Charter Spectrum Celebrates Megamerger One-Year Anniversary With Blanket Price Hikes For 'Mispriced' Customers
from the synergies! dept
You may recall that when Charter proposed spending $79 billion to acquire Time Warner Cable and Bright House Networks last year, the usual promises of job creation, lower prices, better broadband, and improved customer service came along for the ride. The problem: none of those things have materialized under the new company (Spectrum). In fact, like so many telecom mergers, many customers of the nation's now second-largest cable provider say Charter's prices have gotten higher and the company's customer service (already ranked among the worst in any industry) has somehow managed to get worse.
With this week being the one-year anniversary of this mega-deal, customers in acquired territories say the company is engaged in yet another round of blanket rate hikes. In Lexington, Kentucky, for example, Spectrum customers say they're being forced to pay $20-$40 more (plus assorted fees to swap out their cable boxes) for effectively the same service. And when they call in to complain, they're discovering that part of the new Spectrum experience involves a company that's no longer willing to haggle on promotions (because it doesn't have to):
"Fitzgerald tried to haggle — Time Warner usually cut you some slack on price increases in order to keep your business, he said — but the representative stopped him. This is Spectrum’s deal. Take it or leave it.
“It was bull crap,” Fitzgerald said. “They don’t give us any notice, they just spring it on us in the middle of the month. And then they tell us we’re getting an 'upgrade.' This isn’t an upgrade, it’s the same channels we already had!"
Spectrum's latest rate hikes are part of a sweep of customer accounts to identify customers that company executives claim are "mispriced" (read: aren't paying enough). Like Comcast, Charter benefits from a dwindling amount of broadband competition with the telcos, who have simply refused to upgrade their aging DSL networks at any real scale. As a result, customers looking for ISPs that can actually provide the base FCC definition of 25 Mbps usually have only one option to go to: cable. And when they arrive, they're usually forced to bundle TV service they may or may not even want in order to get the best price.
As a result, Charter added 350,000 broadband subscribers last quarter. But even then, Charter managed to lose 47,000 pay TV subscribers last quarter, the majority of them former Time Warner Cable customers that have used the price hikes as an opportunity to cut the cable cord. Customers clearly aren't happy with the way the merger is going, but Charter CEO Tom Rutledge is positively giddy at the "value proposition" he's presenting these customers:
"It’s a difficult thing to model,” said Rutledge, whose 2016 pay package was $98.5 million. “But we’re coming at it both ways, both from creating a value proposition in the pricing and packaging we have, and doing those smart things that you can do with an existing customer base that’s been mispriced to move them in the right direction."
While the former Obama administration approved what is clearly an awful deal, they did affix a few conditions to the merger. Namely that Charter has to adhere to the FCC's net neutrality rules (even if thrown out by the FCC), needs to expand broadband to 2 million additional locations, and can't impose usage caps and overage fees for a period of seven years from the date of the deal's signing. But the current FCC has been busy trying to roll back many of those conditions, making an already awful merger even worse.
Good news though: if you really adore higher rates, bogus promises, and historically-abysmal customer service, there appears to be many more telecom mergers like this one headed your direction.
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Filed Under: broadband, competition, mergers, price hike
Companies: charter
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aw yisss
Some like to whisper sweet nothings in your ear while you get fucked and others just bitch slap you and go to pound town...
Some people adore the ones that whisper sweet nothings in your ear before hand and other at least appreciate the direct fuck over with a different set of lies, but in the end... nothing has changed.
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Better news
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Political Pull
Free up the market, let the cable companies raise their rates (not only do you not have a right to a good or service, they don't have a right to force you through government exclusivity laws), you can then start your own company to compete with them. Since you'd now be working on an equal political field (no special favors for anyone), they would have to compete properly (on economic grounds).
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Re: Political Pull
So for your suggestion, are we going to rip up all the fiber and confiscate all the money and subscriber lists from the existing providers, or travel back in time to before the fiber was put in in the first place?
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Re: Re: Political Pull
What I'm suggesting is we remove our politician's ability to make special deals with companies. This way no one gets special favors or monopolies. This way there's unfettered competition. As for existing infrastructure, it remains private property in the hands of the current owners. No time travel needed since laws and policies can be changed for the better and what is an ideal situation.
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Re: Re: Re: Political Pull
I'm sorry, you've used correct english words in a nonsense arrangement. Norman, co-ordinate! If you want that to happen, you WILL need time travel - at least 3.7 years worth.
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Re: Re: Re: Political Pull
Except that there are already monopolies. Removing regulations from the entrenched monopolies will not result in increased competition. It will result in deregulated entrenched monopolies.
Your proposal is this:
What's step 2?
Okay. So you are proposing that there will be "competition" between a company that already owns fiber and is able to provide service, and a company that does not currently own fiber and is not currently able to provide service. What is your proposal for making company #2 competitive with company #1?
