Seems all issues that are posted here are about politics or War so I thought I'd post something different.

http://www.desmoinesregister.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=2006610260408


Most of you probably dont know who Mediacom is but I find it kind unprofessional for Sinclair to threaten to pull the channels and while at teh same time advertising to get people to get into Direct Tv while they can. If they like Direct TV so much why dont they just be exclusive.

The funny thing about this article is that Mediacom wont agree to pay a increased price to keep there channels up and going, (Sinclair wants 150 dollars per subscriber),to me I see this as mediacom trying to do something that will help consumers in the end but most consumers are sadly only going to see it as mediacom's fault and drop it for direct TV.

any views would be interesting to read :p

The cable industry has become the Ma Bell of the 1990's-2000's. It is beyond me how they are able to monopolize the industry in the manner they have; I always thought that the federal laws governing interstate commerce would prohibit larger companies from forcing out the smaller ones to avoid monopolies such as Comcast, Mediacom, etc.

The large companies buy up the small ones to avoid having to compete, and then if they deem an area not worth expanding into, that area simply is forced to go without, or try to lure satellite in as an alternative.

Just another example of big business being able to make large enough campaign donations to get their way at the end of the day.

I'm afraid we're about to get screwed pretty hard. It depends how you look at it, but with a single fiber connection I have 500+ channels, on demand, internet and telephone in my house. This only invites companies like Comcast and Verizon to get bigger and bigger while making it harder and harder for the small companies to compete.

Stay tuned for the 500 lb gorilla (the U.S. Government) to come into the fray swing, and breaking up all the cable companies.
Remember when they did that to the telephone service? Wasn't it a month's worth of sheer pandemonium?
The only way I could see this not happening, is if the satellite companies are somehow viewed as legitimate competetion.
And now a word from our sponsors...

I'm a mediacom subscriber.

They hit our neighborhood with a deal on cable, internet, and phone service for 89.00 / month.

At that time I was paying over 80 bucks a month for DSL (love how the phone companies sent out DSL here, then a few months later throtled down the connection and called it DSL lite then sold you upgrades to DSL or "Ultra"). I was also coughing up another 60.00 / month for the dish programming package.

I now have a connection to the net that is much much faster than my DSL was, don't have to pay a seperate bill (and keep up a second contract) for my channels.

IMO, the phone companies are still finding ways to stick it to the consumer.

I missed this topic till today. I have been on the phone twice with Comcast this evening trying to understand how my bill has gone up $20 from last month when nothing changed except that they bought out my older provider and made a switch 3 months ago. It seems as part of the switch they gave existing customers a 3 month special on the $20 fee but didn't tell any of us. Dicks, I'm totally pissed. To get a straight answer out of customer support is like listening to a politician spin. It's not that I can't afford the $20 it's the dirty sleezy way in which they went about it. My rates went up after they bought my local cable company in January. And then again in June one month before the official switch. Sick.

I hate that I don't have more than one choice for cable nor internet. I don't have the option for DSL where I live b/c Verizon won't spend the cash to put in the switch or whatever is necessary so cable is my only choice and I am seriously considering only using comcast for cable internet and switching to satelite for my TV. Fuck them.

Possibly off topic, but I read about people not having much choice for lack of DSL and cable access...

http://b2b.vzw.com/broadband/index.html

plus

http://www.kyocera-wireless.com/kr1-router/

solved my broadband needs where I could not get DSL nor cable. Unfortunately, Verizon's wireless broadband areas are limited (but expanding faster than their DSL) as well.

Finally something to expose the assraping content providers pull on cable providers. think about this a sec. the broadcaster is upset because mediacom doesnt want to pay 150$ per subscriber for the right give the broadcaster a greater footprint with wich they will use to sell more/higher priced advertising?

Talk about milking both ends, thats a business model to follow.
People bitch about the price of thier cable bills going up and up but what you fail to realize is that is driven mostly by those that provide the content to the MSO's.
One of the worst offender for the hiway robbery is ESPN, Comcast pays a pretty high price for the "rights" to carry ESPN every year. ESPN also piggy backs all of it splinter feeds(like espn news) into its deals. a company like Comcast is forced to give in to the high price and outrageous demands of ESPN because they have become ingrained into our society. can you imagine the outrage that would follow if Comcast decided to stop getting ganked and pulled ESPN from it's lineup?
For you internet junkies dont forget that the infrastructure you use isnt all Comcasts(or whoever) at some point Comcast has to jack into the backbone that is owned and controlled by other corporations. once again paying thru the nose to connect thier local neighborhood network to the WWW.
And thats just two reason's your bills keep going up, you want more just let me know.