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Charter Fights FCC's Attempt To Uncover 'Hidden' Cable Modem Fees (arstechnica.com)
Charter is trying to convince the Federal Communications Commission to backtrack on a plan that would force cable providers to charge a separate fee for cable modems, an anonymous writes, citing an ArsTechnica report. From the article: Charter is unusual compared to other cable companies in that it doesn't tack on a cable modem rental fee when offering Internet service. But FCC officials don't think that's good for consumers, because the price of Charter Internet service is the same whether a customer uses a Charter modem or buys their own. FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler's latest proposal for new cable box rules would require companies to list fees for equipment used to access video. The FCC is clearly hoping that Charter will create a separate fee for cable modems and lower the base price of Internet service by a corresponding amount, thus letting customers save money in the long run by purchasing their own modems. (Separately from modems, Charter already charges monthly fees for the use of its TV set-top boxes.) "As part of the proposal, all pay-TV providers are required to be fully transparent about the cost consumers pay for leased equipment used to access video programming," an FCC spokesperson told Ars. "The goal is to uncover hidden fees and give consumers the ability to make informed choices. If a consumer chooses to purchase their own equipment at retail, our rules would require they no long have to pay for the built-in cost on their bill. We look forward to input from the Commissioners on this aspect of the proposal."
If I were Charter, I would embrace this. I would make the base internet price the current price, then tack on $10/month to renters of cable modems. I would include a letter in the bill that says, "The FCC has mandated that we start charging for the rental of your cable modem...yada yada, it's the government's fault your rate just went up."
They'll make a killing and not really lose many customers. The FCC is creating a golden opportunity for them.
Business Class With Static IP Force you to rent. The FCC needs to stop that and let you buy the same one that used at home that you can buy.
Free.fr, a french ISP notorious for bringing low cost internet doesn't charge a rental fee for its "boxes" and using any other hardware is not supported.
In a lawsuit related to the non-disclosure of some open source components, they argued that the freebox (that's the name of the modem) is part of their network and that the customer has nothing to do with it. IIRC, they lost, but I can see Charter pulling the same argument.
Yeah, but because they don't tell you (as a separate line item), the cost of renting the cable modem, you're unable to determine whether or not it's a good deal.
I mean, okay, my cable modem is from Time Warner. I honestly couldn't tell you how much the rent on it is, because the internet service is bundled into the rent I pay.
But let's say I did have the bill for that. A mid-range cable modem costs, what, $100? $150? (Newegg lists some going up to $200.) Let's go with $150.
If the bill says my monthly cable modem rental is $5 a month, it would take 30 months before I've saved money by buying my own. If it's $10 a month, it would take 15 months before I've started saving money.
There's other factors, like how often do you need to replace a cable modem because of age or damage, or whatnot. If you're renting the cable modem, the company should replace it if it breaks, right? Maybe there's an extra fee involved in that, maybe there isn't. Maybe it depends on how often you need the cable modem replaced. If it's your modem, and it starts going south on you, you have to pay the replacement cost. So, that has to be taken into consideration.
But if you don't know these things, because the ISP is hiding them from you, you can't make an informed decision.
Mr. Hu is not a ninja.
Huh??? DOCSIS requires backwards compatibility, both for the head end and the modems themselves. Any DOCSIS n hardware is compatible with n+k and n-k for all values of k. There's absolutely no reason for your cable company's head end to not negotiate a connection with your existing cable modem. You just won't get the faster speeds provided by the newer standard.
Besides, at $6 a month, it doesn't take years to recover the cost. It takes just a few months. Unless you're doing something special, a cable modem typically costs only forty or fifty bucks. That's only about seven or eight months of service. Unless your cable company requires you to rent one (e.g. Comcast when using multiple static IPs), you're a chump if you rent from the cable company. The break-even point is probably about a dollar a month.
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I can only say that among my circle of friends and family that just about all of us have about reached the end of what we're going to pay for TV and internet and I think there's a pretty good chance that $10 extra would be the straw that breaks the camel's back and makes people drop cable TV altogether. Cable TV subscribers are going down every year due to cost. Even Disney had to do something in some negotiations in the past year that most stock market analysts didn't think they would ever do. They were able to keep their channels like ESPN on basic cable packages but they had to agree to lower numbers of subscribers to do it, which does reduce their revenue.
Maybe that's true, the same thing happened to me: alleged backwards compatibility didn't stop Comcast from causing my DOCSIS 2.0 (Linksys BEFC-MU10) modem to stop being able to connect. The DOCSIS 3.0 replacement (Zoom 6341j) I bought worked.
I wouldn't be at all surprised if Comcast intentionally configured their network to reject connections from DOCSIS 2.0 modems even if they were supposed to still work, in hopes that some people who owned modems would start renting (or just to punish people for having the audacity not to rent). It's just the kind of thing those criminal, corrupt fuckers would do.
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The static IP thing has to do with how static IPs are managed. The modem needs to be configured to participate in routing (RIPv2). That configuration includes a shared secret key, that the cable company can't share with customers for security reasons. Keep on hating though.. And to comment on the bring your own modem thing, the cable company must do frequent software upgrades to it's CMTSs just in order to keep up with the ever increasing demand for bandwidth. Those upgrades should be lab tested ahead of time. Having a large population of XYZ brand modems to test against causes that testing process to be much more complicated, or even impossible. This lack of testability, and lack of relationship with the modem vendor (cable company didn't but the piece of shit, you did), often results in the experience of "that damn greedy cable company broke my modem". Keep on hating though. What the cable company doesn't want to happen, is for their software/hardware upgrades to make their phone ring. It costs them plenty to answer the calls - 3 or 4 calls to their call center costs roughly the same as they would pay for a modem.
Yeah, I'm sure it's just people hating on the poor cable companies and nothing that they're doing. Comcast specifically lists which devices they support and to what extent. You can buy the exact same model of modem that Comcast rents for about six months worth of rental fees and you the owner of the modem have the exact same amount of control over secret keys and configuration and whatnot as the rental modems (ie none). They can and do push configuration and firmware updates to your privately owned modem just as they would their own.
But I'm sure it's all just me hating on poor Comcast and none of these actual facts instead. Fucking shill.
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