Comcrap acquires Time Warner

[EL PRESIDENTE]

FUCK. I WAS HOPING TO BE DONE WITH THAT FUCKSHIT COMPANY

hoop fam

 

[EL PRESIDENTE]

Oops pulled an A2M

hoop fam

 

[santeesioux]

Doesn't it suck that such an awful company can buy up everything?

 

[EL PRESIDENTE]

Doesn't it suck that such an awful company can buy up everything?

Used to be comcastfor home Internet. Then Twc. Now comcast again. When it changed to TWC my bill went down about 12 bucks a month and speed was better

hoop fam

 

[TradeNurkicNow]

Don't question the Invisible Hand or Denny will get sad feels

 

[Natebishop3]

One shitty company acquires another shitty company.

 

[Denny Crane]

Don't question the Invisible Hand or Denny will get sad feels

GE used to own NBC/Universal. Now it doesn't.

Shit happens, eh?

 

[BigGameDamian]

I hate comcast.

 

[jlprk]

Shit happens, eh?

You summarize Adam Smith well.

I never question the Invisible Hand. In fact, I'm feeling it right now.

 

[BlazerCaravan]

One shitty company acquires another shitty company.

The free market at work!

 

[ponderguy]

at what point is this considered a monopoly?

 

[Denny Crane]

at what point is this considered a monopoly?

Do you think the combined companies have more subscribers than... DirecTV?

 

[GriLtCheeZ]

at what point is this considered a monopoly?

I don't care as long as we can pay with this:

 

[ponderguy]

Do you think the combined companies have more subscribers than... DirecTV?

It's not just TV though. They also control over phone and internet and block all attempts at getting other cable companies in the area. I'd love to have Fios fiber internet but they'll never get in here. There is no competition. They all have their set areas and thats it. We don't get Cox cable. Time Warner. Verizon Fios. All these companies SHOULD be competing against each other but instead whoever has the existing infrastructure completely owns the area.

 

[KeepOnRollin]

It's not just TV though. They also control over phone and internet and block all attempts at getting other cable companies in the area. I'd love to have Fios fiber internet but they'll never get in here. There is no competition. They all have their set areas and thats it. We don't get Cox cable. Time Warner. Verizon Fios. All these companies SHOULD be competing against each other but instead whoever has the existing infrastructure completely owns the area.

Yep. At least DirecTv and Dish Network get to go after the same customers. In almost all cases competing Cable companies can't.

 

[Wheels]

so is this good or bad for my inability to watch Blazer games regularly?

 

[Denny Crane]

It's not just TV though. They also control over phone and internet and block all attempts at getting other cable companies in the area. I'd love to have Fios fiber internet but they'll never get in here. There is no competition. They all have their set areas and thats it. We don't get Cox cable. Time Warner. Verizon Fios. All these companies SHOULD be competing against each other but instead whoever has the existing infrastructure completely owns the area.

There's no phone company where you live? That's a shocker.

If they're able to somehow block competing cable companies, it's only with the government's help. Get the government out of the way and see.

On the other hand, the cost of running cable and the infrastructure to support high speed internet is quite high. There's no incentive to build out areas where other companies are established because they're not going to get 100% of the other company's subscribers to switch.

I have TWC here, but there's Cox in nearby towns. If I were willing to pay Cox to pull cable to my house, they'd do it.

Or Cox could buy out TWC or the infrastructure here and offer better service.

Google is willing to run even better infrastructure for all of Kansas City, Austin Texas, and Provo Utah (so far). So the competition is coming.

Once you get Google and their 800Mb/sec bandwidth, you'll likely complain about the company and competition again.

 

[Denny Crane]

Interestingly enough: http://www.wired.com/opinion/2013/0...-government-for-dismal-broadband-competition/

 

[BlazerCaravan]

Interestingly enough: http://www.wired.com/opinion/2013/0...-government-for-dismal-broadband-competition/

If "local government" was the name of a company doing exactly what local governments were doing, you'd call it a smart move to raise revenues.

 

[Denny Crane]

If "local government" was the name of a company doing exactly what local governments were doing, you'd call it a smart move to raise revenues.

No, I wouldn't. I would keep government out of commerce entirely.

If you don't want comcast, verizon offers 4g LTE home internet. For $90, you get 16G of data, which is enough to stream quite a bit of netflix.

Edit: you know, SCOTUS ruled corporations are Persons for exactly this scenario. Govt. should not favor one company or industry over another. Equal protection.

 

[KeepOnRollin]

Eh, this is more about Cable TV than internet in my mind.

 

[porkchopexpress]

No, I wouldn't. I would keep government out of commerce entirely.

If you don't want comcast, verizon offers 4g LTE home internet. For $90, you get 16G of data, which is enough to stream quite a bit of netflix.

No it isn't. I just checked my Cox internet usage and for the month (just finished), I used 200GB of data. We don't have cable, so every night we are watching Hulu+ and Netflix and during the day I stream some stuff as well, but mostly it's at night. A 16GB cap for home internet would be a joke.


https://support.netflix.com/en/node/87

1-2.8GB/hour when streaming in HD.

