm not about to drop $200/month for a bunch of channels I'll never watch.
improving poorly rated customer service runs contrary to the comcast business model of doubling your bill after your 2 year deal is up.
I dropped cable because my $80 a month bill went to $160. There is no other isp in my area, so comcast can charge whatever they want. If comcast wants to improve customer service they first have to stop raping their customers.
i thought once I was found, but it was only a dream.
to get one positive review from a Comcast customer. That will indicate that enough time and effort has been put into customer service re-training, and that resources can be reallocated to find new and inventive fees to add to your bill.
..there is actual competition between cable companies. When you have a monopoly in an area, you have no incentive to treat your customers well.
I find myself watching youtube videos for my video, "normal TV is damn near unwatchable, with a 50 percent commercial rate, you can forget what program you were watching.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
What is your UPLOAD speed and DATA CAP? Download speed is not the only metric of internet service. I get 100 down but only 10 up for almost $80/month. I dont consider it a good value because the upload is so low.
Good-bye
that is all.
More people watched Mayweather vs. Pacquiao last Saturday night on illegal online streams than on Pay-Per-Views. TVs as we know it are dying.
New Economic Perspectives
Comcast isn't so bad *if* you don't have issues. If you do, you will hate them. Their customer service is one of the worst I have encountered. (A recent run with Expedia indicates that Comcast has challengers for the title.) I had Comcast up in Michigan and it was really good. I moved here to Texas and the equipment is horribly outdated. My box is from 2008, has 24 hours of HD recording space (despite them saying it had 60), drops the HDMI signal at least 3 times per hour of content, and looks like it went through a war. And this is the second such box I got from them after complaining about the first one doing the same thing. Calls to customer service waste all day (you seriously wait over an hour many times) and don't lead to answers. I complained to a rep in the store about all this and he gave me some snide responses that were, "We don't have to do that because the law doesn't make us."
Better yet, if you call for one thing and want to do something else too, you will re-enter the queue. Today I went to setup a transfer of my internet service to a new home (where we will have Directv for TV. It can't be worse). I wanted to cancel a second account and was told that department can't do that. They make it as difficult to get service (esp. in regards to cancellations) as possible and entirely disappointing when you do finally get someone.
You don't know what bad customer service is until you have dealt with AT&T. I have had AT&T and Comcast and AT&T is worse.
> for the first time, the country's largest cable provider has more internet subscribers than cable subscribers
Oh thank God. Does this mean that the Comcast salescreature who leans on our doorbell monthly will stop trying to push cable on us? I have to es'plain to him each time that we have this thing called an An-Ten-Na that receives digital TV Foooorrrrrrr Frreeee-eeee-eee. ...and incidentally, anything not available on the antenna is (eventually) available on our internet connection (fiber to the door, courtesy Frontier, formerly courtesy Verizon).
He then loudly proclaims that Frontier is "getting out of the cable business" and our cable tv will "go away in a month". (He's been saying that for almost a year now -- eventually he could even be right.) I patiently explain (yet again) that we don't have cable TV. At all. Not even the basic package. Haven't since we sent back those horribly expensive multiroom DVR set top boxes that never really worked correctly.
So... I have to wonder, what's in store for me now? Internet is, basically, internet. I haven't noticed any particular "traffic shaping" on my current fiber connection (25/5, lowest tier, more than adequate), something that Comcast in particular is famous for. What can they offer me that I don't already have? 100 Mb/sec? Frontier will be happy to sign me up for that, for a price. I just don't happen to believe it's necessary. Besides, a 100 Mb link from Comcast.... what does that really get me? Faster access to pr0n? Any content I want to access is going to compete with Comcast's core business (cable tv) and is likely to be "shaped", so the faster speed buys me what, besides bragging rights?
It's going to be interesting how the salesguy's spiel is going to change (if at all) when internet connectivity is his main pitch. Internet connectivity is like... electricity. Just another commodity. At least, it should be, and we seem (finally!) to be going that direction.
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
Doesn't this just mean that the number of people that have just internet are now more than the number of people that just have cable? If the FCC prevented bundling it would have happened years ago.
