[bluecountry]

I read Charter filed for Chapter 11 (Halluhall...halluhhall).
One of the reasons I moved to Tolland and not Willington was because Charter served Willington and parts of Northeast CT.

Besides the fact Charter has horrible customer service...for some reason they are one of the few cable companies in CT that does not offer YES.
This mean you can not get Yankee games...and since CT is considered Yankee TV broadcast territory by MLB....you can not get the games even with MLB extra innings.

I'd like to know if this Chapter 11 means in the next few months towns served by charter will get a new provider, like Comcast.

I wonder if they did...would they gain YES...and keep or lose the other stations they get.
Charter gives them Boston and Providence local news...I just get Hartford and 1 Springfield station.

[JayCT]

I believe Chapter 11 means that they are just reorganizing their debt and not going out of business. This should not effect service significantly. If Charter does close, I am sure one of the other cable companies would quickly buy their franchise areas. Jay

[KH02]

Charter is NO better then COX, whom i've had TONs of problems with.
They all STINK in my opinion.
they have monopolies and it's unfair, they need to compete with one another, only then will we get REAL customer service.

[Stratford, Ct. Resident]

Originally Posted by KH02

Charter is NO better then COX, whom i've had TONs of problems with.
They all STINK in my opinion.
they have monopolies and it's unfair, they need to compete with one another, only then will we get REAL customer service.

I don't think it would be quite that simple. The cable companies are pretty entrenched in their mediocrity. It would just be a choice of "pick your poison", IMHO.

[toddb]

Originally Posted by Stratford, Ct. Resident

I don't think it would be quite that simple. The cable companies are pretty entrenched in their mediocrity. It would just be a choice of "pick your poison", IMHO.

Yep, and unfortunately it looks like the telco's that are moving in on their territory are adopting the same level of crapola... $30+ for 3mbps internet is ridiculous for "the most advanced country in the planet"... especially when countries like south korea are looking for 1gb+ within 3 year to EVERY HOME, or that in europe they are paying the equivalent of $15 for 30-50 mbps.

And don't get me started on the ridiculousness of the new caps they are putting on. You only 50-60gb of traffic / month before you're cut off. That's because people are moving towards websites for TV, which cuts into the cable companies profits. So now they are cannibalizing 1 area to help provide profits for the outmoded other areas. That forces people to keep their $50-100 / month TV services because thats a huge profit margin for the cable co's.

So, basically, charter filing chapter 11 will have no effect on the market at all. Either they'll clean up, not pay a bunch of creditors and come back financially better off, or some other identical crappy cable co will come in and buy their exclusive rights to whatever towns that charter initially bought off.

Until someone comes in with a better solution that is still profitable, or the government removes the exclusive rights-of-way rules that restrict a township to 1 choice, then we're S.O.L. Or, they create regional gov't-sponsored and -regulated monopolies with forced SLA's and regular technological improvements, like they did with most electric and water utilities. Internet should be no different - it's turned into a basic need that should be universally available.