People Still Don't Like Their Cable Companies, ConsumerReports' Telecom Survey Finds (consumerreports.org) 116
Larger cable providers once again take a beating for perceived value -- even when it comes to bundled plans. ConsumerReports: Unhappy with your pay-TV company? You're not alone. Dissatisfaction with the perceived value of pay-TV service was once again high among the 176,000 members who participated in Consumer Reports' latest telecommunications survey. When we asked for feedback on their experiences with pay TV, home internet, home telephone service, and bundled plans, they shared their displeasure. In fact, most of the larger cable companies -- Optimum (Cablevision), Comcast, and Spectrum (Charter, Time Warner Cable, Bright House Networks) -- earned low scores in multiple categories, settling into the bottom half of the 25 providers in CR's new telecom service ratings.
Only 38 percent of pay-TV subscribers were highly satisfied with their service, meaning they were "very" or "completely" happy with the offerings. Armstrong, a smaller cable company that operates in Kentucky, Maryland, New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and West Virginia, earned the second-place slot behind Google Fiber, in part due to favorable scores for technical support, reliability, and customer service. Verizon and the two satellite-TV companies -- AT&T's DirecTV and Dish Network -- also rated better than Cox Communications, Comcast, Spectrum, and Optimum.
Top-rated EPB, a municipal broadband service run as a public utility in Chattanooga, Tenn., was one of the few bright spots for internet service. It was the only company to receive a top mark for value. It also got top marks for speed and reliability. Google Fiber was a close second in the ratings, the only other company to get a favorable mark for value.
Nearly three-quarters of the survey respondents who have a bundled plan -- TV, internet, and phone -- said they got a special promotional price when they signed up. And 45 percent were still enjoying that rate when they answered our survey.
Only 38 percent of pay-TV subscribers were highly satisfied with their service, meaning they were "very" or "completely" happy with the offerings. Armstrong, a smaller cable company that operates in Kentucky, Maryland, New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and West Virginia, earned the second-place slot behind Google Fiber, in part due to favorable scores for technical support, reliability, and customer service. Verizon and the two satellite-TV companies -- AT&T's DirecTV and Dish Network -- also rated better than Cox Communications, Comcast, Spectrum, and Optimum.
Top-rated EPB, a municipal broadband service run as a public utility in Chattanooga, Tenn., was one of the few bright spots for internet service. It was the only company to receive a top mark for value. It also got top marks for speed and reliability. Google Fiber was a close second in the ratings, the only other company to get a favorable mark for value.
Nearly three-quarters of the survey respondents who have a bundled plan -- TV, internet, and phone -- said they got a special promotional price when they signed up. And 45 percent were still enjoying that rate when they answered our survey.
I do. LOVE FIOS. Love. Love. Love. (Score:1)
Never had a problem with Verizon FIOS.
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Never had a problem with Verizon FIOS.
I felt the same way about Spectrum for the past year when I was paying a $45 flat rate with no added fees. Then I got the letter saying "Your promotional period is now over and you will be paying $65 for this basic ass 80/10 internet package LOL fuck you." Thanks a lot, assholes.
Re:I do. LOVE FIOS. Love. Love. Love. (Score:5, Insightful)
Spectrum is always down in my area too! When you live in an area with precisely 1 fast broadband provider (which is common across the US); and you cut cable TV only to find a few years later you're now paying the same for internet that you once paid for cable- because they use internet consumers to subsidise their cable TV customers... yeah, I hate my cable company ISP. I hate monopolies in general because they can do precisely this... abuse the consumer.
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Always down here too. And the box they hooked up is garbage. We went down for a few hours one day. I called for service and it came back up. I let the tech come out any way to figure out what the problem was. He said it goes down all the time and the service department doesn't get notifications when their people take it down to fix something. He asked me to call and just cancel the service call as he wasn't going to really look at anything. I told him fine. Called in and I couldn't make it past the automate
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You got a letter? I just got a price hike. No letter, no explanation, but it was about 2 years after I got it. One month my bill was $160 (still too high), the next it was $210!!!
Breaking News! (Score:5, Funny)
Water Is Wet!
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You can only buy water bundled with wetness.
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It still has wetness, but it's feature-locked until you add some energy.
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The problem is too many channels (Score:5, Insightful)
The cable companies are under this false impression that it was a good idea to provide as many channels as possible. My biggest issue with TV now when I go somewhere that has cable, is it takes me a while to even find one of the channels I might want to watch. Maybe their idea what to increase the odds that a show you like is currently airing on one of the 800 channels, but in an age of on demand programming, this strategy is insufficient. The only saving grace for them now is to offer Netflix-style on demand programming for all their content.