"Basically I'm waiting for ala-carte TV or a service through our network connection that provides basically the same thing. (No Netflix, Hulu, etc aren't there yet)"
SlingTV (from Dish Network)
..there is actual competition between cable companies. When you have a monopoly in an area, you have no incentive to treat your customers well.
I've been thinking about this. It's true, but I wonder how things will change when all the cable companies are competing to provide you only with basic access to the internet. Then it becomes just another commodity, like phone or power, and there is very little room for differentiation.
The thing about basic internet is that it's very easy to quantify. You can get measurements of *true* performance from third parties for free. This makes it harder (but not impossible) for a company to claim 100/100 when measurements show it drops to 15/5 after a few minutes of sustained traffic, or drops to a lower tier based on whether traffic is streaming or torrenting.
We know that Comcast "shapes" traffic using criteria that makes paying for an ultra high speed connection pointless to the very customers who could best make use of that kind of connection. A competing service only has to say "we don't shape traffic". Ok, sign me up.
It's going to be an interesting world in the next few years.
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
Several years ago, as a cost-cutting measure, I put up an antenna and got rid of Comcast cable TV. Too many channels I was ostensibly paying for but never ever watching. I'm perfectly happy with OTA broadcasts and the local stations, major networks. I'll supplement that with a small amount of programming from the Internet, but not anywhere near as much as you might think. I think I'm not alone in this, I think many people are going back to OTA broadcasts for the one-time cost of an antenna and saying 'FU' to cable and satellite costs, it just doesn't show up as much because beyond the cost of the antenna there's no subscription for anyone to track. I also cite ventures like Aereo, which despite their being killed off, showed that there is a market for OTA broadcasts still. I think this is the direction things are -- and should -- move back towards. Honestly the picture quality of OTA DTV is better than cable or satellite anyway, no re-compressing happening.
Are YOU using the TOOL, or is the TOOL using YOU? Think about it!
Any chance Comcast will look at where their customers now lie, decide they're now an ISP with a side business in TV rather than a cable company with a side job in internet, and stop raping the quality of their internet to drive customers towards their cable offerings, and give up on those silly plans to become a competitor to Netflix et al. because they feel lonely without the ability to cram their own ads into something that's already overladen with advertising?
No chance? Didn't think so.
I want service and infrastructure to be separated.
I like the idea of IPTV, and AT&T's U-Verse TV service is completely IP-based. So why do I have to have U-Verse Internet service? If I can only get Comcast Internet at my home, then why am I limited to Comcast TV? Why can't I subscribe to U-Verse TV over the Comcast lines?
That is just an example. The same principle could be applied elsewhere... such getting DirecTV over cable lines or cable TV over satellite. The point is, you should be able to choose your service based on what you want, not which pipe you happen to have running to your house.
All my liberal friends think I'm a conservative, all my conservative friends think I'm a liberal.
Thing is, every cable TV provider is trying to sell "value added" internet. They want you to use (i.e. subscribe to) their particular service instead of using a competitor (like Netflix). That's the whole reason for their fighting against being classified Title II. They want to restrict/block access to competitors so that you'll either pay more for their service or pay just to access competitors.
What I'd really love to see is for internet access to become a true utility. Break the connection part of the business from everything else and regulate it just like the electric or gas company. Set a rate schedule and minimum throughput for various tiers of service. The only thing they do is provide you a connection to the net and that's it. Then all content providers (the other side of the cable TV company as well as everyone else) would compete on a level playing field. Your connection to any of them is exactly the same. They would have to compete based on what content they provide and how much they charge.
Managing cell phone networks would be a fair bit more complicated since they already operate in each other's territory and there isn't the kind of monopoly that exists in local cable TV markets. That would require more thought than I'm prepared to give it right now. But certainly you would want to break the service providers apart from the content creators to ensure the providers don't discriminate against where the traffic is coming from.
But there's less profit in net neutrality and true competition which is why the various companies want to keep the status quo and they're fighting hard to protect their revenue streams.
You are right. It will be interesting to see how things work out in the next couple of years.
