[Jim 9922]

Originally Posted by PennBF

Where are the Florida elected reps who are to protect the Community against abuses? This is just another way of using the air waves as a facility to over charge and cheat customers. Only the Gov't reps can stop this and they are invisable.

In many communities the local governments, with all the States' blessings, issued exclusive licenses to the various cable operators, so they are into the "pork" too. And, there a few lines on your bills for various government-mandated "fees" and taxes. So you won't hear much from the government bumblecrats who put the whole system into operation and still collect their share of the juice.

[Steve & Deanna]

With no cable competition such as Brighthouse, fees ad prices will escalate. I remember in our area when AT & T had telephone monopoly....but that said, we were paying $10.00/mo. Times have REALLY changed as well as rates

[zcaveman]

I see that the Voice/Data modem is going to $10 a month. I guess it is time to start looking for a replacement.

Z

[KeepingItReal]

Something Else to Watch For with Comcast

FierceCable <editors@fiercecable.com>

Comcast News Just for Information

Daniel Frankel - FierceCable

1. Comcast sued for turning residential routers into hotspots
By Daniel Frankel

Two Northern California residents have launched a class action suit in a San Francisco federal court against Comcast (NASDAQ: CMCSA), claiming the cable company's shared Wi-Fi routers use too much electrical power, violate their privacy and slow their network.

The suit was filed in U.S. District Court in San Francisco on behalf of Pittsburg, Calif., resident Toyer Grear and his daughter Joycelyn Harris. They claim Comcast is "exploiting them for profit" by using their leased gateway to support the MSO's rollout of its Wi-Fi network.

The suit claims that the secondary signal these gateways broadcast increase their electrical power usage by as much as 40 percent, and that Comcast is pushing "tens of millions of dollars per month of the electricity bills needed to run their nationwide public Wi-Fi network onto customers."

The suit also claims the secondary signal puts Comcast's customers under greater security risk, allowing "strangers to connect to the Internet through the same wireless router used by Comcast customers."

Comcast has yet to publicly respond to the lawsuit.

Comcast is seeking to build a carrier-grade Wi-Fi network that can compete with cellular networks, and it has the ambitious goal of deploying 8 million Wi-Fi hotspots across the U.S. by the end of 2014.

Many of those hotspots utilize newer gateways leased by customers, which push out a secondary signal that's publicly available.

Comcast has begun notifying its customers in cases when their router is being used as a hotspot. And the company has provisions to turn the secondary signal off if a customer wants to opt out.

However, as a message-board poster noted on DSL Reports last week, the sharing is a default setting in Comcast's wireless gateways. So, every time the MSO pushes out a firmware update and resets the device's settings, it gets pushed back into hotspot sharing mode.

And for their part, the plaintiffs in the suit accuse Comcast of being vague about the contractual terms of Wi-Fi sharing.

[tuccillo]

I don't believe there are even 57,000 homes in The Villages (isn't the latest advertised build-out 56,000 homes) let alone all of them having Century Link fiber to the house. I live in a newer area and do have Century Link fiber. I have had a few issues but they were resolved without any drama and I am happy with it.

Originally Posted by GuardMeSecurity

There are nearly 57,000 homes in the villages with direct fiber optic connections through centurylink. Brighthouse is just another cable co, like all the others. Fiber is the Mercedes of the telecommunications world.

It's not going to get any better...

[Dr Winston O Boogie jr]

Originally Posted by Hancle704

Comcast gets away with it because many folks tolerate it. They have reached a point where they enjoy an almost monopoly status in some markets and could care less what their customers think. Oh and there are some who say they enjoy the high speed that only Comcast can offer, is it really that important? Not to me.

The problem is not that folks tolerate it, it's that they're the only game in town. In order for economics and the law of supply and demand to function properly, competition must be at the consumer level.

Comcast and all of the other providers only compete for towns, counties or areas. Those first line customers only care about what tax revenues a provider will bring.

What we have with cable companies is a bunch of little monopolies. We really need to break them up and allow fair competition at the consumer level. If enough customers changed their service to a competitor Comcast prices would come down. But, if you want high speed digital cable and internet, in many places there are no competitors.

I am in Lady Lake. I cannot get Verizon or Brighthouse so Comcast knows that I cannot go anywhere.

[Dr Winston O Boogie jr]

Originally Posted by tuccillo

I don't believe there are even 57,000 homes in The Villages (isn't the latest advertised build-out 56,000 homes) let alone all of them having Century Link fiber to the house. I live in a newer area and do have Century Link fiber. I have had a few issues but they were resolved without any drama and I am happy with it.

Certainly no homes in the historic district have it and I doubt that many north of 466 have it either.

[PennBF]

Monopolies can only exist with the sanction and approval of the Government. As long as our representatives ignore the abuse to its citizens get use to the abusive fees for this service. The question is why do these rep's ignore the
problem of citizents being overcharges and terrible service, etc. As the saying goes," What is their payback"? and there has to be a payback for their lack of action.

[JourneyOfLife]

Originally Posted by Deseylou

We dropped Comcast and went back to Direct TV
We are so much happier
Saving money also

Sorry to break the news to you... AT&T is Buying Direct TV!

