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~ Bulgaria has faster Internet speeds than America?
~ Americans pay 38 times as much for Internet data as the Japanese?
~ America ranks 29th in the world for Internet speed?
~ Americans pay four times as much as the French for an Internet triple-play package—phone, cable TV and Internet—at an average of $160 per month versus $38 per month.
Has The United States of America turned into a has-been country or what?
Dang, and here I am always told that the free market will make everything cheaper and better for consumers and that, therefore, there ought to be no laws protecting consumers from companies who will merciless pursue the bottom line.
Alas, neither you nor I NEED internet. We don't NEED a phone. We don't NEED cable. Our nation survived just fine without any of it and since there are many who argue that we should be utterly isolationist, I suppose we don't have to worry about keeping up with the Pierre's and Rastilav's of the world.
Of the three, I only have internet - I pay more than I would like, but a whole lot less that I would pay if I also decided to get cable and phone service... Screw these companies - they are not getting my money until they offer a product I want for a price I deem fair.
My brother currently lives in Germany (in a small city). The local provider offers internet speeds that are up to 80 times faster than what I can get here in the US (in a much larger city). They do so for a much more reasonable price than the local providers in my neck of the woods.
Make my cable so that I can pay for a predetermined number of channels - 20, 30, 70 - and let ME choose the channels. Until then, No thanks. I don't need Telemundo, Univision, or some rabid "preacher" proselytizing 24 hours a day.
In England, a 100Mb DSL connection with Virgin Media costs £39.40 ($63.81) a month while a 105Mb cable connection with Comcast costs $99.95 (£61.71). So we pay almost double the price to enjoy broadband service that is shared with other users while UK customers pay almost half the price to have DSL (DSL is superior to cable because the bandwidth is not shared with others on the street, meaning less peak network slowdowns compared to cable). Canada is even worse than the US, they have the worst deals on the planet, besides Australia. US and Canada have the worst internet due to a lack of market competition and consolidation of services, while Australia also has a lack of competition and their geographic isolation plays a huge role as well.
Dang, and here I am always told that the free market will make everything cheaper and better for consumers and that, therefore, there ought to be no laws protecting consumers from companies who will merciless pursue the bottom line.
Alas, neither you nor I NEED internet. We don't NEED a phone. We don't NEED cable. Our nation survived just fine without any of it and since there are many who argue that we should be utterly isolationist, I suppose we don't have to worry about keeping up with the Pierre's and Rastilav's of the world.
Of the three, I only have internet - I pay more than I would like, but a whole lot less that I would pay if I also decided to get cable and phone service... Screw these companies - they are not getting my money until they offer a product I want for a price I deem fair.
My brother currently lives in Germany (in a small city), the local provider offers internet speeds that are up to 80 times faster than what I can get here (in a much larger city). They do so for a much more reasonable price than the local providers in my neck of the woods.
Make my cable so that I can pay for a predetermined number of channels - 20, 30, 70 - and let ME choose the channels. Until then, No thanks. I don't need Telemundo, Univision, or some rabid "preacher" proselytizing 24 hours a day.
The rest of your post makes 100% perfect sense, the first paragraph is just non-sense. The FCC is ruled by the big telecoms to make rules that prevent several different companies from competing in one market. Almost all the time in a media market, there are only 2 choices for land-based broadband: one cable company and one DSL company. The UK has a deregulated market when it comes to providing services, and you can choose from at least a dozen companies to supply your broadband on one street alone
Dang, and here I am always told that the free market will make everything cheaper and better for consumers and that, therefore, there ought to be no laws protecting consumers from companies who will merciless pursue the bottom line.
Alas, neither you nor I NEED internet. We don't NEED a phone. We don't NEED cable. Our nation survived just fine without any of it and since there are many who argue that we should be utterly isolationist, I suppose we don't have to worry about keeping up with the Pierre's and Rastilav's of the world.
Of the three, I only have internet - I pay more than I would like, but a whole lot less that I would pay if I also decided to get cable and phone service... Screw these companies - they are not getting my money until they offer a product I want for a price I deem fair.
