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Communications Businesses Media Television United States

Cablecos, Telcos Working To Strengthen the Duopoly 113

Posted by kdawson from the let's-you-and-hiim-collude dept.
The LA Times is running a piece on cooperation among cable companies and telcos. No, not cablecos cooperating with telcos; rather, both industries working on industry-wide initiatives aimed at getting a leg up on the other. AT&T, Verizon, and Qwest have been working on a site, Moveroo.com, aimed at easing the pain of people moving within the US — by making it easier for them to hook up with the incumbent telco at their destination, for instance. Odd that there is no mention of which cable services might be available where they are heading. The cablecos are cooperating on a more ambitious initiative to standardize targeted advertising nationwide, using data gathered from the set-top boxes used by Time Warner, Cox, Comcast, Cablevision, Charter, and Bright House Networks. The article quotes a spokesman from a utility consumers' action group: " [The spokesman] said these moves by the telecom and cable industries may be good for the respective businesses, but they almost surely won't be good for consumers. 'All they're doing is creating obstacles to each other's industry from gaining an advantage,' he said. 'That's not competition.' Well, it is. But not the kind that benefits customers."
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Cablecos, Telcos Working To Strengthen the Duopoly More

Cablecos, Telcos Working To Strengthen the Duopoly

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  • Ok -the sky is falling. So WHAT? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday July 13, 2008 @02:40PM (#24174643)

    Given that the government has been bought and paid for by large corporate donors and there is no other game in town, and given that boycotting is impractical (and would make no difference) --you expect us to do WHAT exactly?

  • Duh! (Score:5, Insightful)

    by zappepcs ( 820751 ) on Sunday July 13, 2008 @02:51PM (#24174725) Journal

    " [The spokesman] said these moves by the telecom and cable industries may be good for the respective businesses, but they almost surely won't be good for consumers. 'All they're doing is creating obstacles to each other's industry from gaining an advantage,' he said. 'That's not competition.' Well, it is. But not the kind that benefits customers."

    People have been saying this all along. There is no move by either company that is aimed at achieving anything other than coin for the shareholder. Their level of collusion with the **AA et al is debated, but seems inevitable. We are seeing the beginnings of the next level of content cartel being born. Each is seeking to be the biggest triple or quadruple-play content provider. The rumors that they want to charge you for access to various content on the Internet is not so far fetched as you might at first think. The large ISPs finally figured out that they now own the distribution channel for content in the foreseeable future and want to own it the way that the **AA have previously done.

    No, I'm not wearing a tin-foil hat, this is a logical conclusion. Without control of distribution there is no big bucks to be made, no expensive houses, cars, coke parties. Yes, $45 for your standard package, with tiered charges for extra 'Internet channels' like YouTube or Google or MP3World etc.

    What they are fighting about now is how to legally divide up the Internet content and not be taken to court. Comcast just lost one of the test battles.

    If remuneration for good services rendered were their goal, there would be no court cases. There would be no throttling of traffic. There would be no hints of collusion with the **AA. There would be no one questioning what ISPs should monitor and what they should not.

    In an ideal world, a massive boycott of commercial content would put everything in perspective for them. Unfortunately that won't happen. We are all the poorer for it.

    What can be done? support independent content makers now. Encourage more bands to use the pay what you like model. Eventually the message that if people won't even pirate your content, you are not worth supporting will become an industry insiders golden rule.

    It's time that such a message was sent to those spending money in Washington. Sad that it will never get there.

    • The pieces became obvious last month [slashdot.org]. It's not something that could happen in a competitive system and it's not something I would have imagined just a year ago but the end of the free internet is here.

      • twitter, please stop doing things like these [slashdot.org]. Why do you insist on crapflooding Slashdot this way?

      • Note that "owned by Verizon" apparently means "20.5% owned by Verizon" [nytimes.com]

        Note also that the TELUS mobile Web service in question is WAP-based [telusmobility.com], so it's not direct access to the "real Internet"; a lot of sites might be unavailable because they don't offer WAP [wikipedia.org] or because any Web-to-WAP gatewaying TELUS might be using can't handle them.

        (BTW, is there any evidence that anybody named "Dylan Patten" has ever written anything, or is writing anything, for Time Magazine? And has he actually talked to the sources that

  • I'd say informal price collusion also. (Score:5, Informative)

    by RyanFenton ( 230700 ) on Sunday July 13, 2008 @03:00PM (#24174765)

    I've been pricing packages for phone/television/internet lately, and have found that the local Verizon and BrightHouse offerings all happen to offer a minimal price of $100/month plus equipment rental and misc fees moving the realistic cost to $130/month, and a demand for long-term contracts with heavy penalties for ending the contract.

