Comcast Stuffs Consumerist Poll - Still loses to that ragamuffin Verizon
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Cowboy86 @ 7th Dec 04:18PM:
Comcast...
Is a joke.
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Dodge @ 7th Dec 04:19PM:
Verizon was just better at it
I am sure verizon did the same thing, except they managed to keep it under wraps.
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me2000 @ 7th Dec 04:31PM:
Re: Verizon was just better at it
Or maybe it's because Comcast is a complete ripoff.
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cypherstream @ 7th Dec 04:32PM:
At least verizon announces more HD in 2008
Verizon FIOS is the best in terms of internet speed, but TV is another story. Comcast and Verizon are about neck and neck in terms of HD channels. FiOS has MORE SD channels and better quality due to less compression. Comcast has a much nice VOD selection with HD-VOD. Then again Fios has Multi Room DVR and a nicer looking interface with widgets and games coming.
But you know what irks me is that all of these providers EXCEPT Comcast are publicly announcing their plans to expand their HD channel offerings. You had Cablevision announce they are up to 41 HD channels, Cox announcing an aggressive 1 GHz with SDV strategy for 50-100 HD channels, Charter announced they are up to 44 HD channels in Louisiana, and of course grand daddy of them all, DirecTV with all the HD content you can throw a stick at.
Comcast really needs to step up to the plate and get on the HD bandwagon. When e-mailing support, they still send canned responses from 2005 stating that HD is not a priority because not many people have HDTV's.
I would give Verizon a chance, despite their numerous billing mistakes, video stuttering and other bugs. In the end I would settle on whichever company fits my needs. Comcast almost fits my needs, but only 22 HD channels when many other providers offer double that is a farcry from being worth $200 a month.
Perhaps it's just the poor management with Comcast in my area. That's the thing with cable... each area is a hit or a miss. Comcast is awesome in the New England region. It's almost like they are 2 completely different companies. That's something they need to work on. CONSISTENT service wouldn't make them look so 'iffy'.
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Synbios @ 7th Dec 04:43PM:
No comparison between FiOS and Comcast internet
I have Comcast in Boston and it's amazing..Internet Speed is 8/768 which seems above average and TV is excellent.
But how can you go wrong with FiOS in boston at 20/20 symmetrical at 65 a month now? There's really no comparison.
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Jerm @ 7th Dec 04:47PM:
Re: At least verizon announces more HD in 2008
Well at least your Comcast 22 beats my 14 with Charter (gasp omg 19 w/ movie channels)! Louisiana Charter sounds like your New England Comcast. The rest of us get the shaft!
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DotMac @ 7th Dec 04:48PM:
It's like AMD vs Intel
They'll go back and forth as each deploys new stuff.
Meanwhile online polls are entertainment and my guess would be Verizon and their fanbois did their share of stuffing too.
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neufuse @ 7th Dec 04:51PM:
Ha!
Comcast seriously thinks they are better then fiber optic? I'd take fiber optic any day over coax even if I did get less channels on it... it's the future! it costs less in the long run for the company... sure deployment is expensive but then you need less amps you dont need fiber nodes really... no batter backups every so many poles... and fiber can run for miles in single mode before needing the signal amplified.. and no static! aka interferance from RF and cosmic things from outerspace causing interferance like we get on coax cable...
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Chuckles @ 7th Dec 05:06PM:
Am I missing it?
I dont see where the email tells comcast employees to pick comcast.
--
kustomerservice.net
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BabyBear @ 7th Dec 05:15PM:
Re: Am I missing it?
Uh oh. Damn, maybe they forgot that part and all the employees picked Verizon instead. ;) :p
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anon @ 7th Dec 05:16PM:
Comcast has nearly zero goodwill
with the public and it's not getting better anytime soon.
That's the trouble with ignoring word of mouth issues when you lose a single customer. That one tells another one and on it goes. These turd-farmers have plowed themselves a harvest of distrust with their perpetually rising rates, bs marketing, and horrid tech support that no amount of ad dollars or glitzy campaigns can undo.
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prestonlewis @ 7th Dec 05:18PM:
Of course . . .
1. Everyone would prefer to have fiber over coax and Comcast seems to be in no big hurry to upgrade their systems.
2. Comcast isn't a bad ISP or cable company as long as:
A. You don't have to call them. Different call centers give different answers/advice. Their customer rep training does not seem uniform at all.