I don't have a TV subscription and haven't DVR'd a show for years, but I was talked into subscribing to HBO NOW by the girl because she wanted to watch Game Of Thrones because all her friends were watching it. HBO NOW is pretty good - like Netflix and Prime but with a few better movies and some material they make themselves. What I can't work out though is that half the "seasons" seem to be only a few episodes long. It's like they haven't finished shooting them or something. Take for example, Silicon Valley - Season 1 is there - great - it's actually quite good. But Season 2 is only 3 episodes. Why is that? I don't see that on Netflix with their shows. Did they get cancelled or something?
[Edit] I was just told by a colleague that apparently, HBO actually "broadcast" their shows on a timetable. What? Why? The upshot is that we have to wait for some arbitrary time before the episodes become available. Sheesh. Talk about old fashioned...
Does this mean?
* 80% both TV and internet
* 9% TV only
* 11% Internet only
And of course 80% have a stupid cable landline they dont want or need but keep because they dont want to lose the number?
You need internet. Cable-TV is a grossly overpriced luxury.
With a digital antenna, and services like hulu, and every channel having it's own website: you can watch practically anything with cable-tv.
I have a Roku, and use my PC as a Plex server. I have not missed cable at all.
You previously had their BETTER installers then. It's not been unheard of that installations from the islands are run over the grass...If sufficiently nestled down between blades, the coax often survives a few mowings...
...when you consider that many of us are forced into getting basic/local ( $10/mo) on our internet service.
If they would let me have my internet service without television for the same price, I would totally do that. Instead, my cable television set top box gathers dust in a closet and props up the cable television subscriber statistic.
comcast isn't available here and since i can't get actual broadband at home ill tell you what i can get at work suddenlink for business cable max speed i can get is 8/1 for $134.95/mo att uverse ip-dsl max speed i can get is 12/1 for $55/mo ($40/mo after discounts for having phone service $5 and promotional rates $10) diamondnet city fiber lowest speed i can get 10/10 for $54.95/mo highest speed i can get 50/50 for $156.95/mo keep in mind none of the 3 have any usage caps for business and the city fiber has none for residents
Minimum threshold fixed. Thanks!
I was told something was "impossible" 10 times, until I got tired of their lies, and sent a complaint to the FCC, local regulator, and multiple departments in SBC (formerly and finally ATT), and within 48 hours of dropping a letter in the mail, the service was fixed, and a couple days later, a letter came indicating the problem was fixed and essentially gave a script to read from when the FCC contacted me.
From "impossible" to "done" in a few hours, once I sent a letter to the regulatory bodies. They won't do the job they are required by law to do, unless threatened with legal action. And, sadly, that was my best experience with ATT, as the problem was fixed, even if it took them 6 months to fix their DSL service, and required I send letters to the national and state governments.
Learn to love Alaska
Ohio -- more payday loan vendors than McDonald's, Burger King & Wendy's...combined.
In Oklahoma, more borrowers use at least 17 loans in a year than use just one.
In 2006 the Pentagon found that payday loans were "becoming a threat to readiness" and tightened up the rules on loans...to military personnel.
- all three from yesterday's NYTimes weekend magazine
I come here for the love
54 up / 23 down according to Speakeasy.net/speedtest. Don't know the accuracy of that . Also pay 100 plus a month.
Get up!
how can comcast expect to keep having data caps with services like SlingTV out there? people are used to just leaving their TVs on, but when you do this with an OTT tv service, you're just burning data without even thinking about it.
they "temporarily suspended" the 250GB cap in my area some time ago even a 750GB/mo cap seems unreasonable if you get all your TV over the internet.
Or even an incentive to add them as a customer since you know no other company can legally add them as customers. That is what is happening in the city of Seattle. Comcast has the government-granted monopoly for most of the city, but they have no incentive to actually provide service since the city sets the rates so low it's hard to make a profit and has ridiculous fees (more than a dozen permits are sometimes required to add a single customer) for adding customers. That leaves much of the city without faster than 1.5 Mbps DSL available. That is if you're lucky and live somewhere with DSL. I'm right on the edge of it working, so I'm stuck with ISDN since I'd rather have slow and reliable rather than the faster 576 kbps I had with DSL but it went down several times per day.
