The Cable TV Industry Is Getting Even Less Popular (fortune.com)

Aaron Pressman, writing for Fortune: It seems nobody loves their cable TV or home Internet provider. Wireless carriers, however, are on the upswing.That's the news from the huge annual survey of 43 industries from the American Customer Satisfaction Index. In 2017, cable operators and ISP tied for last place, with an average customer satisfaction rating of just 64 percent. The wireless industry was still near the bottom of the rankings, in 38th place, just below the U.S. postal system. But its 73 percent score was up almost three percentage points from last year. Many of the same companies, like Comcast and Verizon, dominate both fields, ACSI noted. And neither industry offer much choice to consumers, with most localities having only one or two cable and Internet providers. The cable industry's rating slipped 1.5 percentage points from last year, while the rating for ISPs was unchanged.

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[bill_mcgonigle]

The half a million who switched to streaming services are the ones who are actually dissatisfied.* The ones who keep paying a monthly bill for cable TV are satisfied enough.

They'll whine to survey callers, but push comes to shove, the cable companies don't really care if the bills are paid and these people acknowledge sufficient value to continue.

Economists don't give surveys very much credence.

* excepting the very small minority who can get cable TV but not cable Internet

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[Sperbels]

The half a million who switched to streaming services are the ones who are actually dissatisfied.* The ones who keep paying a monthly bill for cable TV are satisfied enough.

Actually, no, I'm not dissatisfied streaming. What I was dissatisfied with was having 200 channels of mostly unwatchable garbage, paying $100 a month for commercial ridden shows that I didn't really want to watch.

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[fluffernutter]

I pay a monthly bill because I would be paying most of it to have an internet connection on its own anyway, so I might as well pay the extra $10 for basic cable or whatever.

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[Anonymous Coward]

I used to do that, but that $10 never stays $10 for long. Eventually, introductory prices end and television ends up costing far more. Last time I had cable television, it ballooned to almost $200/mo before I got around to canceling. Now I pay for $50/mo for 50mbps and don't dare add cable. I might try it again if they ever make it as easy to cancel as it is to activate -- any service that lets you sign up with a few clicks of the mouse but makes you call a number to cancel is a bullshit service (I used to work for an adult entertainment company that pulled that shit). If they thought it was a good product, they'd make it just as easy to cancel as it is to sign up.

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[Maxo-Texas]

You are off by over an order of magnitude.

Cable subscribers have dropped by over 8 million households since 2017.

And the longterm trend is towards the European model with much lower rates of subscriptions except for sports fans.

Business Insider estimates it will cut the value of media companies (esp Viacom) by about 40%.

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[Anonymous Coward]

I don't think it's the service itself that people hate. It's the fact that customer loyalty is now punished instead of rewarded. If you stay with any service provider for more than a few years, then you know exactly what I'm talking about. Your price just keeps going up and up, as they increasingly treat you like a sheep ready for fleecing. Car insurance is a perfect example. Loyal customers used to be rewarded with lower costs. Now they take the opposite approach: loyal customers are seen as the sheep with the thickest coats, and therefore best for fleecing.

This is one of many reasons why I try to avoid participating in consumerism. As a consumer today, your only role is to be fleeced to the greatest extent possible. It was largely this realization that gave me the willpower to reduce my spending to only $15,000/year -- AND feel good about it.

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[Anonymous Coward]

I had cable TV back in 1995. I dropped it as soon as I could. It wasn't that I didn't want to watch TV, it was that, as the parent said, I didn't want to pay that much for 200 variations on the theme of schlock TV.
I have internet through cable because I have no other choice. There is nothing else available in my area. I do not live in the middle of nowhere. I live in an upscale suburb just outside of Minneapolis. The cable company and everyone else is too lazy to run fiber. I actually pay more for my slower internet because I refuse to get cable TV or Phone service.
I hate my cable provider not because they suck at providing internet. The internet is nearly always available. I hate them because they are a G-D monopoly and they press every fsking advantage they can. The make no concessions to the needs or even wants of their customers and take every opportunity to charge users for every dime they can.
The free market failed miserably here.

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[PopeRatzo]

What I was dissatisfied with was having 200 channels of mostly unwatchable garbage, paying $100 a month for commercial ridden shows that I didn't really want to watch.

I'm old enough to remember when cable TV was originally sold as "commercial free". See, we were going to pay for a subscription to have all this wonderful programming sent to us without the annoying ads.

Also, it was sold as "interactive". I mean, there were special controllers and everything. And there would be plenty of bandwidth for public interest programming on the local level. It turned out to be regular old bullshit television on steroids.

The entire thing has been a huge boondoggle. A gift to the telecoms.

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[drinkypoo]

The half a million who switched to streaming services are the ones who are actually dissatisfied.*
[...]
* excepting the very small minority who can get cable TV but not cable Internet

What about the very sizable group that can get high-speed internet access only from a cable company which offers them a discount cable, internet, and phone service bundled which makes it actually cheaper to have cable? Those people can be cable subscribers, and yet dissatisfied with cable, and also be rational consumers.

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[Anonymous Coward]

Comcast advertises $10, but when I got cable last month, that $10 turned into over $50 after fees like the $10 "HD Technology Fee", taxes, box rental, etc.. I knew there would be extra fees, but I had no idea it would cost that much more just for $10 worth of TV channels. Because I knew upfront, I asked several reps if they could give me the amount of the actual bill, and none could. Apparently Comcast doesn't allow their customer service access to that information. I guess because they're afraid they'll tell the truth and then they'll lose orders.

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[sjames]

The catch is that the cable internet will be the same crap company that provides the cable TV. Available internet options may have data caps too low to support replacing cable TV with streaming. Or they may mysteriously have a bunch of dropped packets when you try to stream from any popular service they don't own. They will definitely not do any of the logical engineering they would do if they were internet only (such as placing caching systems on their network to relieve upstream traffic).

The problem is that the cable companies strive to be just barely better than nothing. They can get away with that because they carefully avoid competition. In many markets they have worked very hard to make sure that you can't see any of the local sports over broadcast TV.

If you want to call just barely better than nothing satisfaction, that's your call.

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[Vermonter]

I actually managed not to see a car insurance bill a few years back, resulting in me not paying and my coverage being cancelled. When I signed back up with the same insurer, I actually got a better rate as a new customer who had defaulted on their last payment than I had as a customer continually paying my bills on time.

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[oldmac31310]

It's still 2017. What are you trying to say?

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[Maxo-Texas]

Gr.. Since 2010. Typo. Over the last 7 years.

