[Rant] North American Communication Companies Are Scum

Shakey

Shakey

A few years ago a city decided to deploy their own fiber network since the local telco decided it was too expensive to offer decent DSL speeds. The telco promptly held the project up in the courts while they scrambled to build out their own fiber network. So much for it costing too much to offer better service.
 
Dave

Dave

Staff member
I have Cox Communications and even though they are one of the big guns I have never had a complaint about them. A couple months ago I called them about our services and without asking they gave me new stuff that saved me $80 a month.

I get digital cable, phone, & high speed internet from them. Yes, my bill is about $200 a month, but when you consider what I get it's actually really good. And I never have issues with my service and pull down 60+ Mb/sec.
 
Bowielee

Bowielee

I do have to admit that my service is far better than I expected it to be seeing as it's through Charter, one of the notoriously bad cable companies. But it sure as hell beats the pants off my old DSL service, which cost 3 times as much with 1/3rd or less the speed.
 
WasabiPoptart

WasabiPoptart

Time-Warner is the only cable service in the islands. There is Hawaii Telcom, but we can only get their tv service. They don't run their internet to our area for some reason. The other option is satellite. When we first moved here, TWC/Oceanic said we could only use their modem, which you were charged a fee for, and gave us some run around answer as to why. Except where we lived in San Diego Co. was also a TWC area and we had the option to use our own modem there. Suddenly this year TWC/Oceanic has said it's ok to bring your own modem. Total rip off.
 
AshburnerX

AshburnerX

Ironically, the monopoly laws may not apply for net and cable providers... because they have no competition in their markets (since they already carved up everything into little fiefdoms), they aren't preventing competition.
 
Espy

Espy

Frank said:
Canadian telecoms are awful. They collude to a degree that is beyond blatantly criminal.
Click to expand...
I doubt that US telecoms are any better. They may be better at hiding it but it's clear they have carved up territories to avoid competition and anyone who thinks they aren't price fixing must have a hole in their head. "Hey, it just so happens we ALL have the same bundles at the same prices! Who knew?"
 
Bubble181

Bubble181

I'm fairly sure we can just change that to "All Communication Companies are Scum".

There are two big players in the field in Belgium - one is the old state run monopoly company on phone lines and wires, the other is...the old state run monopoly on TV lines and cables. Both have been...mostly....privatized, and these are the two main "competitors" in the market. They also own all fiberoptics in the country, and because we have so many cables and pipes in the ground, there's a complete moratorium on laying any new lines -s o any competition they have, have to lease their lines from them. Shockingly, leasing these lines costs enough that any other smaller company has to charge more than them to be profitable. It's awesome.

(of course, our rates on some things are still better than those in the US because of those darn meddling EU bureaucrats :p)
 
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