No they should be able to do what they want business wise.
The real problem is the lack of competition that would give, you the consumer, the option to tell them to shove it.
Until the illegal oligopoly is addressed, you might as well stock up on a fine lube.
Looks like it’s time to just suck it up and do the yearly bundle negotiation dance. The key is to get the lowest priced tv package, which should lower your overall bill, confirm the hardware works, and then put the hardware in the closet because the digital antennae works better.
So our response, as subservient consumers, should be “please sir, may I have another”?
Yeah… NO.
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Cox does the same thing. You can get high speed internet but they charge more than if you were to bundle with them. I’ll never get cable TV.
Had it in the past and between the ads and never finding anything to watch it was a waste of money.
To be fair you don’t need high speed internet to stream television. I get Hulu just fine with 3.5 Mbps. They say you need 1 Mbps for 360p but that has never been an option to me. It’s either HD or nothing.
Netflix wants more; around 5 Mbps. So Comcast’s move is only hurting large families, or people with 5 devices connected at a time or more. I would rather stream SD on Netflix at 3 Mbps than give Cox any more money.
Comcast advertises 60 Mbps per second for $30 a month no commitment. That’s actually better than what I’m getting with Cox. I only get 10 Mbps for that price. Don’t give them anymore money!
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While I have and greatly dislike my Comcast service, the title to this article is blatantly false.
If this works way out in the San Juans, it should be easy in the city
TL;DR they have a dedicated microwave link from startouch.com on the mainland
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This is also true of AT&T broadband where I am. You can only get it if you also have a “package” deal (with tv and/or phone, it’s unclear). I’m not sure I can even get broadband (which I don’t have) without also getting a television package, as I’m not sure anyone else even offers it besides Comcast and AT&T.
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Somebody grease this gif. We don’t want it to wear out prematurely.
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Is it true that Comcast will only let you get the highest speed if you also carry a cable subscription?
As there’s no tech reason for this, I think everyone can safely drag Comcast executives from their homes, and subject them to executiveution
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Re: At&T, LOL: Yeah, I know but we’re kind-of right between a ‘rock’ and a ‘hard place’, hopefully the satelite services will actually show up (and work!) one of these days!
…sigh…
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Sure - if they don’t have an effective monopoly. But they do, so they should not be allowed to handle customers in this fashion. Period.
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My FIL lives in a rural corner of Alabama with no wired cable services. He gets internet from satellite. It’s definitely slower than wired broadband, but it’s finally fast enough download speed that you can watch Netflix without it buffering every 5-10 seconds. Someday soon, satellite will be fast enough to compete with the likes of Crapcast and we’ll finally have a viable alternative. There are no other broadband providers in my neighborhood.
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We’ve been waiting for viable alternatives for years…
That’s called “backwards compatibility” which is baked into the spec for voice lines, iirc.
Promoting existing products/services would still happen. It’s the enforced bundling that is the issue. Bundling was considered an anti-trust issue once upon a time. Ask IBM.
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[Checks on server at home downloading at gigabit speeds, pats it on top] Don’t let the mean person tell you that you don’t need fast internet, baby.
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Comcast has found a new way to stem “cord-cutting” (cutting off your cable TV subscription in favor of subscription services like Netflix, or, as in my case, in favor of giving up on watching TV altogether); […]
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Could be much worse… Where I live the only ispis centurylink. The fastest speed available here is 15 mbs down 1.5 mps up! For “$50” a month. (Plus fees and taxes of course… Closer to $60/month)… Yep.
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yea, monopolies are evil and so on and so forth…
But really what is the average customer doing with 1 gbps?
I recently dropped Spectrum for a local company Redzone, they offer a base level plan that is half as expensive. It is 5 mbps, which I guess is four to twelve times slower than what spectrum offers? but I do not notice a difference for my very mundane internet activities? Like, I’m really curious, what do you DO with that much speed? especially outside of a professional context where an extra $100/month (or whatever) would just be a marginal expense.