 

[ponderguy]

No it isn't. I just checked my Cox internet usage and for the month (just finished), I used 200GB of data. We don't have cable, so every night we are watching Hulu+ and Netflix and during the day I stream some stuff as well, but mostly it's at night. A 16GB cap for home internet would be a joke.


https://support.netflix.com/en/node/87

1-2.8GB/hour when streaming in HD.

16gb of data for $90 is a joke

 

[Eastoff]

No it isn't. I just checked my Cox internet usage and for the month (just finished), I used 200GB of data. We don't have cable, so every night we are watching Hulu+ and Netflix and during the day I stream some stuff as well, but mostly it's at night. A 16GB cap for home internet would be a joke.


https://support.netflix.com/en/node/87

1-2.8GB/hour when streaming in HD.

WOW I had to re-read that. I thought it said 16gb/s for 90$/mo and I thought, that's sounds good to me. I didn't realize it was a data cap until you commented.

 

[Denny Crane]

I see. So you want infinite bandwidth for free and would require a carrier to spend an absurd sum of money to do so?

You can't say there isn't another option.

 

[Denny Crane]

No it isn't. I just checked my Cox internet usage and for the month (just finished), I used 200GB of data. We don't have cable, so every night we are watching Hulu+ and Netflix and during the day I stream some stuff as well, but mostly it's at night. A 16GB cap for home internet would be a joke.


https://support.netflix.com/en/node/87

1-2.8GB/hour when streaming in HD.

About $5/movie. The DVDs cost $20.

 

[porkchopexpress]

About $5/movie. The DVDs cost $20.

Redbox = $1. You don't stream the movie and then own it.

 

[Denny Crane]

Redbox = $1. You don't stream the movie and then own it.

Nobody has a gun to your head making you buy internet from Comcast or stream video from Netflix.

$1 is a bargain, and 16G will let you stream all the music you want and browse the WWW and buy/update your software.

Obviously you feel the value you are getting is worth paying for.

 

[porkchopexpress]

I said nothing about what I pay or had any complaint about my service. My only point was $90 for 16GB is a joke. And 16GB as a data cap for home internet is a joke.

 

[ponderguy]

I see. So you want infinite bandwidth for free and would require a carrier to spend an absurd sum of money to do so?

You can't say there isn't another option.

I'm more than willing to pay for better speed but data caps are ridiculous. They are just trying to make more $$$ for something that has always been unlimited and they know now that the speeds are getting faster and more things rely on the internet people will use more and more.
http://www.techhive.com/article/205...ants-to-nix-all-you-can-eat-data-buffets.html

According to Comcast, the current median monthly data usage for its customers is roughly 16GB. AT&T claims that the top 2 percent of its users (in terms of data consumption) eat up 20 percent of its network’s total available bandwidth. Telecom analyst Teresa Mastrangelo, principal at Broadbandtrends, suggests that the 80/20 rule applies, in that 80 percent of the data is going to 20 percent of users. “It may even be closer to 90/10,” Mastrangelo says.

But Mastrangelo questions why any ISP would risk angering its whole subscriber base by imposing caps and metering to deal with the heavy usage patterns of just a few.

“The downside of metered broadband for most consumers in the United States is that we’ve never been metered,” says Mastrangelo. “It’s not like mobile phone use, where we’re accustomed to tracking how much data we consume. Most consumers have no idea how much data they’re consuming.”

And having a data cap that exceeds a typical user’s consumption by 600 percent seems, to her, a strange way to address the problem, Mastrangelo says.

ISPs cite self-defense, pointing to the extreme volume of data some users consume. For example, in August of this year, Verizon cracked down on one FiOS user whose monthly consumption amounted to more than 38 terabytes. That’s per month. Without some kind of data cap, says one ISP spokesperson, providers have no way of cracking down on abusers.

Charlie Douglas, senior director of corporate communications for Comcast, chalks it up to fairness: “We think it’s fair that people who use more can pay more to use more, and people who use less can pay less.”

But DSLReports’ Bode says the fairness argument is bogus, because American consumers already pay “more than their fair share” for bandwidth.

“If carriers were truly interested in fairness, you’d see grandmothers who only check email and the Weather Channel [website] paying $10 a month for broadband because they use few if any resources,” Bode says. “Instead, they pay $50-plus.”

Besides, says Bode, the heavier users already pay more than light users, because they typically pay for faster tiers of service. “It’s effectively a rate hike wearing lipstick,” he quips.

But the data hogs may not be the real reason ISPs are warming us up to their metered billing approach. They may be slowly getting into position to reap maximum profits in a future in which home broadband service is way faster, and in which we’re using way more of it.

The average consumer today uses about 16GB of data per month, but that number has risen sharply over recent years. In 2009, the average consumer used just 9.7GB, according to estimates from the networking equipment provider Cisco.

And a growing segment of the population is streaming Netflix to their living rooms while surfing the Web, streaming music to their tablets, and playing online games such as World of Warcraft. According to Netflix’s published bandwidth estimates, streaming HD consumes up to 2.8GB per hour. By those numbers, a single tech-savvy person could easily consume 150GB of data just by watching the national average of 50 hours of TV per month via their Netflix account instead of traditional cable.

Lest you think this type of user is a small minority, consider that 55 percent of households in the United States now subscribe to some kind of streaming video service. And 88 percent of Netflix users and 70 percent of Hulu users say they have watched three or more TV-show episodes in one day (a practice known as “binging”).