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[Anubis IV]

I'm dissatisfied streaming, but that's because in the last two years I've seen my Suddenlink Internet bill (after calling them to negotiate a lower price each year) go up by 66%, from $30/mo. to $50/mo., despite having the exact same 50 Mbps connection with a 250GB/mo. data cap the entire time. It's the lowest tier of service they offer, so there are no cheaper options through them. In my repeated searches for alternatives (cable, DSL, WISP, satellite, whatever), what I've discovered is that their biggest competition currently comes from Frontier DSL...which offers 3 Mbps for $30/mo..

The 3 is not a typo.

Mind you, the area I live in is flat terrain with over 200K people, so we aren't in difficult terrain or miles away from civilization. It's a metropolitan area centrally located between three of the nation's ten largest cities, but the absolute cheapest, most rock-bottom, lowest available broadband service is still $50/month. In 2017. Which is about the same as what I was paying back in 2013 when 50 Mbps was the highest tier they offered and there were no data caps on any plans.

The only change around here during that time was that Verizon DSL was around back in 2013 with a 10 Mbps plan. But Verizon exited the area a few years ago. With the next closest plan being Frontier's 3 Mbps, Suddenlink is apparently free to gouge its customers without fear that we'll leave for someone else. Because where else would we go?

What. The. Hell.

So, yes, I'm dissatisfied. The only thing I was more dissatisfied with was my cable TV bill back before I ended that.

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[Anonymous Coward]

Cable TV was never commercial free, and was never intended to be. As a matter of fact, CATV stands for Community Antenna Television. It was simply a way for people in areas with poor reception (e.g. a valley) to share a large antenna. The only 'no commercial' channels were premium ones like HBO.

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[PopeRatzo]

The only 'no commercial' channels were premium ones like HBO.

How about premium ones like ESPN, TNT, FX, etc? Are they no-commercial too?

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[Anonymous Coward]

Cable TV was never sold as "commercial free" -- ever. What they did have was certain channels that were commercial free (sort of -- they still had commercials, but they weren't sold). Mainly the cable only channels like HMO, Showtime, Cinemax, probably MTV and a few others. And for the most part they still are -- there are no commercials interrupting movies. A few of the channels switched from premium channels to ad supported free channels (I can't name them, but bravo, A&E come to mind, but I could be wrong).

Honestly, how do you ever picture a 40-42 minute TV show filling a 60-minute time slot? Do you ever recall seeing shows starting at odd times? I love lucy at 10:10, then the three stooges 10:52-11:34? You may be able to remember cable back then, but your memory is failing you.

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[mrclevesque]

"The free market failed miserably here."

That market depends on good regulations, so it isn't really the market that failed, it's bad regulations.

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[Anonymous Coward]

Not true at all. I haven't actually used the cable box in years, but I have upgraded it, and it sits there, because the monopoly in my city dictates that the cheapest price for internet(that isn't total shite) is bundled with cable. It isn't the shows, I definitely watch "tv" as it were, but I will always do whatever it takes to avoid commercials.

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[Anonymous Coward]

Hello. In an effort to comfort the anguished cries or children everywhere, your local cable company has decided to drop all networks that sexualize spousal homicides from regular programming. Customers still wishing to view true-crime networks will now need to purchase a separate package which will require a technician to service your cable box every night from 2 to 3 am. and must include the purchase of 300 channels in Portuguese. We realize this may be an inconvenience to you, and we hope you will voice ALL your concerns to us, because at your local cable company the customer is always... our bitch.

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[Rujiel]

Cable companies don't care that they're hemmorrhaging millions of customers? wtf are you smoking

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[Rujiel]

And how exactly is it the regulators' fault when two monopolies agree not to compete? Or when an ISP influences state legislatures to kill municipal wifi projects? The regulation boogeyman is such bullshit here.

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[mrclevesque]

"And how exactly is it the regulators' fault when two monopolies agree not to compete? Or when an ISP influences state legislatures to kill municipal wifi projects?"

It's the regulators' fault when regulations are inadequate?

Good regulations : effective antitrust laws and enforcement of those laws, effective lobbying regulations, and so on.

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[Rujiel]

That's silly, virtually no one who first complains about inefficient regulators rather than momopolistic ISPs will go on to say that there are too few regulations. They will always complain that there are too many, and that that's why american broadband sucks.

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[mrclevesque]

Well you might call it silly but it's still true that problems with the market are often less about there being too many regulations and more about regulations that are ineffective or unenforced.

By the way, I was responding to the comment "The free market failed miserably here."

Wonder why the postal system is ranked so low?

[Anonymous Coward]

Seriously, I never have any problems with lost mail, it arrives dependably and at the same time every day, and even with the frequent stamp price increases it still seems like a bargain to send something coast-to-coast in a couple of days for less than a buck.

The only bad thing I might have to say would involve standing in line at the post office, but even that is not really necessary very often anymore with online postage and pickup. I think the US Postal Service should get very high marks. Maybe I just don't use it enough.

Re:Wonder why the postal system is ranked so low?

[H3lldr0p]

It's another disinformation campaign that's been going on for some time. There are a few congressional members who have been aiming to rid us of the Post Office and sell off pieces of it to their buddies. They've been making sure that the PO's budget can't balance through making them pre-pay pensions for a very unreasonable amount of time as well as shrinking the amount they can charge for stamps.

That doesn't even get into the political battle over letting the PO act as a bank for low income people. Which it did at one time but was removed in the late sixties and completely shut down by 1984.

Re:Wonder why the postal system is ranked so low?

[Anonymous Coward]

i take it you do go to the post office often. its worse than the dmv.

Re:Wonder why the postal system is ranked so low?

[Maxo-Texas]

The amount of junk mail has become staggering.

I should be getting 8 envelopes a month in my mail box.

I get a pile over a foot high. And there have been times critical bills were buried in with junk mail.

Re:Wonder why the postal system is ranked so low?

[Anonymous Coward]

I always get my bills... I used to subscribe to a couple of magazines... but even back when they were relevant, I would get like maybe 4 out of 12 issues for the year. I would call and complain to the post office and the magazine companies, the magazine companies where super nice but after getting like 2 free years I gave up and just bought them at the store for way more than the cost of the subscription...

Video game magazines must have been popular with someone at the post office. (Or maybe more than one person) I guess the advantage for them was they didn't have to buy a subscription or buy it at the store.

yeah the post office isn't exactly high on my list of awesome companies.

Re:Wonder why the postal system is ranked so low?

[drinkypoo]

The only bad thing I might have to say would involve standing in line at the post office, but even that is not really necessary very often anymore with online postage and pickup.

The only reason you don't have to stand in line in spite of the volume of package that USPS carries is that UPS and FedEx do all the work of processing most of the small packages into the system, then they hand them off to the USPS... which would be out of business now if it didn't have those packages to carry. The USPS would also be out of business if not for residential spam, which has a massive environmental cost. The USPS literally exists now only as a spam delivery system.