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Re:The problem is too many channels (Score:5, Informative)
I'd argue that the problem is too little competition. Especially if you're relying on your cable company for Internet service. In most places, the local cable company is the only Internet access provider or one of two providers. And by "local", I mean "giant cable company who serves your area." Without meaningful competition, a company doesn't need to invest in customer service. After all, customer service costs money and customers have few, if any, other options. For example, Charter's Spectrum is the only wired Internet provider in my area. So even if I hate them (I'd definitely say I'm highly dissatisfied), I have no other options. I can reduce what I pay them by cutting the TV service cord and not having a home phone via them, but I'm still tethered to them by Internet service. They know this and can engage in whatever trickery they like knowing that I can't switch without significantly impacting my home Internet usage.
Now, if there were four or five different providers, then Spectrum would be forced to either give me good service or see their customers flee to Providers 2, 3, 4, or 5. The providers with good customer service would increase their customer base while the ones with bad customer service would either be forced to improve or go out of business.
This would also fix issues with TV service. Providers with good TV service would thrive while those stuck in the past would continually lose customers.
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Re:The problem is too many channels (Score:4)
That's why the last mile should be a public resource.
Re: The problem is too many channels (Score:4, Insightful)
Which is why we need local loop unbundling so the last mile fiber and wire can be hooked up by lots of people.
Not disimmialar from electricity. I pay one company for distribution and another for usage.
I am also not againist usage metering as long as the meter is publicly visible to me, and all data is the same. Att Comcast all don't count cettian services againist your data use
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Problem is, most (if not all) got decades worth of subsidies and tax breaks in order to pay for that last mile infrastructure. I even know of cities where the municipality directly paid to have it installed. One way or another that "capital investment" you're so worried about came from the taxpayers, and what do they have to show for it?
As usual in the U.S., not a goddamn thing except corporations and their sycophants complaining that all the free money they've been raking in isn't enough.
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Which is why cable operators and internet companies and media/content owners should be split into separate companies. Treat the cable and fiber as a common carrier. This has worked before when AT&T was broken up, there was competition and the former baby bells and smaller telecomm companies grew and expanded in that environment, such as Verizon and Sprint.
But when the expensive cable is owned by the same company that provides internet and television, there's no fair or viable way to compete against th
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I'd argue that the problem is too little competition.
Good thing they repealed net neutrality. Things are going to change, really. Thanks you Mr. Pai!
Re:The problem is too many channels (Score:5, Insightful)
That wasn't the cable companies, it was the providers. Disney said, "If you want ESPN, you also have to carry these other 30 channels". Because they were all owned by Disney. And more Disney channels means it's more likely you'll watch a Disney-owned channel.
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Mainly so that all the parents with little kids can pay fees for Disney's mostly low-cost programming, to subsidize ESPN so that people who watch sports don't have to pay $30 a game.
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Or vice versa. ESPN subscribers pay a heavy premium, and it's not like SyFy could support itself ala carte.
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ESPN almost certainly doesn't subsidize Disney. They pay almost $2 billion for pro football alone, which is likely more than the total budget for all Disney Channel shows put together.
That said, other NBC-Universal properties might be subsidizing Sci-Fi somewhat. And certainly, all those crappy shopping networks subsidize Sci-Fi by paying cable providers to carry them. (I refuse to call it SyFy.)
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Disney channel, Disney East, Disney West, Disney Junior, Toon Disney, Disney XD, there are just too damn many Disney channels! All Disney does is turn child actors into broken and dysfunctional adults.
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These days its more likely to be the other way around. Disney tells cable companies that if they want ABC and Disney and the other content they have (which they absolutely do need if they want to keep customers) they have to include ESPN in the basic tier package (and push up the price of said basic package because of how much money Disney charges the cable companies for ESPN)
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The cable companies are under this false impression that it was a good idea to provide as many channels as possible. The only saving grace for them now is to offer Netflix-style on demand programming for all their content.
Funny how things come around. Netflix is under the impression that it's a good idea to produce as many possible series / movies as possible regardless of their quality.
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The cable companies are under this false impression that it was a good idea to provide as many channels as possible. The only saving grace for them now is to offer Netflix-style on demand programming for all their content.
Funny how things come around. Netflix is under the impression that it's a good idea to produce as many possible series / movies as possible regardless of their quality.