My brother currently lives in Germany (in a small city). The local provider offers internet speeds that are up to 80 times faster than what I can get here in the US (in a much larger city). They do so for a much more reasonable price than the local providers in my neck of the woods.
Make my cable so that I can pay for a predetermined number of channels - 20, 30, 70 - and let ME choose the channels. Until then, No thanks. I don't need Telemundo, Univision, or some rabid "preacher" proselytizing 24 hours a day.
YES! I agree..... I do NOT want any of the bat**** crazy channels either
Give me the History channel, ESPN, TNT, AMC, Animal Planet and that is it..... I refuse to buy it until they do offer that type of pick and choose your own
You are also correct on the "we don't need" part too These are WANTS, not needs. The only Pierre I want to keep up with is the one from War and Peace
~ Bulgaria has faster Internet speeds than America?
~ Americans pay 38 times as much for Internet data as the Japanese?
~ America ranks 29th in the world for Internet speed?
~ Americans pay four times as much as the French for an Internet triple-play package—phone, cable TV and Internet—at an average of $160 per month versus $38 per month.
Has The United States of America turned into a has-been country or what?
The problem is lack of competition. You cannot choose between Time Warner, Comcast, COX, RCN etc cable provider in your area, because only one of them can service any given area. The reason is simple: there is only one cable line going into each house, and it is owned by the cable company which services your area. They WILL NOT allow other cable companies use that line, and nor will other cable companies run a line to your house just to serve you. The only option is Satellite TV such as DirecTV. So, these companies are basically ran like monopolies.
Currently there is only one cable comany (WOW - Wide Open West) who are bold enough to build new cable networks in areas which is already ran by an existing company, such as Comcast. However, doing this is very expensive for WOW, and as a result they operate in very small franchises.
Last edited by Finn_Jarber; 09-25-2012 at 07:12 PM..
The rest of your post makes 100% perfect sense, the first paragraph is just non-sense. The FCC is ruled by the big telecoms to make rules that prevent several different companies from competing in one market. Almost all the time in a media market, there are only 2 choices for land-based broadband: one cable company and one DSL company. The UK has a deregulated market when it comes to providing services, and you can choose from at least a dozen companies to supply your broadband on one street alone
You know, I actually remember when some of these services were monopolies and subsequently "deregulated." For a while, I could choose from a variety of providers - and then it all stopped and I am stuck with ONE company - and no others.
I have no doubt that there are quite a few bucks being passed around to keep things favorable for some and unfavorable for others...
Alas, like someone stated above, the cables are owned by somebody and that somebody sure as heck is not going to share them - no matter what.
If you look at the bill for your phones a good portion of the price is taxes...everything from federal to local. Unfortunatley, many of the people that still have landlines are elderly, and a good percentage of those have medical alert systems that will not work on internet phones or magic jacks. Sad.
The cost of providing new or maintaining old hard line systems is prohibitive, so many areas will have to rely on satellite internet, phones and TV in the future, but it probably won't be long b4 they find a way to tax them as well.
Meh, hasn't been a problem for me for awhile now. We ditched our cable awhile back and haven't given it a second thought. I use a simple antenna to get OTA broadcasts (even better HD quality than cable) which covers all the big networks like ABC, NBC, Fox, CBS and the local PBS affiliates. Between Hulu, Netflix, torrents and other online content...aided with the increased internet speeds we put part of the cost savings into...I never have a shortage of viewing options.
YES! I agree..... I do NOT want any of the bat**** crazy channels either
Give me the History channel, ESPN, TNT, AMC, Animal Planet and that is it..... I refuse to buy it until they do offer that type of pick and choose your own
You are also correct on the "we don't need" part too These are WANTS, not needs. The only Pierre I want to keep up with is the one from War and Peace
Your ESPN content can be accessed with ESPN3.com (available to most service providers now) and streamed right from the internet. TNT also makes most of their content available online. Not sure about the others, but I know most AMC content is on Netflix now, along with a substantial amount of History channel programming.
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These are WANTS, not needs. The only Pierre I want to keep up with is the one from War and Peace 