Re:Wonder why the postal system is ranked so low?

[Anonymous Coward]

Just try forwarding your mail after moving. I work for Microsoft, so getting anything done with HR is just a damn hassle and takes forever since we're such a large company with so many benefits thus more benefit problems than most companies and with fewer HR employees than we need after some cutbacks. For example, my HSA and 401(k) require approval from HR to change my address. That means I must get mail forwarding to work. I moved five weeks ago, but I still haven't received a single piece of mail addressed to me.

First off, the three post offices I went to were out of the forms. They claimed that since so many more people were moving each year in the Seattle area that they weren't allowed by Trump to have enough forms to cover everyone. While true, and the census just showed that 36% of the 25-34 year-olds in Seattle moved within the past year(!!), it's ridiculous for them to blame Trump. He's only been president for a few weeks. I finally gave-up on doing it in person and then did it on their web site. Apparently that does nothing since I haven't received any confirmation or any mail at all. I talked to my local postmaster about that, and instead of addressing the problem, he went-off on a long rant about Trump. Finally, I waited in a lawn chair beside my mailbox for my mailman to talk to him. I mentioned that I had moved into the place, and I would like to start receiving mail. He said to put sticker inside the box with my last name in order to help. He said he would do it, but he claimed that Trump took their stickers and Sharpies. I asked when that was, and he said "'round two years ago." The USPS is crazy.

Re:Wonder why the postal system is ranked so low?

[Anonymous Coward]

You do know that you can forward your mail by filling out an online form, right? I've moved twice in the last year and haven't been to a post office once.

Re:Wonder why the postal system is ranked so low?

[Anonymous Coward]

I work for Microsoft, so getting anything done with HR is just a damn hassle and takes forever...

My god this. When I first started, it took twelve weeks to get my first paycheck. To be fair, some of that delay was my fault. I worked in Factoria area of Bellevue, WA (6.3 miles from Microsoft building 1 where my boss works) so I didn't know who to talk to. Then, I couldn't find my social security card. Three weeks after I started, I moved into a nicer place, because I felt like I deserved it after getting a job at Microsoft. It took HR (IIRC) seven weeks to approve my address change. During that time, USPS wasn't forwarding my mail despite the fact that I filled-out the form. I missed rent, car, and credit card payments during that time, so my credit is now destroyed. It's going to take me seven years to get out from this hole. If Microsoft would have processed my change address faster or USPS actually forwarded my mail, this would not have happened.

Re:Wonder why the postal system is ranked so low?

[Anonymous Coward]

You do know that you can forward your mail by filling out an online form, right? I've moved twice in the last year and haven't been to a post office once.

This site has just gone to crap. Been a proud AC since I first heard about /. at the 1998 Atlanta Linux Showcase. GP wrote:

"I finally gave-up on doing it in person and then did it on their web site."

How is that unclear? It's sad how many people either don't read or can't comprehend so they build stupid straw men arguments because they have no other argument. Instead, they just post stupid replies like "did you know they have a web site that you said you already used?" Just stupid.

Re:Wonder why the postal system is ranked so low?

[Insightfill]

It's another disinformation campaign that's been going on for some time. There are a few congressional members who have been aiming to rid us of the Post Office and sell off pieces of it to their buddies. They've been making sure that the PO's budget can't balance through making them pre-pay pensions for a very unreasonable amount of time as well as shrinking the amount they can charge for stamps.

That doesn't even get into the political battle over letting the PO act as a bank for low income people. Which it did at one time but was removed in the late sixties and completely shut down by 1984.

The US postal system is also one of the largest single union employers in the country. Yet another reason that many are trying to "drowned it in a bathtub."

The Post Office is additionally hamstrung by Congress micro-managing it. Want to get rid of Saturday delivery? No. Want to raise the price of a stamp? No. It's really quite tragic. Like that story about the boy who keeps commanding a grasshopper to jump and pulling off legs each time it fails, then loudly proclaiming that it must be deaf.

Re:Wonder why the postal system is ranked so low?

[swb]

I've had the same experience, but I think in some parts of the country it may be more problematic. There have been a few well-publicized incidents of couriers hoarding/dumping mail rather than delivering it.

It's probably statistically rare overall, but I have to believe that it must happen more than we know about, if not commonly, then periodically.

I'd also guess that in dense urban areas, there's probably also a fair amount of mail theft, bad mailbox setups which lead to mail theft or misdelivery, and some post offices may be worse than others in terms of employee quality, etc.

It's not that the entire postal system is bad, but if there are enough problems in specific areas it may wind up being "the post office is bad".

Re:Wonder why the postal system is ranked so low?

[CrashNBrn]

Have you ever dealt with the post office in person? I had to go pick up a package that was supposed to be delivered to the door and signed for. After waiting in line for 20+ minutes, verifying my ID, I had to write with a "touch pen" on a "touch screen" My full name, then address, then you have to wait while the human on the other side, looks at the crappily written on a touch screen, back to the name address, back to the screen back to the typed address.

Or attempted to resolve a problem over the phone? Set aside a few hours. Then wait a week or more for the "investigation".

Those examples describe pretty much every US Postal "process", time intensive, pointless dreck.

Re:Wonder why the postal system is ranked so low?

[Anonymous Coward]

Paycheck? Like dead-tree paycheck? Sounds like it's your own fault to me.

Re:Wonder why the postal system is ranked so low?

[known_coward_69]

Why are you standing in line at the post office? They have these cool machines you can use to buy postage and then just put it into the box. Or you can use their website to pay and print a shipping label and just take it to the post office and put it in the box

Only the idiots are standing in line at the post office

Re:Wonder why the postal system is ranked so low?

[dcollins117]

The amount of junk mail has become staggering.

I get lots of junk too. Like bills and collection notices. All that stuff goes unopened into trash.

Re:Wonder why the postal system is ranked so low?

[Altrag]

And bank statements and letters from your grandma and any number of other things that UPS and FedEx either don't bother with or charge insane rates to handle.

Yes, the volume of legitimate mail may well be dwarfed by the volume of junk mail, but until there's another viable alternative for sending such things the USPS is still fairly necessary.

Perhaps in a couple of generations when all the grandmas are genx / millenials and are happy to use email instead of writing, and all the banks have (maybe) caught up and those mail-in rebates you get can be punched in via the internet and so on.. perhaps then USPS can finally be left to die. But that's still a couple decades off at least (especially the grandmas -- we still have two or three generations of pre-internet elderly who are unwilling to learn how to do things digitally.)