They're doing that because they're victims of their own success. Netflix became big- so the TV networks all wanted in- bang there was Hulu as competition and NBC, etc started pulling content off Netflix. Amazon Video started up and started signing exclusive rights with other show. Then CBS want their own special place to compete with Netflix- and their shows disappeared. Now Disney and Marvel are pulling content off Netflix. BBC did so a while ago for most of their shows for their own streaming servic
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And never mind that much of the Netflix content is good quality too. What I really want to see is a mix of the Netflix from 3 years ago, with lots and lots of back catalog tv shows and movies, with the Netflix produced or subsidizes original content. Ie, I want Stranger Things, Jessica Jones, Mission Impossible, and Star Trek all on the same service.
I am hating this move to exclusive content, it feels too much like those idiotic wars between game console makers where nobody wins.
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Yes you are right of course. Sad, because consumers just want one place where they can find their shows and are being given just the opposite.
I interviewed at Netflix some years ago and asked them about their strategy in the face of competitors controlling their content. They said something about having superior video delivery technology. Something about their stream adapting to bandwidth. I remember thinking people will catch up to you on that. I didn't get the job :)
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The cable companies are under this false impression that it was a good idea to provide as many channels as possible. My biggest issue with TV now when I go somewhere that has cable, is it takes me a while to even find one of the channels I might want to watch. Maybe their idea what to increase the odds that a show you like is currently airing on one of the 800 channels, but in an age of on demand programming, this strategy is insufficient. The only saving grace for them now is to offer Netflix-style on demand programming for all their content.
It's been a long time since I had cable TV- but when I had it, my family would only watch at most 5 channels on a regular basis. I don't think this is unusual either. I dropped in the early 2000's though when everything became reality. Once upon a time I liked history channel... nope- now the Hitler and reality TV channel. Once upon a time I liked Discovery and TLC... nope now the reality TV Channels... All the good channels died when reality TV took off.
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I cut the cord when I was down to 5 *programs* I watched regularly. The "channels" were just those that I would scan when bored in case something was on (IFC, BBC America, AMC, and um, well, not much more than that).
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And those channels are not grouped at all on their guide. I imagine this is for the purpose of making you feel like there's a lot of content by forcing you to scroll past 50 channels to see the next channel you want to look at. Instead I can't remember what my choices are because they are all separated by 2 minutes of screwing around with the remote.
I wish they'd give up that nonsense and group them by genre or let you custom filter/sort them. Of course, all of that is nonsense considering that it could be
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That's not really how it works. The reason they have a ton of channels is because content providers make the cable companies take ALL their channels as package deals just to get the few good ones that everyone watches. Like ESPN? Well, you're going to have to take the other 30 flavors of the same crap to get it.....then they pass that horse poop onto the consumer as "more choices". Cable companies know exactly which channels people don't watch and believe me, they wouldn't waste precious band width pump
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To quote Bruce Springsteen
"57 channels and nothin' on ...."
hidden fees and some times forced hardware rent (Score:5, Insightful)
hidden fees and some times forced hardware rent.
Comcast may force people to rent there gateway when they move to IPTV.
monopoly broadband (Score:2)
monopoly broadband look we are the only choice so do you want TV with that that cable internet line?
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Comcast (Score:2)
I had mostly good fast internet service through Comcast.
But also
Very high prices
Bundle full of garbage
Terrible customer service
Using my service to semi-secretly sell service to others
Typical million channels of garbage, semi-goodstuff would have still been more on top of too much.
And now threatening to be anti-competitive or throttle my service.
Their internet could be as fast as they could get it, it was overcharged and bundled with garbage, and forced to subsidize their wifi access point division.
Reduced size might help (Score:2)
When it comes to customer service, you either get "So large it runs Big Data on everything to try to predict your needs but when you call in you get India" or "Small enough to care because every customer is an important revenue source despite the monopoly".
From an ISP perspective, cable companies either work well or they don't. I've lived in Cox areas of San Diego (the other regional monopoly in North County was TWC, now Spectrum) and have had cable modems since the @Home days and have generally always been
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Comcast has competition in your area- you mention webpass and Google Fiber. Comcast has to provide a better service in your area because you have competition.
When google fiber moves into town, the other providers in that area drop their costs and improve their service.
