[thelist] 56k users for 4 more years

Jacob Stetser lists at icongarden.com
Sun Jul 30 09:20:55 CDT 2000


Blaming the woes of the cable companies on the consumer is a terrible 
fallacy; most of these companies STILL enjoy virtual (or real) 
monopolies on large populations.

Life as a government sponsored monopoly tends to make companies 
complacent - look at the Baby Bells and the cable companies and their 
often blatant disregard for the consumer. Look at the recently 
deregulated gas providers in many states - the monopoly provider 
still 'provides' gas to a whole bunch of front operations, so now you 
pay both the front man and the original gas provider.

The picture you paint is one of a company that needs to learn how to 
compete in a changing marketplace or die trying. I think most of 
these cable providers NEED to learn a little humility.

(CASE IN POINT: I spent over a year trying to get cable internet from 
MediaOne. I was told _every month_ "We'll have it in your area in a 
month," or "Well, the trucks are laying cable down near there so it 
can't be long." I'd call back in a month and they'd either say "We 
don't give out estimates" or "It will be there in a month." This 
happened again and again despite the fact that their little 
availability tester (mediaoneexpress.net, I think) said I did have 
availability _every time_ I checked it. I told them to change it, 
they said, oh, it doesn't mean _every house in town_, so I  told them 
to add something to reflect that. As far as I knew when I stopped 
asking, they hadn't.

BellSouth is _exactly_ the same way about ADSL. They couldn't give a 
flying f*** about their customers; I managed to talk my way up to the 
Vice President of Marketing about THEIR faulty advertising about 
availability (not to mention bait and switch: the map showed I could 
get ADSL. When I filled out the pre-qualifier, I got 'no you can't, 
but how about a nice 56k dialup line?). He promised me they'd fix the 
map by adding a disclaimer. Never did.

Since I've moved from that area, I'm with Comcast, which at least 
here is a smaller player than MediaOne, who owns most of the Atlanta 
market. Comcast had me set up with cable modem and cable the day I 
moved in, has friendly customer support and reliable access. Can you 
guess which company I hope makes it in the long run?)
>
>Many of the cable providers are also public companies that
>deliver phone services, and must live in a marketplace that
>keeps driving down their revenue per transaction.  How do they
>cope?  Cost-cutting.  Things are so competitive that they can't
>take a breath.  If they make a mistake or say they're putting x
>percent of budget to do something that will only pay off
>long-term, their share prices go down, which reduces the value
>of whatever portion of their shares they hold themselves, which
>may be in use as collateral for loans to do the long-term
>projects.  They must do whatever they can to prevent their share
>prices from dropping.  And we (the populace of the USA, not me
>personally, though) asked for this, and we're the one who drive
>down share prices when a quarter's revenue does not "meet
>analysts expectations" even though revenue may be up over the
>same quarter in the previous year.  Humphh.
>

<tip type="Cable modems">
Latency and other network factors change when you're using a cable 
modem. There are great shareware applications such as OT Advanced 
Tuner (don't remember the URL) that allow you to optimize your 
computer's network speed for the faster connection.

Now if only I can find something that will simulate a dialup!
</tip>
-- 
--
icongarden.com
Making good ideas grow || http://icongarden.com/






More information about the thelist mailing list