[mythtv-users] Comcast 'flees $45bn monster-merger with Time Warner Cable'

Sat Apr 25 22:33:54 UTC 2015

Bah. One thread of discourse regarding a rather bothersome issue should be
allowed :)

If anyone else here was subscribed to certain other open-source lists, this
is actually rather tame compared to what I've seen in years past.

As I sit, I can physically only receive DirecTV (via in in-building
distribution system) or setup a dish for their competitor, Dish Network,
out my window.  Otherwise I get antenna TV, as back in 1995, when these
apartments were finished out of an old department store (Denver Dry Goods
Co.,) TCI at the time refused to foot the cost to install cable to the 65
units.  3 years later, when the condos were finished on the opposite side
of the building, it would appear that TCI or perhaps the condo association
funded the install; Comcast is now available to the condos today.

Instead, the apartments were doomed to an exclusive contract from a third
party, 'American Broadband' is their current name, who ran coax in exchange
for said exclusivity. They provide DirecTV to the wall-jacks and no
Internet over the coax infrastructure at all.

I should also mention I live 2 blocks away from the central Denver
Centurylink switching building, and the telecom hotel, Denver Gas and
Electric (910 15th St.; you might see it in Comcast ibone traceroutes).

However, even with terabits of bandwidth being exchanged 2 blocks away, my
Internet is only faster than the 12mbit/s of Centurylink's 50+ year old
home-run-to-the-CO copper, due to the fact there's 1 very small individual
ISP that has an Ubiquiti Rocket M5 Titanium + omnidirectional antenna on
the roof of said telecom hotel.

This is a 100mbit max connection, shared between 5 current users: myself
and 4 businesses, 2 of which I referred directly to Aerux(the ISP) as they
were also facing 12mbit ADSL2.  Presently Aerux is capping each user to
30mbit/s to preserve the network quality/latency, but being wireless (and
as such, no asymmetric bandwidth allocation on the physical media) 30mbit
is also the upload. Compare that to 0.9 with Centurylink, or even the
5-20mbit of higher tiers of Comcast.

So its a bittersweet victory: proper Internet, at the lack of any useful
form of television.  Good thing I watch so little anyway, recording a few
PBS shows here and there.

So yes, I will agree our current regulatory environment sucks, being smack
dab in the middle of inability to even receive services 95+% of Coloradans
have the ability to receive (Comcast) or any sort of competitive service
from the incumbent telco: their '1 gig' is a pipe dream for the 99% who do
not live in brand new apartments and condos being built; their next-best
40mbit service is available only in fiber-passed suburbs and very little if
any penetration in the central core.

Only by the stroke of good luck that someone had taken the initiative to
start a company, plop an antenna ontop of a building, and enable public
advertisement of the SSID which I saw on my phone, sitting in my living
room, am I able to pay $55/mo for a _much_ more stable, consistent, and
low-latency solution that gives me absolutely 0 netflix or youtube
throttling/ or playback issues.

If we had reasonable regulation, Centurylink (or Qwest or USWest before
them) would have been mandated to provide the same service everywhere, and
likely would have upgraded the central Downtown area to fiber a decade
ago.  TCI would have been be required to wire every building that might
house residential tenants, providing for a better level of competition.
But no, there wasn't any of that sort in the late 80s to mid-90s when
services were being digitized.

In short: This discussion is rather civil compared to some; and, being a
forum of techies who have an opinion about recording what large companies
hold dear to their profit margins, it is a much better place than many for
such a discussion.

Have a great weekend!

Mike

On Sat, Apr 25, 2015 at 10:08 AM, Phil Bridges <gravityhammer at gmail.com>
wrote:

> On Sat, Apr 25, 2015 at 3:15 AM, Stephen P. Villano <
> stephen.p.villano at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>>
>>
>> On 4/24/15 3:49 PM, Hika van den Hoven wrote:
>> > Hoi Stephen,
>> >
>> > Friday, April 24, 2015, 9:30:15 PM, you wrote:
>> >
>> >
>> >
>> >> On 4/24/15 9:04 AM, Eric Sharkey wrote:
>> >>> On Fri, Apr 24, 2015 at 1:06 AM, Stephen P. Villano
>> >>> <stephen.p.villano at gmail.com> wrote:
>> >>>> On 4/23/15 4:37 PM, Doug Lytle wrote:
>> >>>>> Looks like the merger was killed
>> >>>>>
>> >>>>>
>> http://www.theregister.co.uk/2015/04/23/comcast_45bn_twc_gobble_declared_dead_in_the_water/
>> >>>>>
>> >>>>> Doug
>> >>>>>
>> >>>> That's good news,
>> >>> Not entirely, at least for MythTV users.  Time Warner is one of the
>> >>> most MythTV hostile providers out there.  Being acquired by Comcast,
>> >>> which is much friendlier by comparison, could have been a good thing
>> >>> for many people on this list.  Given that TW and Comcast don't
>> >>> actually compete for customers, the people negatively impacted by this
>> >>> consolidation would have been content producers, not consumers, as the
>> >>> combined company would have had more leverage in negotiating
>> >>> contracts.  Conceivably, this could have been passed on to consumers
>> >>> as savings.  (Ok, maybe that last point is going too far...)
>> >>>
>> >>> Eric
>> >>> _______________________________________________
>> >>>
>> >> It's been my repeated experience that when two corporations merge, with
>> >> one having lousy customer service, the one that had barely acceptable
>> or
>> >> even excellent customer service tends to end up having lousy customer
>> >> service.
>> >> Examples are the Sanyo-Fisher merger and the Sears-Kmart merger.
>> >> _______________________________________________
>> > Not by definition. Here in the Netherlands our two biggest cable
>> > companies (UPC and Ziggo) have merged last year and are now in the
>> > proces of equalizing. At this moment it means that where before for me
>> > with Ziggo every channel was encrypted, it looks like all digital SD
>> > and some HD channels are becoming unencrypted. Like it was with UPC.
>> > So finally I will be able to move to digital!
>> >
>> > Tot mails,
>> >   Hika                            mailto:hikavdh at gmail.com
>> >
>> > "Zonder hoop kun je niet leven
>> > Zonder leven is er geen hoop
>> > Het eeuwige dilemma
>> > Zeker als je hoop moet vernietigen om te kunnen overleven!"
>> >
>> > De lerende Mens
>> >
>> > _______________________________________________
>> >
>> Good for you! Unfortunately, where you have an extremely robust
>> regulatory environment, we in the US have a variable and weakening
>> regulatory environment, forgetting *why* we enacted said regulation in
>> the first place.
>> Where much of Europe accepted some ideas from socialism, the US does its
>> level best to destroy anything it *thinks* is socialism, ignoring
>> superhighways, parks, essential services, etc.
>> In short, we're an abject mess, attempting to protect our society and
>> destroy it at the same time.
>> What *other* nation has national leaders openly suggest removing
>> protections from the poor and indigent and permit them to starve to death?
>> I've heard that with my own two ears.
>>
>>
> Somehow I missed getting subscribed to rec.politics.  Where's the
> unsubscribe?
>
>
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