In the meantime.. you can bet your bank is going to either start charging you a much more significant amount for your paper statements if they're forced to send them via FedEx.. and that $10 rebate coupon probably won't get sent in if it costs you $12 to mail it. Your grandma may be able to adapt and use Skype or something, but lots of them won't and will just suck it up and maybe send less letters to her friends and family.

Or of course FedEx could see an opportunity for letter delivery service and start charging reasonable rates for USPS-level delivery. Which of course would mean the spammers would just start sending things with FedEx cause lets face it, FedEx isn't going to say no to however many thousands of dollars the spammers pay to get their junk mail to your doorstep. They might not "need" the money to survive in the same way USPS does, but as a private company their goal is "profit over everything," so they still have an extremely strong incentive to take the deal.

Re:Wonder why the postal system is ranked so low?

[Altrag]

Sure, but how often do you have to do that? I guess if you're a big ebayer perhaps quite often but for the vast majority of the population their interaction with USPS amounts to "is there mail in my mailbox today?"

Of course when I call up and ask about your experience with USPS, you don't really think about the thousands of times mail was just in your mailbox -- you just pick it up and get on with your day. Instead, you think about the one crappy trip to the depot.

Heck even if you go to the depot frequently, you generally think of the one crappy trip instead of the many perfectly normal ones (unless you just have a crappy depot and all of your experiences are bad.. which is certainly not impossible and unfortunately little you can do about that short of buying a PO box in another district with a better depot and having to drive however far to get there and deal with shippers that refuse to deliver to PO boxes and so on.)

Re:Wonder why the postal system is ranked so low?

[drinkypoo]

Perhaps in a couple of generations when all the grandmas are genx / millenials and are happy to use email instead of writing, and all the banks have (maybe) caught up and those mail-in rebates you get can be punched in via the internet and so on.. perhaps then USPS can finally be left to die. But that's still a couple decades off at least (especially the grandmas -- we still have two or three generations of pre-internet elderly who are unwilling to learn how to do things digitally.)

Well, I agree with you. Hell, last I checked my mother was refusing to get internet access. She's really not old enough to opt out of society, but that's where she was. She had a substantially older boyfriend who had internet access so she wasn't completely cut off from reality, but he died.

Or of course FedEx could see an opportunity for letter delivery service and start charging reasonable rates for USPS-level delivery. Which of course would mean the spammers would just start sending things with FedEx cause lets face it, FedEx isn't going to say no to however many thousands of dollars the spammers pay to get their junk mail to your doorstep.

Well, what's a "reasonable rate"? If they were allowed to just stuff it into your mailbox, they could probably deliver a letter from grandma (or a bank statement to her) for around a dollar. The bank might choose to send out statements only bi-monthly, and grandma can probably afford to send you about the same number of letters even if the postage doubles.

Re: Wonder why the postal system is ranked so low?

[Anonymous Coward]

Or if you had looked at your rent/car/credit statements from the previous month and just called to find out the current balance, then sent vhecks before the due dates ... You would have saved yourself a whole lot of hassle.

Re:Wonder why the postal system is ranked so low?

[Altrag]

Well, what's a "reasonable rate"?

An absolute dollar value isn't something I can claim -- it would depend entirely on how long it takes for such a thing to happen (if ever) and what the economic conditions are going to be by then. Given the way the US is going under Trump, $1 might not even be reasonable in 8 years for most Americans since they'll be too busy paying for the tax breaks the rich are getting. Then again if in the extremely unlikely scenario where Trump's version of trickle down somehow works better than Reagan's did, maybe $4 or $5 will be reasonable in 8 years.

And if something like this doesn't happen for 20 years? Or if Trump actually gets impeached in the next few months? Who knows what will be reasonable 5 or 10 years from now.

So I stayed away from absolute values intentionally. But a decent relative definition might be along the lines of "cheap enough to allow 95-99%+ of Americans to use the service." Whether they'll be able to run a profit at that level is up for grabs of course, and that will be a big deciding factor in whether or not they'd consider such a plan (though in the short term at least, the main deciding factor is that USPS exists and is required to provide service at a price most people can afford, even if its not profitable and has to be subsidized by taxpayers.)

Re: Wonder why the postal system is ranked so low?

[Anonymous Coward]

> sent vhecks

What is a vhecks, and how does one send one?

But seriously, I'm in the same situation. I took a job seven weeks ago with Azure Compliance, and I haven't received a paycheck yet due to screw-ups with my mailing address and with Microsoft HR being slow as crap.

Re:Wonder why the postal system is ranked so low?

[Anonymous Coward]

I have lost or delayed mail all the time - and I have a PO BOX!!! You would think they could get it to their own boxes without much problems, but sadly, no. It got so bad at one post office, which was the MAIN POST OFFICE, that I became convinced someone at that facility was stealing or deliberately not delivering mail and I had to switch my box to a different, less convenient post office. Huge pain in the ass. Even so, I have maybe 10-15% of my packages temporarily go missing...scanned as being delivered to my PO Box but not there and no one has an explanation...and then they show up days or in one case, weeks later. Just this week, I finally got a package for which the seller gave me a refund two weeks ago because it was "lost in transit".

Re:Wonder why the postal system is ranked so low?

[Anonymous Coward]

>... the US Postal Service should get very high marks...

Yes, it should get high marks. And I for one, was never aware of any reason the postal service would even have bad reputation, as I'd never seen it. Until I moved to Colorado.

The postal service had decided that in order to save money on government retirements, it will hire contract labor. Temps if you will, permanent temps.
Some of these 'employees' are part of criminal rings that infiltrate the PO with the intent to steal and it has happened to us many times.
Mail theft is a big business and it starts with CONTRACTORS & TEMPS!

Holiday colored envelopes? Taken-
Why? Because of the occasional dollar or two placed in there by grandparents for the kids.

Financial looking correspondence? Taken-
Why? It can have SSN and or other revealing info in it.

Credit card application/promotions? Taken-
Why? What better way to start a nice financial ID theft or at least make headway into someone's life.

These things have happened to us, and one guy was even caught (on camera), and sentenced. I've even seen characters break into apartment mailboxes and walk off with everything- pizza coupons, everything...

Mail theft is a big business and it starts with CONTRACTORS & TEMPS!

I don't have a choice

[Anonymous Coward]

The only service I have through Mediacom is internet. Their service is ok for the price. But their customer service is horrible, they talk down to you and treat you like you're the enemy. I got a DMCA violation for downloading a CD that I owned. So I cleared all copies of it out of everywhere. Yet somehow it happened again. They insisted that it can still be uploading even if I don't have a bittorrent client installed as long as I have the .torrent file. They shut off my internet. So we got a new account in my girlfriends name at a different address, we had an official 2nd address with an A at the end through the town. After a couple of months they shut her off because the post office forgot to actually register the 2nd address and they had her voice recorded calling for support on my previous account. Finally after enough ass kissing they turned on her account, but she had to agree not to let me put any of my devices, not even my phone on her service. The only other alternative is a DSL provider who will sell you a 7Mb package but you'll be lucky to get 1.