    I was pricing these because we had work crews installing the FIOS lines around the neighborhood, and wanted to see how I could use that fact to negotiate a better price with either the cable company or the new Verizon FIOS. But I was surprised at how strictly each company matched eachother's offerings without offering any cheaper options for those interested in the cheapest option. I was interested in FIOS speeds a little, but I discovered that they would be cutting the independently-powered copper and replacing it with an 8-hour battery on the wall of the house. But... if they do that, and then a hurricane comes, then the landline is nothing more than a glorified cellphone with an 8-hour battery... most hurricane power outages last much longer than that, and there is a need to call city lines for messages on drinking water and the like that just aren't available from radio.

    In any case, I don't understand the rationale of Verizon here - they're spending all this money rolling out the fiber for FIOS, but they aren't using the opportunity to compete other than offering faster, but still traffic-shaped internet. The end result is just two cables running to neighborhoods, each privately owned and vulnerable in the same ways, but not really distinguishing themselves.

    Ryan Fenton

    • I think Verizon is too stupid for that. They finally lit up the fiber and my neighborhood and to get with them the exact same service I have with comcast now will cost $80/mo MORE than what I am paying now.

    • I was interested in FIOS speeds a little, but I discovered that they would be cutting the independently-powered copper and replacing it with an 8-hour battery on the wall of the house. But... if they do that, and then a hurricane comes, then the landline is nothing more than a glorified cellphone with an 8-hour battery... most hurricane power outages last much longer than that, and there is a need to call city lines for messages on drinking water and the like that just aren't available from radio.

      While having a phone line powered by the telco is nice... I'm not sure if that 8 hour battery is only going to last 8 hours into an emergency. Seems more like it's going to last for 8 hours of usage, which should be plenty. Are you really going to be yapping on the phone for 8 hours in the middle of a severe power outage?

      What I'd be more worried about is the longevity of those batteries. If your battery fails and it needs to be replaced, and the next day a hurricane or tornado blows through... well, I wo

      • It takes no power to keep the routers and modems running aside from when they are being used for a phone call? It might take more power, but they aren't shutting down when they aren't being used.

    • I was interested in FIOS speeds a little, but I discovered that they would be cutting the independently-powered copper and replacing it with an 8-hour battery on the wall of the house.

      Verizon removes the copper because they are required to provide other carriers access to their copper but not to their fiber. And, they lock you into their higher-priced service. If you want traditional services down the road, Verizon will charge you to reinstall the copper (if they will do it at all).

  • Big Cable is Wathing You (Score:5, Interesting)

    by overshoot ( 39700 ) on Sunday July 13, 2008 @03:16PM (#24174885)
    Ah, but think of the potential! All of those STBs out there, just waiting to be tuned to ... interesting programming.

    The cable company doesn't need to know that the screen is blanked, the audio is off, and you've left for the weekend -- meantime, your STB is religiously searching out reruns of Speed Racer or maybe the original Star Trek. If one person, just one person does it they may think he's really sick and they'll ignore it. And if two people, two people do it, in harmony, they may think they're both faggots and they'll ignore both of them. And three people do it, they may think it's an organization. And can you, can you imagine fifty people a day,I said fifty people a day? And friends they may thinks it's a movement.

    Well, Arlo, what if millions -- yes, millions -- of people sold their non-watching cable time to run up the viewership for worthy programs like My Little Pony? Easy enough to coordinate over the internet, after all. Either the producers go into panic mode changing their programming or else they give up on spying on their "customers." Either way, it's all good.

  • Shock and horror! (Score:1, Redundant)

    by Zorque ( 894011 )
    Corporations trying to stay ahead of their competitors? Unheard of!

    • no, nitwit, the industry is colluding to eliminate competition.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Zorque ( 894011 )
        Yeah... that's what pretty much every industry tries to do. This isn't any more blatant than a lot of other monopolizing decisions, I don't know why everybody's acting so surprised.

        • granted, that most industries try to do this, but collusion is illegal.

          The FTC under the current administration hasn't been enforcing many regulations.

  • What the hell... (Score:1, Flamebait)

    by pongo000 ( 97357 )

    ...is a "cableco"? Am I to assume this is some sort of abbreviation for "cable company"? Or maybe this refers to Cableco, a division of The Carpenter Group?

    Note to /. editors: Making up words makes one look ignorant and naive. "Telco" has been around for decades (its original meaning wasn't "telecommunications company" but rather "telephone company," back when there were more than a handful). "Cableco" is a made-up word that makes /. editors look like rubes.

  • Duopoly is going to suffer. (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Maxo-Texas ( 864189 ) on Sunday July 13, 2008 @05:12PM (#24175623)

    They are both going to have severe pain over the next two to three years. A lot of folks are going to be more worried about food than cable.

  • I have a cell phone. Ha, ha!

    And the cableco can have my rabbit ears when they pry them out of my cold, dead fingers.

    P.S. Please don't tell either of them about my power company's fiber/wireless network.

    • So, April 2009 and the digital conversion?

      • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

        by PPH ( 736903 )

        So, April 2009 and the digital conversion?

        February 2009? Whatever. I'm there already. Rabbit ears and a converter box work just fine.

        I have a cabin way out in the woods. A homemade Gray-Hoverman [digitalhome.ca] works great there.

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