Soooo then you're not advocating for deregulation, you're advocating for different regulations? Because I can get behind that, but it's a completely different thing than what you said.
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Re:
And yes they have resolved the high ping issues and it should be faster than most all comcast connections.
I actually have the ability to get basic internet access for less than a cup of coffee from Starbucks, yes with a small one off installation cost but no equipment rentals just plain old internet access at about 16mb download and 1mb upload, enough to view two or three netflix streams at once.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Political Pull
follow what green turtle said, but the lines become public property "regulated" by government. Businesses can still build and maintain lines, but cannot control who access them.
The last mile is owned by the property owner which will them be regulated by local municipalities easement rules and demarc's moved to the box on the street.
Since the WWW is a state and national boundary in principal and reality Federal oversight is required, and should contain rules preventing local municipalities from entering into contracts of any kind with ISP's other than subsidy for attracting businesses with. No exclusive contracts, competition rigging, special favors or conflicts of interest.
But, the problem with government is that it likes to break rules all of the time while people just keep asking them to do it more.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Political Pull
That idea for the last mile makes sense. In fact, it was the law until the early 00's until regulatory capture got a firm hold of the FCC. Then they were deregulated and we've ended up where we are now.
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Re: Better news
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You may want to ask Mike what is the normal outcome of a free market system. Generally its a monopoly.
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Re:
http://vashiva.com/shiva-ayyadurais-speech-at-cape-cod-republican-club-annual-breakfast-meet ing/#utm _source=SM&utm_medium=Event&utm_campaign=01On26May2017
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Re: Re: Better news
[geostationary orbit - precisely 35,786 km] where round-trip
transmission latencies are about a half second.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geostationary_orbit#Communications
SpaceX plans a massive constellation of small satellites at only
1,110-1,325 kilometers; less than a thirtieth the distance
thus far less latency. It should be competitive with fiber
over long distances because lightspeed through fiber is about
33% lower than through air and vacuum. The SpaceX system
effectively leapfrogs those long fiber links, with a greater
advantage for greater distances.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SpaceX_satellite_constellation
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Re:
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Re: Re:
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Re: Re: Re: Better news
A constellation of satellites is not a means of delivering significantly increased capacity, but rather a means of delivering a reliable service to places with restricted view of the sky, like deep valleys, and the flanks of mountains, or even places with lots of skyscrapers.
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Re: Re: Re: Political Pull
So you want your utility poles to look like this? https://imgur.com/a/bvbXl
You "slash all regulation!" types never fail to surprise me with your rampant ignorance.
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Basic cable, internet, and phone service (who the feth needs land-line phone service in the age of mobile internet?) costs $95/mo and installation is free.
Basic cable and internet (alone) cost $95/mo *and* there's a $35 installation fee.
Still more transparent than any cellphone contract I've ever had.
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connecting with many at once, like GPS. That, plus the much
shorter range from ground to sky, gets you a major boost in
bandwidth with no need for heavy power consumption.
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Re:
A satellite constellation is a mans of providing service into remote areas with reticules horizons, including those in high northern and southern latitudes.
,
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Cellphone systems are a good example, with lots of frequencies
and rapid frequency-hopping all being used at once, and that's
90s technology. Musk is planning to do something like that;
but newer, with much more capacity and more uplinks at once.
Certainly, it will get better coverage, but don't forget he
plans to compete with cable in every way. Go ask him. ;]
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so already you're connecting well over a dozen at once on two
widely separate high speed bands with well proven technology.]
Second wave is 7,518 satellites in the new V-band, which is
multi-gigabit per link and more direct than horizon-to-horizon.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/V_band
Even with the first wave alone early adopters will be getting better
than 25 megabits on average. Add the V-band and streaming
4K should be easy for millions of customers at once.
I think it's safe to say Elon Musk has thought this through
before committing his money. ;]
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Re:
Also, remember there is another part to this system, connecting the satellites to the Internet, by providing ground stations that they can see, or reach by relaying through one other satellite. Those ground stations are going to need a high capacity fiber connection to the Internet backbone. Two problems will arise, some ground stations will be required in remote areas, and the system will allow some citizens of some countries to totally bypass the countries firewall.
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Re:
What's the other side of the story, Mr. Coward?
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guessing now, based on what you know of older systems. ;]
Such a web can easily outpace fiber by skipping it for the
most part, only downlinking to the most powerful peering points.
They don't need to be nearby at all, and in fact, the farther
the better due to the much higher speed of light in that web.
As for cities, such systems are already in development [5G, E-band]
and it appears the satellite systems (SpaceX and a couple of others)
will be building enough capacity to rival even those, with Musk's
two-layer three-band approach still leading in overall capacity.
The thing is designed to serve billions. Everywhere. All at once.
As for bypassing firewalls I'd call that a nice feature, wouldn't you? ;D
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