When there is no competition in town they jack the prices up and don't maintain their network very well because- they know they've got you by the balls. Your positive experience with Comcast (and other people's negative experience) is proof
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Cox (not Comcast) only really has competition from the ILEC for CO-based DSL (I know, I used to work for multiple ISP's here in San Diego), and DSL speeds are well behind what you can get in most areas of the county. Also, my experience with Cox dates back to 1998 -- and while DSL was viably competitive into the early 2000's, by 2005-2007 DSL really couldn't match what cable was able to provide speedwise, and was going to be less reliable the further from the CO you were.
Webpass (Google Fiber) is only avail
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I'm in Silicon Valley - ie, engineers and stuff who know how this stuff works and who have been on the internet before it was called the Internet. And options here suck and are spotty. When I moved into my condo (around 2002) the cable was still analog with an A/B switch. If you wanted digital cable, you had a special box that combined the A+B into a digitial out. But I didn't want digital cable because after buying the place I couldn't afford the ridiculous $100/month cost. DirecTV at the time had digi
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I had no problem with my Spectrum-Warner service. I had a big problem with the Spectrum-Warner price.
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I only have internet from Spectrum and the service has been good so far. They upgraded internet speed twice...we are now at 200Mbps down. I ignored all of their bundling offers and now they try to get me to take TV for free. I ignored that as well.
Does you Spectrum internet not go out randomly between about 6pm and 9pm on weeknights? We get random outages that last from 10 mins to 2 or 3 hours during peak internet time when people are getting home form work with our Spectrum internet.
What's changed? (Score:2)
What has changed that would make anyone assume that customers wouldn't hate their cable providers anymore? Cable subscriptions are dying and being replaced with streaming but most of us still have to go through our cable carrier for the internet so it's just more of a transition from one technology to another; with us all stuck still having to deal with the same old crappy provider.
Now if SpaceX's satellite internet technology is any good, and multiple other providers like google can also start launching sa
Name change (Score:2)
Time for another name change, that always works when a company name becomes permanently associated with something terrible. SBC, Philip Morris, ValuJet, the list goes on. In the case of Comcast, they need to change both the parent company name and rebrand Xfinity.
Hard investigative jounalism! (Score:2)
Good thing the article isn't paywalled, because I can't imagine people paying Consumer Reports a subscription fee to be told something so damn obvious.
AT&T RC1 account conversion (Score:2)
AT&T has been busy converting all the old DirecTv accounts to their RC1 system and causing major pains!
I have a THR22-100 (High Def Tivo with dual directv tuners) and last Thursday (8-2-2018) when they converted the account over to their RC1 system they disabled the DVR portion. So no pause, play, fastforward, or rewind. Worse, all prior recorded shows are not available. I have been on the phone with them numerous times and keep getting pushed to tech support which then want to change for a tech to c
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It's all about alternatives (Score:2)
I use an antenna for television, Netflix and streams.
If I had any other alternative for Internet services I'd try it, but DSL/ADSL isn't even available at speeds I can use.
But it still feels like a sandpaper condom every month when I get my bill.
That's all the choices I have, and with Rectum being kicked out of NY, I'm scared Comcast will be taking over with their DL caps and even worse customer service.
The only other alternative I have is expensive, heavily capped data over 4G which is a non-starter when I
Does anyone else see a pattern here? (Score:5, Informative)
Think of all the industries with shitty customer service ratings:
1) Cable
2) Cellphones
3) Utilities
4) Airlines
5) Car dealers
What do they all have in common? They lack any real competition. In every case the customer has little or no choice of their service provider. With airlines the choice is fly or take the train or drive. In most cases the alternatives are impractical. With car dealers, unless you are buying a Tesla, you have to work through a dealer network. In most cases that is actually protected by law. The only viable alternative is to buy a used car or don't drive.
It's not much better with cellphones. Service generally sucks, service sucks, coverage sucks and it's expensive. At one time I remember rumors of Apple entering the cell service market. It turned out not to be true but I wish they had.
It's a little different with cable companies. With traditional cable you have the traditional oligopoly. But there is a viable alternative - cut the cord. Get an antenna, NetFlix and maybe Hulu or Amazon and you don't need the cable companies anymore. The cable companies know this and respond in typical fashion - by trying to punish their customers for leaving. Good luck with that strategy boys. Meanwhile their customer service ratings continue to stink and people are cutting the cord at an ever increasing rate.
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See, I wouldn't say what that list has in common has anything to do with competition. I'd say that those things are required for modern life*. They are also run by oligopolies, but that has a lot to do with the nature of the market making competition ineffective, etc..
*Cable TV might not be, but broadband internet is.
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When you say "other developed nations" you seem to mistakenly lump America into that category.