I'd love to be able to purchase cable TV and Internet. In the just over thirty years I've lived in Seattle, I have never had access to either. When I lived in a small town in Georgia in the early 80s, I had cable TV. I wish Seattle would catch-up to rural Georgia thirty years ago.
It's not enough to be the worst customer service in the USA, they want to improve their "poor ratings" to be the worst company in the entire world (while still only operating in a single country).
Their internet service will become so bad that they will bring the entire internet down with them, drawing in poor reviews from all corners of the globe.
Sure you might only get 2-10 Mb/s download compared with other countries many thousand, but the ping times are unrivaled outside a university. If you want high end gaming, it suffices... Part of me longs for 8000 Mb/s internet with low latency because I'm sitting on networking code for an action based MOBA which could allow more players in the same zone than there are people living on Earth now. Forget 64 player limit FPS, have everyone on a single server in a single zone kungfu fighting. But another part of me thinks I wouldn't be able to balance it and it'd be dumb :P
God spoke to me
I have TWC and I watch the hell out of Netflix, for $35/mo. It's 15 mb/s, 10x what I paid AT&T for (1.5mb) for $49.
It;s not Comcast, but it seems relevant since the merger was given the big finger.
What's my upload? I'd rather not upload one goddamned thing. How does my upload matter? I don't give a shit. My Netflix experience hasn't suffered, and for fuck's sake I don't intend to create more content than I consume.
Do you?
Order business class internet, try to order TV with it.
Have fun!
Too much work for me, I skipped it. Plus, what a rip!
"To those who are overly cautious, everything is impossible. "
nah but online backups would be nice or just being able to get large files from home or work in under an hour example its faster to drive to work and back than download a 700mb iso file i have saved there
Minimum threshold fixed. Thanks!
Comcast offers me $1 less per month if I bundle Internet with basic cable. I never use the basic cable. So I'm counted as a TV subscriber even though I don't need or want it. So I suspect the count of TV subscribers is inflated.
comcast's caps are 300 gig a month
Comcast offers me $1 less per month if I bundle Internet with basic cable. I never use the basic cable. So I'm counted as a TV subscriber even though I don't need or want it. So I suspect the count of TV subscribers is inflated.
Yup, this is the case with us as well.
What is your UPLOAD speed and DATA CAP? Download speed is not the only metric of internet service. I get 100 down but only 10 up for almost $80/month. I dont consider it a good value because the upload is so low.
I don't even care about your problems a tiny, tiny bit. My best internet option is $65/mo for 6/1 from a WISP with egregious downtime and customer support to rival comcast (Digital Path.) Quit your crying.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Just stream, Cable tv is anacronistic scam. They want you to bundle shit you dont need. You dont need your phone on the internet, and theres to view via streaming than their overpriced crap offers. That is true of Comcast or ANY Cable company.
What is your UPLOAD speed and DATA CAP?
My service is 100 down 20 up. There might be a cap but I've never run into it even when I used services like Netflix. I don't do stuff like torrents or running servers, etc. Your mileage may vary but it's fast enough for my needs in both directions and the price is manageable at ~$90/month. Not cheap but reasonable value to me given my needs and lifestyle.
The TV on the other hand is a terrible value to me. For $30/month I get maybe 2-4 hours of entertainment per week out of 30-40 channels. I could pay more and get more channels but I wouldn't watch more so there is no point in paying more as far as I'm concerned. My life will go on if I don't get the National Geographic channel or ESPN.
I want service and infrastructure to be separated.
Agreed. I think we (as a society) should be dropping big money on rolling out fast connections everywhere we can and those connections should be independent from the content providers. Companies should be allowed to do infrastructure or content but not both.
Basically I should be able to choose my data pipe and choose my content and switch either without it mattering. If I get unhappy with Comcast I should be able to switch pipes to AT&T or Verizon without anyone knowing or caring aside from a few routers.
Hopefully the same thing is happening to Foxtel.