B. You don't have to wait on them for a service call. Way too often the tech doesn't know what he's doing or they simply don't show up without calling making you ruin an entire 1/2 day. For example, I had a really mouthy, know it all Eastern European tech come and claim I needed entirely new wiring from the pedestal to the house. He left the pedestal unlocked. I plugged my coax into the pedestal and had HSI until they got around to replacing perfectly fine coax, then waited again for a tech to come out and make sure the connection was fine (it was).
So as long as you don't have to call them or wait on them, I'm fine with Comcast. AT&T in my area is worse.
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tmc8080 @ 7th Dec 07:00PM:
time to write some BIG CHECKS..
It's long past time for Comcast to write some BIG CHECKS for node upgrades. Comcast could EASILY do 30/5 the same way cablevision does today.. they are just to goddamn CHEAP and lazy-- if customers want to keep paying $50+ for 1.5 - 10megabits (on vastly overloaded nodes), why should they dump hundreds of millions of dollars to give the paying customers better?!?!? That makes terrible business sense. Start losing customers in droves throughout the FIOS footprint overlap and then it might just start to make business sense. Particularly when symmetrical FIOS starts eating up market share. Don't expect REAL competition from AT&T.. they'll only get customers from Comcast being REAL CHEAP AND LAZY with customer service and poor Cable-TV service/rate hikes--but is still going from the frying pan into the fire.
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Xizer @ 7th Dec 07:05PM:
Comcast got 27%?
How in the hell...
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Rick @ 7th Dec 07:17PM:
Interesting....
I emailed 3 people I know who work at Comcast and not a single one of them ever received this supposed email that was sent to Comcast employees urging them to vote.
Is the Consumerist making things up ?
They state they were provided this information by "several different comcast employees".
Were the "employees" really Verizon ones Posing as Comcast employees?
Or..maybe just people with a comcast.net address?
In any event..again..I'm three for three in my own random poll of people I know who have reviewed the consumerist article and who state that
THIS NEVER OCCURRED!
EDIT: BTW..I just happened to look at the poll results.
"Fios won, 784 to 277."
So..let's get this straight..According to the "consumerist"..
Comcast emailed their employees telling them to vote..
and only 277 of their employees decided to do it?
LOL!!
They have what..100,000 employees?..and "supposedly" a company email went out telling them to vote and
TWO HUNDRED Seventy seven did?
HAHAHA!
The story is bogus.
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drmorley @ 7th Dec 07:28PM:
The first liar never wins
said by Rick :
I emailed 3 people I know who work at Comcast and not a single one of them ever received this supposed email that was sent to Comcast employees urging them to vote.
I emailed four people I know who work for Comcast and all of them received this email.
THIS OCCURRED!
--
»tehblogs.com
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Rick @ 7th Dec 07:33PM:
Re: The first liar never wins
said by drmorley :said by Rick :
I emailed 3 people I know who work at Comcast and not a single one of them ever received this supposed email that was sent to Comcast employees urging them to vote.
I emailed
four people I know who work for Comcast and all of them received this email.
THIS OCCURRED!
LOL!
SURE you did.
According to this site..comcast has 90,000 employees.
»finance.yahoo.com/q/pr?s=CMCSA
Supposedly they sent out a company email (and you contacted four of them)..and 277 of them decided to vote?
LOL!!!
Maybe if the number was more like...oh..19,000 or so..it would be a BIT more believable.
The story..is BOGUS!
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deblin @ 7th Dec 07:45PM:
Re: Interesting....
You misunderstood. It was a poll setup by the consumerist for the internet at large. In fact, I just voted.
Whether or not Comcast saw it and told their employees to vote is questionable, and I highly doubt it.
So this is basically just a random internet poll, and as such should be taken with a grain of salt.
--
Hello...is there anybody in there?
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deblin @ 7th Dec 07:46PM:
Re: Comcast got 27%?
said by Xizer :
How in the hell...
LOL
--
Hello...is there anybody in there?
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Jovi @ 7th Dec 07:48PM:
So...
Do they also email employee's to attack anyone who gives Comcast a bad review/statement on internet forums too?
--
"Where's my coffee? Oh. I guess it's my turn to make it." :(
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MadMANN @ 7th Dec 07:49PM:
Re: The first liar never wins
said by drmorley :
The first liar never wins
In that case, you just called yourself a loser.
I never received an email about this. Neither did any of the 50+ that work in the area.
The consumerist and BBR should try selling things. Their loyal readers will believe anything.