Re:I don't have a choice

[Anonymous Coward]

At least you have an option for another provider.

Everywhere I've lived if there was any option, it was only one option.

This is 20 miles out from Washington D.C.

Re:I don't have a choice

[mentil]

Two copyright incidents and they shut off your internet? I've only ever heard of '3 strikes', which was later changed to '7 strikes', and in both cases you wouldn't actually get your internet access permanently shut down even after the max number of strikes. ISPs have been loathe to actually disconnect their internet customers because they're then choosing to NOT take your money, usually copyright enforcers have to take the ISP to court to try and get them to actually disconnect anyone.
Maybe they talked down to you and treated you like the enemy because they got a nastygram about you, and you were too inept to figure out how to stop sharing that stuff?

How to Fix your Comcast Cable Modem

[Anonymous Coward]

... with gasoline.

Dumped my TV in 1989

[IWantMoreSpamPlease]

I don't feel like I'm missing out on anything, except a whopping monthly bill for channels I'd never watch...

Re:Dumped my TV in 1989

[MightyMartian]

With ESPN dying and more and more sports ending up online, I'd say the reasons for anyone to want cable television are rapidly dying. It's actually amazing to watch an industry collapse. Mind you, most cable carriers are also ISPs, so they get their pound of flesh either way. The really vulnerable sector is the big TV networks, who are going to have to retool fairly quickly, because I think cable TV is likely going to fall off a cliff rather than simply fade away.

so what?

[micahraleigh]

Do people get cable subscriptions so they can be popular by purchasing something popular?

Re:so what?

[Altrag]

Uhh, no. I'm not sure if they ever did. And now its more popular to be a cable cutter. Netflix and chill yall.

Historically (as in, before you could stream or torrent essentially anything,) if you were the only one on your block to have cable then you would have likely been pretty popular. Similarly if everyone had cable but you were the only one with the premium channels, you'd be similarly popular. Especially among teenage boys (Skinimax what?)

But now that porn is one "Yes, I'm 18" click away whether you're lying or not, and things like Netflix (never mind bittorrent) exist and the such.. those popularity benefits are essentially gone.

There are really only a handful of reasons to keep cable at this point:
- You're just stuck in your ways and don't want to change. I imagine there's still a lot of folk in this category, especially among the older generations.
- You're into sports or Game of Thrones or something similar that's locked to your cable subscription and are too lazy or just unwilling to get your fix via less legitimate sources.
- Your local ISP still sucks bad enough that streaming isn't viable and you're too impatient to wait for torrents.
- You're one of the people who's ripping the stuff to put on the illegitimate streams and torrents in the first place.
- Your cable company does packaging or such that brings the cost of cable more in line with the garbage you get on it.

None of those amounts to "because its worth having." Some of them are "because its better than nothing," but that's not quite the same sentiment. And we're starting to see the results. There's been several posters already claiming that internet+cable bundle is cheaper than internet alone. That means the cable companies are treating (basic) cable as a loss leader in the hopes that they can either upsell you to a higher package, or that at least you'll have it turned on enough to justify retaining their advertisers.

Re:so what?

[micahraleigh]

>> None of those amounts to "because its worth having."

+1 well said ... the important things are easy to overlook.

They are subsidizing losses in CableTV subs

[r2rknot]

In 2006 my 20Mbps connection cost me 30 bucks a month. I had no TV service. Then they switched each tier's speed, and made my server faster, but bumped the cost up. Now in 2017 its 90Mbs (at the same tier, 2nd from the top, 2nd from the bottom - the middle of 3) for 90 a month. Now, you would THINK that I could just lower my tier down. But the QoS and throughput scale down drastically such that my mid -tier 2006 service is better than my bottom tier 2017 service. So I am stuck paying 90 a month for well more than I needed.

This is how they are subsidizing lower income from CableTV subscriptions.

Re:They are subsidizing losses in CableTV subs

[Maxo-Texas]

You can get 25mb for $58 from comcast. I think that's the slowest option any more.
They toss in basic cable plus a premium channel for $10 (hard to resist).

The 25mb seemed to have higher latency a couple years ago (you tube videos took a second to start instead of starting instantly) but that's gone and now it seems identical to the normal service.

Re:They are subsidizing losses in CableTV subs

[Kierthos]

Yes, but then you're stuck with Comcast. And they're terrible.

A friend of mine has been having troubling streaming a livestream of his games, so he called his provider, Comcast.

The tech drone at the other end couldn't solve his problem (hardly unique to Comcast), and elevated it to second-tier, which was supposed to get back to him the next day. That was last week. He finally got the callback yesterday.

Turns out his modem is at end-of-life. Even though it worked fine at his previous address (which was also under Comcast service). It only magically hit end-of-life after he moved. (And he has done tech support and IT work for years, so I doubt he slung the thing overhand in the moving van.)

This, of course, is the same Comcast who completely closed out his account when he moved. Even though his new address was also under Comcast. Because no one has ever moved before.

Re:They are subsidizing losses in CableTV subs

[Anonymous Coward]

Turns out his modem is at end-of-life. Even though it worked fine at his previous address (which was also under Comcast service).

The headend equipment at the new place was likely upgraded. Comcast has recently moved a lot of their customers to DOCSIS 3 with 8 downlink streams. A lot of the older DOCSIS 3 modems that were 4 streams were EOLed. Did you ever stop to think that maybe Comcast knew what they were talking about and that your "tech support" friend wasn't all that clueful about DOCSIS.

Re:They are subsidizing losses in CableTV subs

[Anonymous Coward]

That's funny I pay Comcast $60 and I get 80Mbs

Re:They are subsidizing losses in CableTV subs

[Maxo-Texas]

AC said: That's funny I pay Comcast $60 and I get 80Mbs

I checked my current speed and it's
30/6.

I'm assuming that is your *total* bill and not the rate pre tax right?

Looking at the current deals it looks like I can get 50 for $39 (pretax)
https://cabletvinternet.s9.com...

So probably $39 + $10 for basic cable ($49) and taxes ($58).

Probably should go renegotiate.

But it sounds like you are getting a deal if you are paying $60 final cost and getting 80mbps. It's better than anything they offer on their web site.

Re:They are subsidizing losses in CableTV subs

[Anonymous Coward]

I pay Comcast $70/month and I get around 240-250Mbit/s down / 12Mbit/s up. Can't complain, especially seeing that I'm in West Virginia.