AT&T to buy DirecTV for $48.5 billion as cellular growth eases | Reuters

The PAY TV (Cable, Satelite), Phone (fixed and cellular), Internet (fixed and cellular) are merging into a small oligopoly!

If the Comcast/TW and AT&T/Direct TV mergers happen. It will take about 5 years for the follow-on Mergers to Complete

There will be 3, maybe 4 mega companies in an oligopoly.

Next up will look something like this:

- Verizon will probably buy Dish... the story will probably be... to enable them to compete with AT&T
- Comcast will probably try to buy either Tmobile or Sprint to round out their bundle with cellular.. The story will probably be, to compete with Verizon and AT&T
- Then the remaining cellular company will probably have little choice but merge with Charter Communications and the two of them will likely attempt to buy out the remaining larger cable TV companies.... so they can compete in the oligopoly!

One big problem besides the evaporation of competition and choice.... is that the fixed line business in many areas of the country do not have any competition! There is only 1 provider for fixed Phone and Internet!

[tuccillo]

Even where there is competition, it appears that the prices are always pretty close. For example, I have 3 choices for internet access (Comcast, Brighthouse, and Century Link) and once you are beyond the first year or so of "special introductory pricing", the prices don't appear to be all that different. The same applies for TV where my choices are Comcast, Brighthouse, Century Link, DirectTV, and Dish. Has anyone done a detailed look at pricing once you are beyond the first year or so? Customer service is a whole other issue.

Originally Posted by Dr Winston O Boogie jr

The problem is not that folks tolerate it, it's that they're the only game in town. In order for economics and the law of supply and demand to function properly, competition must be at the consumer level.

Comcast and all of the other providers only compete for towns, counties or areas. Those first line customers only care about what tax revenues a provider will bring.

What we have with cable companies is a bunch of little monopolies. We really need to break them up and allow fair competition at the consumer level. If enough customers changed their service to a competitor Comcast prices would come down. But, if you want high speed digital cable and internet, in many places there are no competitors.

I am in Lady Lake. I cannot get Verizon or Brighthouse so Comcast knows that I cannot go anywhere.

[JourneyOfLife]

All of those companies have an average price point in mind for a specific service and for bundles! Even in the promotions, the cost over a period of time will not deviate to much from company to company in a geographic area.

While they may break ranks in terms of pricing from time to time, to try to gain business from the other company, for the most part they will tend to follow the leader.

You can bet they study customer trends regularly regarding how long someone might stick with the company or switch service companies. Since there are only a few competitors, it is fairly easy to understand/anticipate their competitors actions/reactions in terms of pricing.

Here is a primer on oligopolies and price setting.

Oligopoly Diagram | Economics Help

[Paper1]

For the most part I believe in a free market but with communications, internet, television, and medical care there needs to be more comsumer protection. All 4 of these areas lobby Washington very heavily and are having a feeding frenzy with profits. For the percentage of economy they control they do not produce an equal percentage of jobs.

[mtdjed]

Originally Posted by billethkid

what would work but would be impossible to make happen....all Comcast customers demand going to the next package down from what they currently have (unless you already only have basic).

In substantial numbers that would have a significant impact on their revenues.

Do you realize they do have a rate below basic? I have had that for a year at $45 per month including the ridiculous charge for 3 adapters. I'm not a huge TV person but still get plenty of channels. That will likely go up also.

[RVRoadie]

Originally Posted by tuccillo

Tom at TheVillagesAV.com installed the antenna in our attic. I believe the model is a DB4e from AntennasDirect.com. I don't like to quote other peoples prices so I would recommend you call Tom - it was reasonable and he does a great job installing it. It has a amplifier because the signal is split 4-ways. If you are handy you can do the install yourself. I had Tom do it because his price was very reasonable and he had done a bunch of installs in The Villages and could guarantee that I would pick up stations from Orlando - I pull in about 50 stations.

I use CenturyLink for Internet access but do not have phone service through them. I use an Ooma Voice-over-IP for phone service (as well as cell phones).

Tom has recently posted that Comcast has a pretty good deal for internet access plus basic TV for 1-year, I believe. I do not know what the price is after 1 year. I "cut the cord" with TV service about 3 years ago and have not looked back.

I called Tom about an antenna. He gave me a price on an antenna and installation, but said he didn't really like crawling around in the attack to install. He asked me what I was doing for internet and I told him comcast. Then he said something that blew my mind. I don't want to draw undo attention to this, but if you have a similar setup, split your cable connection and run it into a digital TV, scan for digital channels using the cable selection and see what happens. Hint: you won't need an OTA antenna to get OTA broadcasts.

[looneycat]

Originally Posted by 784caroline

If you get Comcast you should read the Pricing changes coming your way January 1, 2015. What really bugs me is the Digital Adapter fees (which we originaly got for free about 2-3 years ago) are rising from $1.99 per adapter to $2.99 per adapter per month. Another crazy fee is the Broadcast TV fee now at $1.50 to $3.25 per month. Another issue is when you call Comcast to raise an issue about somehting , they NOW change you a one time $2.99 billing change fee.

Talk about nickel and diming you!!

and you keep them because.........