It was a rhetorical question. I can blow through 150GB in a day, not even downloading. Someone on DSLReport is on Google Fiber and nearing 300TB/month. Don't ask, don't tell. Caps are stupid for most situations. Hell, I pay $90/m for a 100/100 dedicated uncapped connection will not have congestion, ISP does not oversubscribe. They don't even differentiate between business and residential because all residential customers have business quality Internet. All they sell is "Internet". You can purchase an SLA with all dedicated path-ways, that will cost you an arm and a leg, but if all you want is dedicated bandwidth and a connection that has 5 minutes of downtime every few months at 2am for regular maintenance, you can save yourself a lot of money.
I pay as much as you do, except I get a dedicated connection with sub 1ms pings, no cap, symmetrical, no-bundling required, non-intro price, no funny fees, bill hasn't changed in years, and I bet my jitter to nearly anywhere in the world is less than the ping you get to your first hop. You're getting ripped off.
I know this is practically blasphemy on the internet... but I actually read the original article. I so doing, I found something particularly confusing about it: While it leads off with that "Internet Customers Surpass Cable Subscribers at Comcast" headline, it then proceeds to say the following further in...
"... At the end of the first quarter, Comcast counted 22.375 million video customers and 22.369 million high-speed Internet customers. ..."
I mean, sure... It's been quite a few years since I took a math class -- but I'm pretty sure that 22.375 > 22.369, if only by a very small margin. Was the author too impatient to wait for his headline to actually come true, (likely next quarter) and playing loose with their numbers, or is that simply a typo?
Well that fortunate for you but there aren't any realistic alternatives where I live. So what do you suggest I do about it? I'm perfectly well aware that some places have better service and/or better prices than I do at my residence.
The only competition to Comcast in my town is Frontier Communications DSL service which is much slower and not any cheaper for similar speeds. I think their fastest service where I live is 20Mb down/3Mb up. And that's it for landlines. I could go cellular but that is very expensive, slower and has small bandwidth caps. Satellite? Yeah... no.
That said, I'm ok with the price though not thrilled about it. I can afford it, it's fast enough for my needs (up and down), the price hasn't changed and the service has been very reliable. Would I like to pay less? Sure. Do I think Comcast is making a healthier than strictly necessary profit? I'm sure of it. But given the scenario I'm in it's not bad and it's an amount within my willingness to pay. I don't think I'd be willing to pay any more than I am but I use it enough to get decent value for money.
SlingTV (from Dish Network)
Looked at it but not really quite there. As far as I can tell it doesn't work with my DVR or provide equivalent functionality and the channel list is worse than what I already have for not much less money. Some channels prohibit you from pausing, rewinding or skipping commercials. Not really a great deal to me though I do see the appeal to some.
Upload speed matters in the sense that the Internet was supposed to be a democratized peer-to-peer infrastructure that would enable global dialogue, while you're apparently content for it to be "just another entertainment service" dominated by oligarchic commercial interests.
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
Just stream, Cable tv is anacronistic scam.
I don't disagree but stream what? The options for streaming content are still pretty sad though I do see progress. Cable TV is generally a rip off but the alternatives don't provide any better value for money to me. I had a Netflix subscription and I dropped it because I wasn't using it enough. Most streaming services don't have enough original content or it's too hard to find something worth watching to be worth the trouble. I'm optimistic that will change but right now it just doesn't work for me.
I don't get it. Are you citing that as an example of how AT&T is worse than Comcast? Because it isn't -- I've had send complaints to regulators to get Comcast to do shit too.
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
2-10Mb/s download? You're kidding, right? Average Comcast customer is getting 44Mbps down (actual output). http://www.speedtest.net/isp/c...
Currently the internet is taking over television. Unfortunately this is a temporary situation. Once the telcoms, ISPs, etc get enough lobbying money funneled into congress, net neutrality will disappear and cable TV will be back in business bigger than ever. With their monopolies on internet access, ISPs will be able to control what you see, and when you see it; will be able to insert advertising wherever and whenever they want; and will be able to charge you an arm and a leg for it. The future of the internet is cable TV version 2.0.
