The Cable Guys Have Become the Internet Guys

CommanderFrank

CommanderFrank

Cat Can't Scratch It
Joined
May 9, 2000
Messages
75,399
Internet 1, Cable 0, or to be more precise, Internet 49,915,000, Cable 49,910,000. For the very first time, the Internet subscriptions have overtaken the TV subscriptions from the major cable providers. It’s a narrow margin for sure, but one that is guaranteed to widen its margin in the future.

Still, this is directionally important. The future for the pay TV guys isn’t selling you pay TV — it’s selling you access to data pipes, and pay TV will be one of the things you use those pipes for.
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Shifts occur ... same thing happened with wired carriers ... AT&T and Verizon were both big wired carriers ... now they are the dominant wireless carriers
 
Kicking and screaming these dinosaurs will be dragged into the modern age.
 
we have a local shitty isp in wv, that will not provide internet access unless you have at least basic cable.

they block all normal porn and wikipedia references to vaginas, but are fine with leaving horse porn, beastiality, rape porn, snuff porn, etc

their name begins with Christian. . .
 
Good. Can't wait for the day that Cable goes down in flames. Its outdated and being clutched in hand by Hollywood desperately trying to hold on profitable model of years long past.

Improve the infrastructure of the Internet and let Cable burn.
 
It was inevitable I suppose.

The state of how they regulate it in the near future is what worries me a bit.
 
Starting to intrude more and more as it becomes commonplace and upping the regulation.
 
Ocean said:
we have a local shitty isp in wv, that will not provide internet access unless you have at least basic cable.

they block all normal porn and wikipedia references to vaginas, but are fine with leaving horse porn, beastiality, rape porn, snuff porn, etc

their name begins with Christian. . .
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I understand the first sentence, but you lost me after that...:confused:
 
Cable companies should be glad that they do more than TV/television service: Internet, phone, alarms, etc.
 
Godmachine said:
Good. Can't wait for the day that Cable goes down in flames. Its outdated and being clutched in hand by Hollywood desperately trying to hold on profitable model of years long past.

Improve the infrastructure of the Internet and let Cable burn.
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Yet cable is the second best transfer median behind fiber. Now once fiber to the home is common, then we can talk. Until then, you reaaaaaly don't want the cable companies to go down in flames. At that point your left with Cell and DSL, ewww...
 
Ocean said:
we have a local shitty isp in wv, that will not provide internet access unless you have at least basic cable.

they block all normal porn and wikipedia references to vaginas, but are fine with leaving horse porn, beastiality, rape porn, snuff porn, etc

their name begins with Christian. . .
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That's illegal. Was made into law a few years ago.
 
Ocean said:
Source of law and when it was enacted? Are we talking about forced bundling or forced porn blocking?
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I thought I read somewhere a while back that forced bundling is illegal. I'm having a hard time navigating through results because of all cable and isp adds...
 
BravO))) said:
I thought I read somewhere a while back that forced bundling is illegal.
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Yeah, but they can still charge you more for unbundled service than bundled service. In my case, it's about $20 more to have Internet without cable, even accounting for the set-top box rental.

I mean, yeah, they'll sell it to you. But you're going to pay more for not bundling.

Once you learn marketing speak, you understand that "you get a discount for bundling," is another way of saying "we charge you extra if you don't bundle." In other words, their prices for a single service are such a bad deal that you'd have to hate cable on principle enough to pay that premium.
 
athenian200 said:
Once you learn marketing speak, you understand that "you get a discount for bundling," is another way of saying "we charge you extra if you don't bundle." In other words, their prices for a single service are such a bad deal that you'd have to hate cable on principle enough to pay that premium.
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Yup. Every service provider ever.
 
Ocean said:
Source of law and when it was enacted? Are we talking about forced bundling or forced porn blocking?
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It would have to be forced bundling since an internet service provider is a private company and and can technically block almost anything (as long as it doesn't violate anti-trust laws ... a competing streaming service, like Netflix, for example)

Although they can't force you to bundle, they can legally have different prices for the standalone services (as the others have noted) that encourage you to use the bundle ... they still need to offer the cable, internet, and phone services as independent options though
 
MongGrel said:
Starting to intrude more and more as it becomes commonplace and upping the regulation.
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Phone is heavily regulated and Television, how well do people like those situations? Regulation allowing monopolies in Cable is how we got into this situation. The only increase in government intrusion that might work. Is if the hard lines were taken over like a utility and multiple ISPs who deliver the content have access to those lines and compete without government interference, not sure if the infrastructure could support that model.
 
jpm100 said:
Phone is heavily regulated and Television, how well do people like those situations? Regulation allowing monopolies in Cable is how we got into this situation. The only increase in government intrusion that might work. Is if the hard lines were taken over like a utility and multiple ISPs who deliver the content have access to those lines and compete without government interference, not sure if the infrastructure could support that model.
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"Regulation created the monopoly" love it. This is the new trendy thing I see going around on rightwing forums. They're pretty good at taking any piece of sound logic and completely reversing it to project the exact opposite of the truth. Regardless, regulation prevented this problem from being worse than it would have without regulation.
 
Ocean said:
we have a local shitty isp in wv, that will not provide internet access unless you have at least basic cable.

they block all normal porn and wikipedia references to vaginas, but are fine with leaving horse porn, beastiality, rape porn, snuff porn, etc

their name begins with Christian. . .
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Why do you know all that stuff isn't blocked? :eek:
 
I'm sad to see Subscription Cable TV go away. Not because I really care about Subscription Cable TV, but because I know that as all the company executives shit bricks over declining TV revenue, they are going to do everything they can to compensate by extracting that out of the Internet side. This is where we get monthly data caps from (especially small caps with cellphone style overage charges), as well as other shitty side effects like ISPs pushing you to use their equipment (w/ rental fee), so they can broadcast WiFi from your home that others can pay to connect to (without telling you, or caring if it conflicts with your existing wireless network).

