comcast

Online consumer cancellation law threatens broadband monopolies

7 April 2016 by Steve Blum
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That’s not the AT&T logo about to explode, is it?

Sometimes the simplest laws bring the biggest changes. That might be the case for a proposal from California assemblyman Mike Gatto (D – Los Angeles) to make it as easy to cancel broadband or video service as it is to sign up for it. Assembly bill 2867 adds one sentence to California consumer protection law…

If a cable or Internet service provider enables an individual to subscribe to its services through an Internet Web site, it shall also enable all of its customers to cancel their subscriptions through the Internet Web site.

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Austin and KC owe Californians a thank you card for paying their Internet bill

31 March 2016 by Steve Blum
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The gift that keeps on giving.

The fiber to the premise analysis done by the City and County of San Francisco summed up the likely competitive response to a municipal build in two words: Google Fiber. Incumbents in the markets Google targeted responded with upgrades and lower prices…

The incumbent providers’ responses to Google Fiber’s expansion in other cities may foreshadow their responses to a municipal network in San Francisco. After Google Fiber came to Kansas City, incumbent providers Comcast and Time Warner upgraded their networks to double residential speeds, which lowered the dollar per megabit cost of bandwidth for their customers.

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Comcast sucker punches business park startups

24 March 2016 by Steve Blum
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Ars Technica enterprised a fascinating story that perfectly illustrates the problem new businesses face when looking for commercial and industrial-grade broadband connectivity. Cable companies – in this case it’s Comcast – advertise blanket availability of their highest service tiers, sign up customers to long term contracts, and then don’t deliver because their plant doesn’t reach the location. Or they dither for a few weeks or months, and then come back with a demand for tens of thousands of dollars in installation fees.… More

You're not one of us, California cable tells Google

15 March 2016 by Steve Blum
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Not welcome.

Google probably thought its problems getting access to utility poles in California were safely astern. After all, the California Public Utilities Commission declared that Google is a cable company and has the same right as any other cable (or telephone) company to use utility poles. Turns out, other cable operators, via their Sacramento lobbying front, are claiming that Google Fiber isn’t a member of their tribe and shouldn’t be allowed on poles that they jointly control with electric and telephone utilities.… More

Gigabit competition upsets cozy pricing equilibrium

15 February 2016 by Steve Blum
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It will come back up, eventually.

Big incumbents are cranking up the marketing volume on a gigabit services in urban areas with high revenue potential, but there’s very little, if any, gigabit-capable infrastructure actually deployed yet, except for Verizon’s FiOS systems. So pricing for some is still conceptual, and high, while others are already fighting it out on the ground.

Comcast is talking about charging $299 a month and a $1,000 installation fee for its 2 Gbps service.… More

Big incumbents turn up giga-game heat

11 February 2016 by Steve Blum
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Comcast and AT&T see high speed broadband opportunity in many of the same places. The two companies will go head to head with gigabit offerings (or at least giga-somethings) in five markets, according to a story by Sean Buckley in FierceTelecom…

Comcast has made its intent clear: it’s finally going to bring its DOCSIS 3.1-based gigabit broadband services to five cities this year, a move that directly challenges AT&T and Verizon and their FTTH buildout and pricing strategies.

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Charter and Comcast could control 70% of U.S. broadband market

31 January 2016 by Steve Blum
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More consolidation.

Ars Technica has crunched the numbers, and reached the conclusion that if Charter Communications is allowed to buy cable systems owned by Time Warner and Bright House, it will end up with monopoly control of 25 Mbps down/3 Mbps up broadband service for about a quarter of U.S. households, and that when combined with Comcast’s footprint, service to the majority of homes will be controlled by one of two companies…

Charter said in November that it would serve 23 percent of the nation’s 25Mbps-and-up broadband subscribers if it can buy TWC and BHN.

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Comcast CEO explains why people think it's the worst company in the U.S.

30 December 2015 by Steve Blum

We don’t suck as bad you think we do.

People hate cable companies because they charge a lot of money, and then the cable guy doesn’t show up on time. That was the essence of Comcast CEO Brian Robert’s response to a question posed by Henry Blodget, a writer for Business Insider. In an interview at an industry conference, Blodget pointed out that Comcast has “been voted the worst company in America for customer service” and that “the general reputation of cable companies is ‘Screw the customer'”.… More

Comcast offers Seattle the Philly weasel, er, deal

11 December 2015 by Steve Blum
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After months of fighting, Comcast and the City of Philadelphia reached agreement on a new 15 year cable franchise agreement that included a few spiffs, like expanded eligibility for the low income, $10 a month Internet Essentials program. The announcement came on the eve of a city council vote in Seattle, that would have approved a less generous deal. So, Seattle balked and asked for the same terms as given to Philadelphia. Surprisingly rapidly, Comcast and Seattle negotiators agreed on a few deal sweeteners, including the same IE eligibility upgrade.… More

Internet service is Internet service, all the way through the last mile

30 November 2015 by Steve Blum
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It’s not double parking. It’s a specialised service.

There’s a big problem with Comcast’s claim that the streaming video service it offers broadband-only customers isn’t an Internet service, but rather cable service that’s moving over its internal, Internet-protocol network. As far as I can tell, its $15 a month Stream service is using the same last mile bandwidth that more distant Internet connections use.

In other words, there’s only a certain amount of Internet protocol bandwidth available to customers, and if Comcast loads its up with a proprietary streaming video service, the speed and service quality of connections to other services, such as Hulu or Netflix, will be significantly degraded.… More