For utilities, we usually have public utilities commissions that regulate them. More states need to lump cable companies under the PUCs and PSCs.
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How do you cut the cord. the Cable companies own the internet company.
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Where do you get the internet though? Streaming sucks if you resort to basic ADSL over copper to the phone company (or can badly suck depending on location). The cable companies have a lock on the internet as well. There may be a few competitors in some areas but it's spotty. AT&T with u-verse is ok, but they're also a "cable company" in many ways with the same bad character flaws, and the internet isn't as fast as cable for the same price. FIOS is only in a few places, and Google Fiber is in even
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In many of those cases (in the US at least) there is protectionism preventing competition in the market.
Look at the airlines, if it wasn't for the last century dinosaur rules surrounding the airline industry (more specifically the rules that tightly control who is allowed to own and run an airline) there would be overseas carriers jumping into the market and offering a better deal (anyone who knows the story behind Virgin America and how hard it was to set it up and even then how difficult it was to run it
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Think of all the industries with shitty customer service ratings:
1) Cable
2) Cellphones
3) Utilities
4) Airlines
5) Car dealers
What do they all have in common? They lack any real competition. In every case the customer has little or no choice of their service provider. With airlines the choice is fly or take the train or drive. In most cases the alternatives are impractical.
Over here in Europe, we have alternatives to air travel like fast trains and excellent motorway networks... European airlines are still shit.
OTOH, we have excellent utilities as these are often working from government mandates rather than a profit motive (meaning their priority is service, not fobbing you off as fast as possible.
The problem you have isn't lack of competition, it's a race to the bottom.
I love my HDTV antenna (Score:3)
oh, wait, you mean you actually pay for the 100+ free over the air 1080p HDTV channels?
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Where do you live that they have over 100 channels free via antenna? At best we get 3 or 4.
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It depends where you live. My mother finally got a satellite dish because after the switch from analog to digital she only had one broadcast channel left. With analog it didn't matter if the signal wasn't clean you could still watch it, but with digital you get all or nothing instead of a gradually degrading picture.
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Seattle, I can get channels (usually 3 per call sign) from five locations from Tacoma north. The image quality for the sports games is higher than over cable.
That's unpossible! (Score:5, Insightful)
Top-rated EPB, a municipal broadband service run as a public utility in Chattanooga, Tenn., was one of the few bright spots for internet service. It was the only company to receive a top mark for value. It also got top marks for speed and reliability.
But we've been told there is no way a government service could give better performance at a lower price than a private company! Fake news!
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Would you apply this theory to phone service, or the roads?
But ignore whether or not this is ethical - customers are LEAVING the cable company's television services. They may be keeping the cable company's internet when they go and stream TV, but sometimes not. This should be a sign that the cable companies should do something to retain customers. It has always been good business sense to provide good customer service and provide the customer a product that they want. Instead cable companies provide ter
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Sounded like he needed DirecTV to fix their property that he leaded from them.
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It is not the equipment, its their converting Directv accounts to AT&T accounts (RC1 conversion). I spent an hour on the phone last night only for the tech to confirm that the migration hasn't been going well and all he's dealt with are problems like this.
I suspect that whatever integrates their account system data into a satellite command signal is messed up. So when the Directv account got suspended this sent out a signal to shut down services, and under the new system the command to re-active isn't
Mediacom is shit (Score:2)
I keep getting phone calls, shit in the mail, and even some dude walking door to door, all trying to up sell me to more services from Mediacom. Every time they ask I tell them the same thing, I don't want more services for more money, I want to be able to keep what I have for the same price. Every year it seems they offer new plans with more "gigs", more channels, more phone doodads, and at a higher price. All I want is a reliable internet connection, and not have my costs go up. It would be nice if my
Optimum (Cablevision) (Score:2)
TV Cable & Satellite (Score:1)
WOW!! (Score:2)
My cable/internet package is basic cable only, and 10 megabits per second, in practice can top out at 1.8MB/s.
Cost: $189/mo.
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Build reliable infrastructure - that's it (Score:2)
If the telecoms, ISPs and cable companies would build infrastructure for landline Internet and TV that was half as rugged as even something as mundane as city water or electricity service -- which, by the way, are far from infalliable and have plenty of issues -- people would be a lot more satisfied with their Internet. In reality, I'd say the majority of the people I know have line quality issues with their landline home Internet, and intermittently or constantly experience some level of packet loss varyin
Nooooooo! Don't say all that..! (Score:1)