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drmorley @ 7th Dec 08:06PM:
Re: The first liar never wins
Your facts and figures intrigue me Mr. Rick. Here are some of my own:
9 times out of 10 if your parents don't have children then neither will you.
According to this site Comcast only has twelve employees.
Speaking of asinine responses, I personally find it hard to believe they have that many employees. I would've pegged the number somewhere between 5 and 7...but what do I know.
--
»tehblogs.com
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anon @ 7th Dec 10:10PM:
Re: Comcast...
I agree. I really hate Comcast. Only 3 more weeks of their POS service.
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MadMANN @ 7th Dec 09:40PM:
Re: So...
said by Jovi :
Do they also email employee's to attack anyone who gives Comcast a bad review/statement on internet forums too?
Funny how it's attacking when they try to refute an untrue statement or have a different opinion. This is a discussion forum. The ones who disagree with the article may be employees who never received this "company-wide email" that the consumerist and BBR claim exists. If handing out facts is considered attacking, then so be it. That tells me the news here is can't be considered all that credible, which really shouldn't shock anyone.
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Jovi @ 7th Dec 09:48PM:
Re: So...
I rest my case. :D
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MadMANN @ 7th Dec 09:50PM:
Re: So...
Me too.
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Cabal @ 8th Dec 01:32AM:
Re: Comcast...
With over 12 million paying customers. They must be doing a pretty good job if the worst they get is less than a dozen trolls posting about them on a broadband forum.
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BosstonesOwn @ 8th Dec 02:43AM:
Re: At least verizon announces more HD in 2008
Yeah ? try living here and dealing with it , i get random outages out of no where , the dvr that after you surf 4 channels locks up for 4 minutes then shuts itself off. And all sorts of other little tricks.
The internet is almost as bad. check out my monitor and you see random spikes that kill net service. It's crzy and kills me for 5 minutes or so every couple of days.
--
"It's always funny until someone gets hurt......and then it's absolutely friggin' hysterical!"
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anon @ 8th Dec 02:48AM:
Comcast stinks & Time Warner too.
Had Comcast in Chicago for years. They did the same rigged "polls" in Chicago. They even bought a JD Power award for "friendliest Customer Service" or some crap - notice I didn't mention talented? I suffered thru 2-3 outages a month, support that knows next to nothing and rising costs because...I needed to pay more for crappy management. Switched to Speakeasy ADSL (hated paying Ameritech/SBC/AT&T whatever your name is this week?) for a phone line I didn't call on, but it was faster and more reliable than Comcrap! And Speakeasy support actually knew where their head was when they stuck they stuck-it-up-their-arse. Moved to Wisconsin 6 months ago. I've got Time-Warner cable now and it's as lousy as Comcrap. Same story, 2-3 unannounced outages a month that last 1-4 hours and not a knowledgeable support rep withing 25,040 miles (Earth's circumference). It's the same old story, screw the consumer with higher prices, provide crappy service, advertise lies every 10 seconds, and pay execs millions for crappy management. They can't find your account to reset your email password, but if you miss a payment they shut you off in 10-seconds!!!! Go figure?
Last week Time-Warner migrated my email accounts to "new and improved" servers and crushed my access. I now have two MAC addresses - funny, I only have one modem with one coax cable, but if the "hurtdesk" says I gots 2, then I must gots 2. Wasted another 2 hours on hold with crappy elevator music and Barry Manilow is NOT making it all better. Guns don't kill people, crappy cable companies do.
Comcrap, Comcrap, Com--crap!
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YukonHawk @ 8th Dec 08:31AM:
Re: Comcast stinks & Time Warner too.
For Comcast to pull this kind of crap looks really bad for them. Why is it sooooo hard for them to get their act together as a company?? The top brass has to be embarrassed. From a local level Comcast has been pretty good. The techs that have been to the house did their job well and efficiently. I hope Comcast as a whole learns from this experience.
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ropeguru @ 8th Dec 08:34AM:
Re: Comcast...
said by Cabal :
With over 12 million paying customers. They must be doing a pretty good job if the worst they get is less than a dozen trolls posting about them on a broadband forum.
Maybe, maybe not... How many of those subscribers have no other choice. How many would only have access to only dial up. Start taking those people out of the numbers and I think you will see a difference.
--
FWD#: 223611
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rody_44 @ 8th Dec 08:50AM:
Re: Comcast stinks & Time Warner too.
hmmm. there isnt a one comcast logo on the supposed letter. the letters bogus. also the poll was announced in the fios forum and i didnt see it in the comcast forum.