Proverbs 21:19
comcast is its own worst enemy. I have Comcast tv and internet, but I can't even give the TV cable away. Because of the bundled price, I wouldn't actually save any money but cutting the TV cable, but I rarely watch it because Comcast downgrades HD to SD in the hopes that I'll pay another 10 bucks a month to get HD back. I'd rather wait a day and watch it in HD over the internet. Fuck you Comcast. I hope it was worth the extra $120 a year to alienate customers, because as soon as I get any sort of choice in my area you guys are right out. To me, you sacrificed long term gain for short-term bullshit.
Only thing I have to do is cancel the basic cable after year 2 on the contract. I'm not looking forward to that...
"Seven Deadly Sins? I thought it was a to-do list!"
Comcast hasn't enforced their data cap for years, at least in the Pittsburgh market. I use close to 1 TB per month and have not heard a word of complaint from them. If you go to https://customer.comcast.com/S... you can check your usage and see what the cap is (and it will likely say something along the lines of "Note:enforcement of the 250GB data consumption threshold is currently suspended").
8000 Mb/s would not even be close to what you would need, it is simply wrong, much like the rest of your post.
Protip: adding more players increases requirements exponentially.
What I'm saying is is that you're a moron.
Evene if there is competition, it would not mean that customer service will increase. As long as the competition is a bit more expensive, they will not change.
Sure, some people will walk, but not enough to change that. Competition means a race to the bottom, not to the top.
I have seen in a few companies that the only way to change lousy customer service is legal action. And yes, I have seen that legal action was taken because of liusy customer service.
OInce company I know added 200+ agents to their callcenter, because customers had to wait too long.
But obviously that all means that you have laws in place that protect customers more than it protects companies.
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
Comcast offers me $1 less per month if I bundle Internet with basic cable. I never use the basic cable. So I'm counted as a TV subscriber even though I don't need or want it. So I suspect the count of TV subscribers is inflated.
I had a similar deal for quite a while. They changed their pricing scheme last year, so it's finally cheaper to get internet without cable. So I guess that means I just recently cut the cord, even though I haven't actually had a TV plugged into the cable for several years now.
I have the 50mps Comcast service and it's never 50mps.
It's more like 20mps to 30mps downstream at any given time.
Uploads are typically 10mps to 20mps.
Plenty fast for me, but would be nice to get what I pay for...
My God can beat up your God. Just kidding...don't take offense. I know there's no God.
Same here. We cancelled cable awhile back.
Then Comcast started offering us TV + Internet deals that were cheaper than just our internet.
We signed up for that deal to save money. We don't even have our cable box connected. We're not using the TV service.
But we get counted as a subscriber. They are totally cooking the books. They have far less real subscribers than they report.
My God can beat up your God. Just kidding...don't take offense. I know there's no God.
I gave up on cable TV several years ago. Bought an attic antenna for local channels because Comcast wanted to charge too much for free TV. I cannot just cut the cable as I feel even more dependent on Comcast for internet. But even though I pay $67 a month for 30mbps down and 6mbps up. I can basically pay for what I watch and not what I don't. Plus I have access to many more streaming options and while I give Comcast bad marks for TV programming. I think the broadband service has been stellar and I rarely have any service loss or speed issues. The only annoying thing about Comcast has been the monthly calls about upgrading my service. Its probably true that down the road cable companies will be more broadband suppliers then TV programming providers. It will take time but its going that way.
what nonsense.
slingtv is not alacarte programming...
what canada is implementing (called 'pick and pay'), however, will be.
Though not a Comcast customer, I finally cancelled cable TV and have only internet - and I took a lower speed than they had upgraded me to without my input. My modem couldn't deliver the speed they were providing me, and they had previously implied that I could not get tech service without renting their equipment. We simply gave up TV, did not replace it, but need internet service for business.
Where do you live and how much does it cost to move there?
I like the idea of IPTV, and AT&T's U-Verse TV service is completely IP-based. So why do I have to have U-Verse Internet service?
Probably because multicast doesn't work over the public Internet. It works only on a particular ISP's network.
I've never lived in Comcast's or TWC's coverage areas. I've never had cable.