That's because we keep getting shit on.

[Anonymous Coward]

My family pays for cable. Mainly for a few obscure shows we can't find anywhere online, plus some live sports stuff.

We are constantly being shit on by our service provider. Some of the lovely games they play:

1) Increasing our base bill by $5/month. This has happened four times in the past 1.5 years. No explanation for it. The bill just went up because the shareholders aren't making enough money or the CEO wants a new jet.

2) Moving channels around. This happens on a monthly basis. Some channels are "free trials" that go away after a while. Others were included in our package, but now they're not. Our base package seems to cover less and less as time moves on. It's hit and miss if you select anything past channel 200 and get a "NOT AUTHORIZED" message now.

3) Moving content around. Back when I was actually interested in trying to watch stuff on cable TV, it was amazing how often shows shuffled between channels. It was almost like they were trying to move the good stuff to the most premium channel with the fewest subscribers, thus forcing everyone to add that channel to their package to continue watching what they were before.

4) Constant PVR subversion. We're now getting advertisements DURING our programs. We had to pay like $650 for our PVR units, they weren't cheap... Apparently everyone has 'em now, and uses them all the time, so they're starting to overlay advertisements over the actual show (in-between commercial breaks). They started out small- just tiny pop-ups in the corner, but now they take up 1/3rd of the screen and they're fully animated and basically impossible to ignore. You can't FF through them without missing parts of your show (though you might anyways, because sometimes the ads block critical subtitles or text from the show itself).

5) Explosively loud commercials. Our service provider is incorrectly splicing their own advertisements over the channel content, causing the audio volume to jump up to such high levels that our speakers immediately start to clip and distort. When this happens, it's so brutally loud that anyone in the room is immediately startled, and you can hear the A/V system threatening to overload from across the whole goddam house. I can't even begin to count how many times this has sent everyone scrambling for the goddam remote just to mute the amplifier until it's over. We've complained to the relevant authorities, who told our service provider to smarten the fuck up, then they tried to blame it on our HDMI cables (yeah, really) and say it was actually our fault.

So... yeah. It's not a pleasant experience. We don't feel like valued customers. Things are only getting worse as time progresses, not better. There's always some way you land up having to pay more or deal with more advertisements slowly creeping into your programs. The rest of my family is starting to get pissed off from the continued shenanigans, so I can't imagine it'll be long before they get fed up and we can finally cut the cord for good.

Re:That's because we keep getting shit on.

[MightyMartian]

We were on satellite for about eight years, and suffered the same sorts of abuses. At one point we were paying over $120 (Canadian dollars), and really, mostly what I was watching was Turner Classic Movies and a couple of other movie channels. I can't remember the last time I actually watched a network television show as a broadcast, probably the early seasons of House back in the mid-00s. We finally decided we were wasting money and began chopping off packages, and then the exact same thing happened, suddenly the channels we did watch got split into other packages so we were either faced with paying for a package for just one channel or abandoning the channel. On top of that, they would regularly bump the base cost by $5 so that even when we did get some savings, we ended up handing it back to them. In the end, I just decided that a couple of movie channels I really liked and my wife's home improvement/cooking channels weren't worth it, and we just canceled the service.

Honestly, I haven't even gone to Amazon Prime. I don't watch nearly as much TV as I used to, and Netflix has enough interesting content that when I feel like brainless entertainment, it usually serves it up. For news, I prefer to read it anyways, but the local TV stations all do streaming of their broadcasts, so if I do want to watch the 5 o'clock news, it's there for me. I can't imagine ever actually going back to cable or satellite. If I want to watch a series that bad, I either find it on the Internet, or with a few movies and shows I like, I just buy the whole damned thing off of Google Play. I swear, I went to play a DVD last weekend, and it took me a few minutes to even remember how to use the damned DVD player! And that was after I swept the dust off of the damned thing. We have about 150 DVDs, and we don't even watch those anymore, I just tell the kids to get me a Google Play gift card for Christmas and birthdays.

it wont get better

[Anonymous Coward]

Comcast called to raise my bill. I have no options. Here is your $80 for basic internet service. Thanks comcast. Oh I MUST hold on to this TV box even though I dont want TV? Thanks Comcast. They just recently reimplemented cancellation fees and yearly agreements (at least in my area). Thanks Comcast. This is what you paid for: immunity. They dont care that we dont like them. Thats why monopolys suck.

Re:it wont get better

[MightyMartian]

Hopefully in the long run wireless will create meaningful competition, like it does in other parts of the world. North America just plain sucks for Internet competition.

Post Office

[Anonymous Coward]

You know it's bad when USPS is beating you...

Cable TV is priced for the top 20%

[Maxo-Texas]

Cable TV is grossly over priced.

I suspect they've found that the profit yield curve peaks for them selling $240 packages to the top 20% who don't care about price.

I cut the cord on cable TV and if money ever gets tight, my cell bandwidth is now high enough and fast enough that I'll probably kill cable internet and use my cell for internet.

Cable TV used to cost about 8 minimum wage hours back when it started. And that was with the two premium channels. And it had a fewer commercials. Now it's easy to hit 24 minimum wage hours. And with more commercials.

Re:Cable TV is priced for the top 20%

[JDeane]

I was just talking to my wife about this the other day, I remember about 20 years ago that cable for basic (Florida) was about 20 dollars a month. Yes there was a lot less commercials and for the most part the programming was in my opinion slightly better. Fast forward to today and the quality is virtually non existent beyond the exception here and there. The price for just basic is more than double the price unless you "bundle" and then it's still at 60* dollars before taxes and fee's.

I believe that the cable industry is pricing itself right off the map, I cut my cable off years ago and switched to streaming. Saved sooo much money.

*that 60 dollar price is like half what Brighthouse was charging and I am sure is just an introductory offer so even that low price seems too high to me.

The reason I cut my cable off was the Internet was about $40 for 100Mbps and plenty fast enough for streaming, but getting cable even bundled was over 120 dollars... Almost 1,000 dollars a year so yeah... It's still not what I would call cheap, but it keeps over $500 in my pocket and I like that.

Re:Cable TV is priced for the top 20%

[Maxo-Texas]

If you think about it, cable TV now costs the same as a new car every 20 years.

Just sell shows

[Anonymous Coward]

Shows/sports just need to sell direct to their fans, and none of this forced bundling crud like SlingTV has. If I don't want ESPN, I shouldn't have to pay for it. If I just want a few channels, why charge me for broadcast which I am already getting free? If I only watch 1 show on your channel, why should I pay for the whole channel and not just that show?