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madrhino @ 8th Dec 08:54AM:
Re: Of course . . .
said by prestonlewis :
2. Comcast isn't a bad ISP or cable company as long as:
A. You don't have to call them. Different call centers give different answers/advice. Their customer rep training does not seem uniform at all.
.
I've had both Comcast and FIOS and while Comcast has REALLY,REALLY bad customer service, Verizon is 100000000 times worse.
Verizon has the worst customer support of any company I have ever dealt with in my entire life.This is Gods absolute truth, no other company has even approached the incompetence level that verizon has exhibited.
Verizon has a computer system left over from the Civil War Era and different departments can't access the same information.
--
Get Verizon FIOS,The Anti-DIOS
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bicker @ 8th Dec 09:32AM:
Absolutely Ridiculous Accusation
This is an absolutely ridiculous accusation. I find it hard to believe that any reasonable person, who actually viewed the Business Update that Comcast actually posted, could believe that the Consumerist's accusation is anything other self-centered, self-serving drivel.
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anon @ 8th Dec 01:49PM:
Re: Ha!
said by neufuse :
Comcast seriously thinks they are better then fiber optic? I'd take fiber optic any day over coax even if I did get less channels on it... it's the future! it costs less in the long run for the company... sure deployment is expensive but then you need less amps you dont need fiber nodes really... no batter backups every so many poles... and fiber can run for miles in single mode before needing the signal amplified.. and no static! aka interferance from RF and cosmic things from outerspace causing interferance like we get on coax cable...
Cable companies use for fiber than the telcos. Get a clue bro. Coax is like the last 100 feet to your home. All nodes are fed via fiber back to the headends.
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urbanriot @ 8th Dec 03:01PM:
Re: Comcast...
said by Cabal :
With over 12 million paying customers. They must be doing a pretty good job if the worst they get is less than a dozen trolls posting about them on a broadband forum.
How many of those users, overall, do you think are savvy enough to post to this forum?
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anon @ 8th Dec 05:37PM:
E-Mail
I work for Comcast and I got no e-mail with the above mentioned advice.
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anon @ 9th Dec 10:04AM:
it's true
I am a Comcast employee, and I did receive an email asking me to support Comcast in this vote.
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anon @ 9th Dec 02:35PM:
Re: Ha!
said by getaclue :said by neufuse :
Comcast seriously thinks they are better then fiber optic? I'd take fiber optic any day over coax even if I did get less channels on it... it's the future! it costs less in the long run for the company... sure deployment is expensive but then you need less amps you dont need fiber nodes really... no batter backups every so many poles... and fiber can run for miles in single mode before needing the signal amplified.. and no static! aka interferance from RF and cosmic things from outerspace causing interferance like we get on coax cable...
Cable companies use for fiber than the telcos. Get a clue bro. Coax is like the last 100 feet to your home. All nodes are fed via fiber back to the headends.
Not true. The Optical node can be in the neighborhood but most of the time it is many kilometres from the tap or MDU. Sorry you are wrong on this. I work for the company in Virginia and can attest to that.
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anon @ 9th Dec 04:43PM:
Yes
I work at comcast, got the link to a pdf newsletter that had a link to the website to vote. Funny thing, voting was over by the time I got the email!
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moonpuppy @ 10th Dec 08:06AM:
Re: Interesting....
said by Rick :
EDIT: BTW..I just happened to look at the poll results.
"Fios won, 784 to 277."
So..let's get this straight..According to the "consumerist"..
Comcast emailed their employees telling them to vote..
and only 277 of their employees decided to do it?
LOL!!
They have what..100,000 employees?..and "supposedly" a company email went out telling them to vote and
TWO HUNDRED Seventy seven did?
HAHAHA!
The story is bogus.
I can think of a few reason why they didn't vote.
- They were told NOT to vote from their workstations. Since the Consumerist is a web site, I am sure they would have a way to track where people are voting from. A block of pro-Comcast votes coming from Comcast work IPs would be suspicious. They were probably told to do it from home.
- Many people leave the office at the office. If they email was sent out to vote from your home system, many people either ignored it or simply forgot.
- No incentive. Why vote if I don't directly benefit from it?
There was a case where a radar detector company (I think it was the first company that made the Escort and Passport) asked people to write in to a magazine (the days before emails) and say whether they think radar detectors should be legal or illegal. An insurance company offered money for each letter sent in and a bonus IF the letter was published. Someone sent in the official memo to the magazine and many people saw the anti-radar detector letters as bogus whether or not they actually were.