Only positive side is that maybe live sports will become more available via Internet... eventually. Right now they are doing everything they can to keep live sports as TV content only, and in many cases this is all that is stopping people from "cutting the cord" so to speak. They know that, and aren't going to do anything that might actually give those TV subscribers an option... but as numbers decline anyway, you have to figure that at some point they won't really have a choice anymore.
 
McFry said:
"Regulation created the monopoly" love it. This is the new trendy thing I see going around on rightwing forums. They're pretty good at taking any piece of sound logic and completely reversing it to project the exact opposite of the truth. Regardless, regulation prevented this problem from being worse than it would have without regulation.
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To be fair, he said "regulations allowing monopolies" not creating them. What I get from that is that regulations are broken if they continue to allow monopolies. The problem is the definition of monopoly, Ma Bell was considered a monopoly which is why in the 80s it was broken up into multiple companies, however whether or not collusion existed between the new companies to keep monopoly like conditions is up for debate. Today we have AT&T which has merged with many smaller Bells and is becoming similar to it's parent. The fact that Comcast is is my ONLY choice in cable doesn't necessarily make it a monopoly, however it's the collusion that makes them all act like monopolies so no one can be let in (which is by nature illegal it's just a matter of getting caught).

The problem if anything is our freedom of speech... or rather what the Supreme Court defined speech as. Too much lobbying, too much money passing hands by the very rich (and I don't mean individuals) and corporations realized that all you need is one senior member of congress who doesn't know the difference between internet and interstate and they can stop any regulation from regulating.
 
McFry said:
"Regulation created the monopoly" love it. This is the new trendy thing I see going around on rightwing forums. They're pretty good at taking any piece of sound logic and completely reversing it to project the exact opposite of the truth. Regardless, regulation prevented this problem from being worse than it would have without regulation.
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Dream on comrade.

It was manicipalities at first then states governments that gave out monopolies to companies to lay a single set of wires. Whoever owns the wires gets to control access, content and prices.

Can't make it simpler for you. Just because it doesn't match your capitalism is root of all every child-like look at the world, I can't help you.
 
jpm100 said:
Dream on comrade.

It was manicipalities at first then states governments that gave out monopolies to companies to lay a single set of wires. Whoever owns the wires gets to control access, content and prices.

Can't make it simpler for you. Just because it doesn't match your capitalism is root of all every child-like look at the world, I can't help you.
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Regulation created small local monopolies due to not wanting to have 10 different cable companies running wires everywhere.

Capitalism created the "mega-monopolies" through consolidation buyouts.

The mega-monopolies are much worse as they have the money to infect the political process, and therefore laws to tilt the game in their favor over consumers or would-be competitors. The mega-monopolies stifle price competition and innovation. The #1 lobbyist (by dollars spent) in the country is Northrup Grumman. #2 is Comcast. Comcast contributions dwarf oil&gas. Think about that for a minute. Little-town Cable company never had near that power.
 
GotNoRice said:
I'm sad to see Subscription Cable TV go away. Not because I really care about Subscription Cable TV, but because I know that as all the company executives shit bricks over declining TV revenue, they are going to do everything they can to compensate by extracting that out of the Internet side.
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Broadcast TV is going to die. In order the satisfy the needs of a future on-demand entertainment culture ISP's will require more resources, so prices are certainly going to increase. This is only fair though, because if we're all paying $100+ for an internet only level of service we will probably all be on around gigabit speeds to provide it.
 
jpm100 said:
Dream on comrade.

It was manicipalities at first then states governments that gave out monopolies to companies to lay a single set of wires. Whoever owns the wires gets to control access, content and prices.

Can't make it simpler for you. Just because it doesn't match your capitalism is root of all every child-like look at the world, I can't help you.
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Yeah, right. Comcast, the #1 most hated company in the USA would be even better if they could just do whatever they want. Man, and people say we're drinking kool-aid?
 
McFry said:
Yeah, right. Comcast, the #1 most hated company in the USA would be even better if they could just do whatever they want.
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They are doing whatever they want, and they're in the process of trying to buy the rest of the congress as well in order to continue doing what they want.
 
canna said:
Regulation created small local monopolies due to not wanting to have 10 different cable companies running wires everywhere.

Capitalism created the "mega-monopolies" through consolidation buyouts.

The mega-monopolies are much worse as they have the money to infect the political process, and therefore laws to tilt the game in their favor over consumers or would-be competitors. The mega-monopolies stifle price competition and innovation. The #1 lobbyist (by dollars spent) in the country is Northrup Grumman. #2 is Comcast. Comcast contributions dwarf oil&gas. Think about that for a minute. Little-town Cable company never had near that power.
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How do you think they got the cash to make a mega monopoly and buy government compliance? The cash they were able to get from the local monopolies.
 
nightfly said:
They are doing whatever they want, and they're in the process of trying to buy the rest of the congress as well in order to continue doing what they want.
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Are they buying or Obama and Congress selling?
 
McFry said:
Yeah, right. Comcast, the #1 most hated company in the USA would be even better if they could just do whatever they want. Man, and people say we're drinking kool-aid?
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If they had a competitor, do you think they could charge what they charge or anything close?
 
Government isn't needed to form a monopoly, it can help or it can hinder, depending on the gov't. Look at Standard Oil, etc, you can't say there was too many regulations back then causing the monopoly.
 
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