I haven't known when or what shows come on where in years. Cut the cord, got a Tivo Roamio OTA w/lifetime sub, and only pay for Amazon Prime and share a Netflix streaming account. I spend nearly half my time watching my favorite YouTube subs on the TiVo, because, frankly, the content is just better and is exactly about what I'm interested in. I'm not even a Millennial (40s).

Oh, and here is a surprise about "cliffhanger" season enders: I won't watch them until the next season starts up. What is the point if the show gets cancelled? My TiVo will store them just fine, and if the show is cancelled, I may chose to watch it knowing it'll be left unresolved, but most likely I'll just sigh, delete it, and move on.

Re:Just sell shows

[Anonymous Coward]

You know that with Sling you don't have to pay for ESPN, right?

And that if you have a Roku box you can subscribe - individually - to whichever particular sport you want to watch?

I'm surprised - airline industry?

[dpilot]

I'm rather surprised that the Cable / ISPs managed to beat the airline industry here. Must be either short-term memory, or maybe a lot of people don't fly often.

At least the Cable / ISPs don't physically drag you away from your TV or computer screen. Nor are you at all liekly to need pat-down searches for TV or internet.

Re:I'm surprised - airline industry?

[ausekilis]

That's because the ISP's take more of an organized crime approach. They know you don't have a choice and they are more than happy to charge you top dollar for shit service. They are also more than happy to offer crap you didn't ask for and raise your payments at a moments notice.

I'd say they are like a protection ring, but you won't get a bloody nose for refusal to pay/comply.

Re:I'm surprised - airline industry?

[Cro Magnon]

I'm rather surprised that the Cable / ISPs managed to beat the airline industry here. Must be either short-term memory, or maybe a lot of people don't fly often.

At least the Cable / ISPs don't physically drag you away from your TV or computer screen. Nor are you at all liekly to need pat-down searches for TV or internet.

No, but if I couldn't FF, the commercials would drive me away from the TV, yelling "Enough! No more!" at the top of my lungs.

Re:I'm surprised - airline industry?

[Anonymous Coward]

No, that's because they're perfectly content to pat down your internet packets, and drag them away from sites they don't like.

Or only supply you the TV channels they deem appropriate.

Totally not the same thing. *sarcasm*

Re:I'm surprised - airline industry?

[Anonymous Coward]

It's because when the airlines screw people over it is on the news for days. For an ISP it is Standard Operating Procedure.

Re:I'm surprised - airline industry?

[Anonymous Coward]

At least the airlines beat you up and then pay you for the pain they caused. The cable companies cause you to beat yourself to alleviate the pain from dealing with them, and that's after you beg and plead with them to fix their lines.

I have Comcast, Lancaster, PA.

I recently had a 4 month experience with a bad internet issue. Basically, I had signal fluctuations go way too high and knock out the modem at certain times of the day, usually at night It was spurious, but I'm rather competent, I checked everything over when the problem was occurring, swapped lines and cables, splitters, update my cable modem, and knew it was outside the house.

Comcast would never send a tech out when the issue was occurring. They don't have or wouldn't allow techs "on call" to respond so they could properly diagnose the issue; they always had to have a schedule appointment. Their "remote monitoring" is complete BS and useless. Their tech or crew side of the company is treated separately, even more than a separate department, like a separate company entity, so there is no real coordination, more like an account customer service history, and a checkoff list to forward to some techs who get kickbacks on how fast they can solve a problem. My suspicion is that it's meritocracy based, so when the problem is difficult to solve, no one wants to touch it, since it effects their bonuses

Comcast working principle is to blame the equipment onsite when they can't really find the problem. If they escalate, the working principle for their line, maintenance, pole teams is to mark things as solved as soon as possible.

So, I would get the full blown complete internet outage, modem resetting itself, it would persist for 6-8 hours, I would call Comcast within the first 2 hours. Describe the problem, they would try to contact the modem, ask me to reset it, and schedule an appointment. Wait in the 2 hour window, tech would show up, find nothing. Same day, later, repeat. Second tech visit, they escalate. Maintenance or line crew would come out (supposedly), not find anything (since they aren't coming over when the problem occurs, and won't schedule a meet with you), they would reset the ticket to solved. And repeat.

I went through this pattern sometimes 4-5 times every 2 weeks, probably average 3 times every 2 weeks, for 4 months. Labor Day. Thanksgiving. Christmas. New Years. All in between.

Twice they changed the lines and splitters in the house changed (unnecessarily, but that's their policy apparently). Didn't solve anything. I now am the owner of 3 cable modems, since that's what they blame every time so much they had me going crazy thinking I actually did have a bum new (twice) cable modem.

Twice they charged me for service (had to call in to get the line service charges removed).

I had to call in 6x to get any sort of account credits, despite being down 1/3 of the time at the start and for days at a stretch at the end.

I blew a gasket multiple times in the last 1.5 months.

The last month, I had resorted to pleading and begging them to solve the issue.

When they finally solved it, guess what:

The last 2 techs finally saw the problem on a house visit, because the problem had degraded so badly I was down 16 hours a day and finally the techs could see the problem. iow, despite the csr knowing the line was out, not having a hotline to techs meant the techs never saw this when they visited.

The first tech in the last round escalated it, and the line crew yet again marked it as solved for some reason, probably because yet again, they happen to show up when the problem wasn't there.

Had to call in yet again. After the second tech, it took still took 2 line crew visits to solve the problem. The line crew showed up when the problem was occurring, and despite the account history, yet again marked it as solved. I happen to see the truck leave at the pole, and the problem was occurring at the time, so I called in, blew a gasket, ended up begging and plead

Re:I'm surprised - airline industry?

[Anonymous Coward]

At the airport, you're not supposed to make jokes about bombs.

At home, you're not supposed to talk about anything confidential anywhere near your TV even when it's off.

Been a customer of Comcast for less than 2 weeks..

[Anonymous Coward]

and I've already received two incorrect bills. They also sent me a package with several cables and splitters which I did not order, but I assume I'll be charged for.

The NHL doesn't want you to watch it's games

[nitehawk214]

If you are steaming there is no way to legally watch games. NHL Center Ice? Laughable. No local games and even then games are rarely covered.

I think I've decided that if they don't want me to watch, I will oblige them.

Re:The NHL doesn't want you to watch it's games

[mentil]

If you are steaming, you should probably get that looked at. Or else leave the sauna, the steam is likely to harm your electronic device.

Re:Been a customer of Comcast for less than 2 week

[Anonymous Coward]

You're uninformed if you expected any differently.

I work for a property management company, and about once a year someone rips out a bunch of Comcast's cable in anger. Also, we have a lot of tenants that get mad at our employees because of Comcast's dishonesty. We can't do anything to help.