Companies play the PR game 24/7. If Comcast were to come out and say they were trying to "stuff the ballot box", do you think people would understand? About all they could do is put some call center worker out in front of the camera saying if people didn;t order Comcast, they would lose their job. Sort of like National Lampoon's "Buy this magazine or we'll shoot this dog."
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anon @ 15th Dec 06:51PM:
Re: Comcast...
I'm no troll. 384k uploa speeds for a 8-12MPBS internet is beyond RIDICULOUS. Either upgrade us, CC, or you WILL see a mass customer exodus when symmetrical service is available in our service areas!
(A ComCast internet user for 5+ years) :huh: :mad:
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anon @ 15th Dec 07:56PM:
Re: Interesting....
Don't be a noodge. Why would :uhh: one company stuff the box for another.. this is beyond reason!
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anon @ 20th Dec 11:23AM:
Comcast Stuffing
I have worked for the company for 5 years, first as a sales associate taking inbound sales calls and now as a retail account executive in the Metro-Boston region; I did not receive the email everyone is talking about.
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UncleDirtNap @ 15th Jan 09:02AM:
Re: No comparison between FiOS and Comcast internet
"Internet Speed is 8/768 which seems above average and TV is excellent"
Seems above average until you actually get it, use it and test it. I had the same level of service here in Pittsburgh up until about two years ago, or I should say I PAID for the same level of service. I never ever saw the line test above 4.5/500k and I ran a thousand tests and every night about 9:30 when I'd want to play a little Counter Strike or BF2 the line speed would drop to 500/56K or crap out completely.
My FIOS line tests above the speed I'm paying for every time I try and never slows down... It's a wondrous thing to behold getting what you pay for.
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UncleDirtNap @ 15th Jan 09:08AM:
Re: It's like AMD vs Intel
"They'll go back and forth as each deploys new stuff."
The only ping pong happening is in the minds of those who don't understand the technology at all. Verizon's technology already so far out ahead of Comcast and all other cable providers that even after Comcast rolls out their next generation of equipment they won't catch up. When Verizon rolls out GPON cable internet is finished.
It is the proverbial tortoise and hare race underway and cable is a three legged tortoise at this point.
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UncleDirtNap @ 15th Jan 09:17AM:
Re: Of course . . .
As a former Comcast now Verizon customer I agree Verizon's customer service is the worst I've ever encountered. Here's the problem though. In the two years I've had FIOS Internet and the few months I've have FIOS TV I've only needed to call them twice with a problem.
With Comcast I was averaging two calls a month at least, sometimes two calls a week when I was trying to get constant Internet outages and slow downs resolved (never did).
On balance I'd rather have the vastly superior services, lower cost and have to deal with crappy customer service once in a blue moon than the shit products Comcast offers, the price gouging and being on a first name basis with the tech support due the the frequency of calls.
Had em both and it's not even a close call: Comcast has no possibility of ever getting me back as a customer, not ever.
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UncleDirtNap @ 15th Jan 09:33AM:
Re: Comcast stinks & Time Warner too.
"Why is it sooooo hard for them to get their act together as a company??"
It's quite simply actually; TW and Comcast are companies with no experience with competition. Up until recently they relied on bribed local politicians to ensure that they were the only ones permitted to operate in an area and bribed congressmen to ensure that they could own stakes in the companies that produce the content they resell with sleazy deals they make amongst themselves and never face scrutiny for business practices that would land any other company owners in prison.
The cable companies have never run real business before that's why they have no clue how to do it, that's why they're pouring ungodly amounts of cash into Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid and other Democrat congressional leaders campaigns war chest so they'll keep doing things like investigating FCC chairman Martin and keep the wolves of competition at bay as long as they can.
It's all they know how to do.
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UncleDirtNap @ 15th Jan 09:40AM:
Re: time to write some BIG CHECKS..
"It's long past time for Comcast to write some BIG CHECKS for node upgrades. Comcast could EASILY do 30/5 the same way cablevision does today"
Well no that's the underlying problem with cable no matter what they upgrade to... they can't really do it. They can offer the theoretical speed and charge for it, but because it's a shared connection as more people sign up for it the actual performance will immediately drop. FIOS on the other can do 100/100 with not much more than a flip of a switch and each and every customer will actually get what they're paying for.
Nobody with a cable modem will ever see 30/5 service, only bills for it.
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