The issue wasn't that I had to send a letter, but that ATT lied to me for almost a year. They claimed something was "impossible" then did it in a few hours, when I stopped asking nicely. It was a small technical tweak on my line that didn't even need a truck roll. And it was to change it back to the original config. It worked great when I signed up, then they broke it and refused to acknowledge they broke it, until they fixed it. They violated the contract (and law) by changing my service, and lied for months about it, then lied for months after that in reasons why they wouldn't fix it.
I can't compare to Comcast. Never had them. I can tell you what my experience with ATT was. If yours was worse, share it. Otherwise, I don't understand why you are posting just to whine.
Learn to love Alaska
Alright, here are some of my experiences with Comcast's evilness (not including the "normal" and endemic DNS hijacking, Bittorrent and Netflix throttling, and secret data cap issues that Slashdot has reported on, of course):
1. I called up Comcast to negotiate my rate, and the customer service rep offered me $19.99/month (for I think 20Mbps internet). When I got my first bill, it was for $60+. I called to complain, and (after escalating to a manager) was basically told that they did not offer such a rate, that I was a liar for claiming to have been offered such a rate, and that they refuse to go listen to their own recording of the phone call (which would have proven that I was correct). Once I filed the BBB complaint, I was contacted by somebody higher up in Comcast (some kind of VP... it was over a year ago and I'm going by memory) who said they'd reviewed the recording of the call and would honor the rate for one year. Then, after 6 months, they jacked up the rate again, so I filed a second BBB complaint to get them to finish honoring their original agreement.
2. After that previous rate had ended, I changed my plan to a $39.99 plan that included Internet + basic cable TV (because Comcast is so desperate to inflate their TV subscriber numbers that they often offer that plan cheaper than Internet by itself). I refused to let them give me a cable box, opting instead to use my digital-cable ready TV's built-in QAM tuner instead. Then my PERFECTLY-GOOD built-in tuner stopped working, because Comcast decided to start encrypting the signal (which is nothing more or less than a blatant power and money grab, to force people to use set-top boxes and drive business for 'on demand'). Of course, Comcast will tell you the government forced them to do it -- trying to conflate it with the over-the-air digital transition -- but that's a big fat fucking lie. Long story short, I ended up filing the following FCC complaint:
Once I eventually obtained a CableCard -- which required physically going to a Comcast office, and was such a painful experience that I started yelling at the service rep and almost got arrested by the county sheriff's deputy that Comcast apparently employs to keep the peace because their customer service is apparently THAT BAD! -- I found out that having the CableCard actually entitled me to a discount vs. having the "free" set-top box. In other words, 1. the "free" set-top box isn't actually free, and 2. Comcast overcharged me for the several months between signing up for the plan and getting the CableCard registered on my account.
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
Sounds pretty bad, glad I never had the option to buy from them, so never even faced the temptation.
Learn to love Alaska
Thank you for saying what i could not articulate.
Good-bye
300TB a month? Doing the math in my head puts that at very close to 1gbit/s throughput for 720 hours (30 days).
That's a whole lotta hard drives and/or machines they must have going, their electricity bill must be enormous :D
Founder & COO, Hayai India (hayai.in) / USA (hayaibroadband.com)
That's near the max of 1Gb one direction, or 500Mb in both directions.
I'm really hoping the entire non-demand cable paradigm collapses as soon as possible. It really hasn't been necessary for some time
A lot of people would disagree with you in the case of live sporting events. One well-known example is the College Football Championship Game on ESPN. How should we convince people that it is acceptable to watch the big game a week after the fact?
For every dollar a customer pays for TV, Comcast pays ~60 cents right out the door to the content guys
And collects how much from local advertisers? Cable operators are allowed to preempt a small number of commercials each hour.
Let me know when "properly implemented multicasting" functions over the Internet, not just a private LAN.
how can comcast expect to keep having data caps with services like SlingTV out there?
By being the only wired ISP in the area and bragging that its caps are higher than those of sat and cell.
streaming is downlaoding numbnuts
just cause its playing while downloading doesnt change that
Exactly. Even bi-directional 500mb isn't easy to attain unless you're running some kind of traffic generator or something like that.
It's both absurd and awesome. I couldn't find the post on DSLR you were referring to though.
Founder & COO, Hayai India (hayai.in) / USA (hayaibroadband.com)