I know where I live, Comcast charges $62 per month total for the $10 basic cable package. When I ordered, they were not able to give a total price for the package. I should have known better. I knew it would cost more than the advertised $10, but I didn't think it would cost more than six times as much!

Marx once said..

[Anonymous Coward]

That religion is the opiate of the masses. But I think that in today's world, television is the opiate of the masses, and we have a huge problem of opiate addition. Honestly I have gotten to the point where I simply don't care about the vast majority of TV programs. Most of it is just meaningless fluff that serves no other purpose than to fill the hours of the day.

Hardly surprising

[Mordaximus]

An hour time slot is filled with 40 minutes of actual content, the remainder being commercials. There's no better painful reminder of this than Netflix. Go back and find a show from the 80s, or the 90s and note the playtime, and compare it to today. And the way the bundles are set up, you end up having to pay an extra $40 just to get the one channel that was actually worthwhile.

There was a time where TLC was actually about learning. And A&E was about arts and entertainment. They are an utter waste of time now.

Choke on your lost profits, cable companies.

Re:Hardly surprising

[Cro Magnon]

An hour time slot is filled with 40 minutes of actual content, the remainder being commercials. There's no better painful reminder of this than Netflix. Go back and find a show from the 80s, or the 90s and note the playtime, and compare it to today.

What bugs me is, when I watch one of those old shows on MeTV, I find significant parts are cut out to make room for the commercials.

Re:Hardly surprising

[toonces33]

H&G used to be about home repairs and gardening. Now it is nothing but house flipping. Although a lot of these programs come from Canada where the housing bubble is only now just bursting. Weather used to have more weather related programs. Then they started to fill it up with reality crap. At least until Verizon replaced Weather with Crapuweather, so I haven't seen it lately. Travel once had potential. Now it is really more informercials for various resorts or cruise lines. Smithsonian is usually quite tolerable. For now, anyways. But sometimes on "Mighty Ships" the programs are really just infomercials for a cruise ship. They haven't figured out a way to turn "Air Disasters" into an informercial yet.

Just wait for comcast to pull an ATT and force you

[Joe_Dragon]

Just wait for comcast to pull an ATT and force you to rent the gateway as part of there IPTV system even for Internet only subs. Right now with business planes with static ip you have to rent there hardware at an added cost on top of the static ip fee.

Re:Online sports

[sconeu]

Blackouts. I can't get my local team online due to dumb-ass blackout rules, without using a VPN. I have cable for my baseball and hockey fix.

I can get it streaming through the Fox Sports app, but it asks for my cable company info to prove I already get their channel.

Re:Online sports

[MightyMartian]

But how much longer is that going to last? Once cable viewership falls below a certain threshold the sports leagues are going to jump ship in a hurry, and either find a new middle man to broadcast games online, or simply make their own. The whole business model only works so long as the cable companies can guarantee the leagues and advertisers sufficient viewers. That's why I think cord cutting, when it reaches a critical mass, is simply going to see cable TV collapse. There's a point at which it isn't sustainable anymore.

With all the complaining

[Anonymous Coward]

Have all of you contacted the FCC about any of your complaints?

Re:With all the complaining

[mentil]

I tried but all I got back was a form letter saying how once the nasty 'network neutrality' and Title 2 are reversed internet caps and speeds will double; Netflix prices will be subsidized by Comcast; trolls, crackers, and spammers will recede to the dark web; there will no longer be a need for internet surveillance or privacy invasions; wisdom and freedom of information will reign supreme; and it will be the land of milk and honey for everyone.

The industry doesn't offer the choice of provider.

[Bartles]

Local governments choose who will be the provider for a given market.

No shock - there's nothing to watch

[filesiteguy]

Last show I felt somewhat worthwhile was 24. Even that got stale. I'm not sure why we have a TV.

What's with the price?

[wardrich86]

I'll never understand the price point of cable. It's not like you have full access to every show at any time like you have Netflix, and with only 24 hours/day (only a few of which you are awake, at home, and able to watch TV) you'll never come close to watching the entire library of programming available (especially with all the adverts tossed in). Why not charge a respectable $30-$50 a month for the entire package of channels, then maybe charge a small premium for the sports/movie channels? I'm also curious as to why they have so many damn adverts during shows. What are my cable fees even going towards?

Why is the postal service so low?

[Anonymous Coward]

I've had much better service from USPS than UPS. UPS is brown for a reason

Re:The industry doesn't offer the choice of provid

[Altrag]

Not that I'll try to claim outright corruption is unheard of by any means, but usually this isn't so much a question of monopoly vs competition as it is a question of monopoly vs nothing at all.

That is, there were many instances (especially in rural areas) where the providers were claiming that they couldn't justify the investment if they had to face competition. Whether or not those claims were valid is anyone's guess, but valid or not they still weren't going to build out into those areas without a monopoly agreement.

So just like many of us face on a personal level these days, local governments were basically given the option of picking one of 2-3 equally bad options, or going without all together. And since everybody wants (and getting closer to needs by the day,) internet access, going without isn't really a plausible solution.

Fast forward 20 years and there's probably plenty of those areas where opening up to competition would now be plausible but remains blocked due to the old agreements either still being in force or just getting blindly renewed without much thought.

Why the postal system is ranked so low.

[GPS Pilot]

I recently tracked a package.

For the first 593 miles it was in the hands of a private enterprise: âoeBestway Parcel Services.â This took 14.1 hours. Average speed: 42 miles per hour

Then an agency of the government got hold of it (the United States Postal Service). The last 72 miles took 192 hours. Average speed: 0.37 miles per hour

I sent feedback to USPS.com. Since I was able to provide the package tracking number, one would think they would want to investigate where the process went so wrong, The reply I got told me that they were profoundly disinterested in doing so.

Another recent experience I had was applying for passports at my local post office. They accepted passport applications from 7:00 - 16:00, according to the hours posted online. When I called ahead to confirm this, I was warned that "sometimes we close as early as 2 p.m." Dodgy, but whatever... I made sure my family arrived well before 2 p.m. Upon arriving as 12:55, we were turned away. I protested that I was told they would remain open until at least 2 p.m. They were very unsympathetic to that fact.

On my next attempt there was a ridiculously-long wait, but at least I didn't get turned away. The person who had stood behind me in line for hours wisely commented, "To think that some people want government to administer our healthcare!"

Popularity

[Anonymous Coward]

Being the only choice is a monopoloy, not popularity.

My turn is next....

[MerlTurkin]

.....for dumping cable TV. I'm expecting a price increase / bend over any minute now from TWC. I know it's coming and when it does they will get the old FU from me. Like many others I've had enough. They are SLOWLY killing themselves off and I love it.