Charter Communications to acquire Cox Communications

[kphoger]

Well, this should end up being interesting for me, considering I work for a company that does contract work for both Charter and Cox.

[JREwing78]

I have clients in the former Time Warner service area under Charter; their techs continue to get tripped up because they think they're going into a Charter service area and bring the wrong equipment with them. What should've been a 1 hour install took all day. I suspect similar issues will happen with those formerly with Cox.

[LilianaUwU]

Clearly the current government isn't interested in enforcing the antitrust laws.

[Scott5114]

Clearly the current government isn't interested in enforcing the antitrust laws.

Most of the markets that these two were in only had one or the other; they weren't competing. So the only cable Internet I can get in Las Vegas will be called Spectrum instead of Cox. Ho hum.

[SEWIGuy]

Right. Most cable companies aren't competing with one another AND are competing with other entertainment and ISP providers. So there really aren't antitrust issues involved.

[mgk920]

The younger crowd has clearly moved on.  "Hey grampa, what was cable/satellite TV like?"

Mike

[SEWIGuy]

The younger crowd has clearly moved on.  "Hey grampa, what was cable/satellite TV like?"

My kids think I'm old fashioned with my YTTV subscription. 😂😂😂

[SP Cook]

Cable companies, all of them, are evil.  Why?  History.

Where did cable come from.  From rural America.  CATV.  Charging rural people for something that city people got for free and which can, and should, be free to all people.  These companies were started with the basic premise "what is the absolute least service we can provide, and still get paid".   That was 70 years ago, and a lot has changed, but the basic credo of cable companies, do as little as possible, remains.  Very different mindset from most any other industry, including those that drove them out of actual video service, DBS and later streaming, and those that will, eventually, defeat them as ISPs. 

Cable is evil.

[Scott5114]

Charging rural people for something that city people got for free and which can, and should, be free to all people.

Stop being a rural person then. It's simple economics that it's more expensive to deliver pretty much any kind of service to a rural area (low population spread out over a large area) than an urban one (large population in a smaller area).

You have the freedom to choose a rural lifestyle, but complaining about the foreseeable consequences is just whining.

[LilianaUwU]

Charging rural people for something that city people got for free and which can, and should, be free to all people.

Go live in a city then. I did so in 2012, and I never looked back.

[SEWIGuy]

Cable companies, all of them, are evil.  Why?  History.

Where did cable come from.  From rural America.  CATV.  Charging rural people for something that city people got for free and which can, and should, be free to all people.  These companies were started with the basic premise "what is the absolute least service we can provide, and still get paid".  That was 70 years ago, and a lot has changed, but the basic credo of cable companies, do as little as possible, remains.  Very different mindset from most any other industry, including those that drove them out of actual video service, DBS and later streaming, and those that will, eventually, defeat them as ISPs. 

Cable is evil.

What an absurd take. Evil? They provide a fee-based service for locations who could not receive broadcast TV signals.  If that's your definition of evil...

What exactly is your solution to provide broadcast television to rural locations?

[SEWIGuy]

Stop being a rural person then. It's simple economics that it's more expensive to deliver pretty much any kind of service to a rural area (low population spread out over a large area) than an urban one (large population in a smaller area).

You have the freedom to choose a rural lifestyle, but complaining about the foreseeable consequences is just whining.

Go live in a city then. I did so in 2012, and I never looked back.

Yep and yep.

[kphoger]

I have clients in the former Time Warner service area under Charter; their techs continue to get tripped up because they think they're going into a Charter service area and bring the wrong equipment with them. What should've been a 1 hour install took all day. I suspect similar issues will happen with those formerly with Cox.

My first work with Time Warner was in Kansas City and Lincoln (NE), before Charter acquired them.  We still have an office in Lincoln, although we shut down the KC operation about half a year ago.  A number of years ago, we also launched an office for Time Warner in Dallas, but it only lasted a couple of years.  Still today, we sometimes send techs out from the Lincoln office into smaller-town Charter markets that used to be something other than TWC.  Not only is the equipment different, but so are the work order codes.

I'm still kind of biting my nails about what this will mean for my job.  It's not all we do, but cable has been our company's bread and butter—especially Cox.

From my own limited perspective, Charter is a dinosaur.  Some of the ways they do business seem not just quaint but antiquated.  Hopefully Cox's influence will change that for the better, rather than Charter's influence changing it for the worse.

[bandit957]

The government needs to bring an antitrust suit.

[SEWIGuy]

The government needs to bring an antitrust suit.

Why? How is competitiveness hampered by this?

[Scott5114]

I'm still kind of biting my nails about what this will mean for my job.  It's not all we do, but cable has been our company's bread and butter—especially Cox.

Here's hoping that there being more Cox now means you'll have more jobs, rather than less.

[thenetwork]

Charging rural people for something that city people got for free and which can, and should, be free to all people.

Stop being a rural person then. It's simple economics that it's more expensive to deliver pretty much any kind of service to a rural area (low population spread out over a large area) than an urban one (large population in a smaller area).

You have the freedom to choose a rural lifestyle, but complaining about the foreseeable consequences is just whining.

Out west, if you live out in the middle of nowhere, many of these big-city stations are still available to most rural towns via translator stations over rabbit ears.

Most of them will try to place the antennas for these stations where they can cover the most area.  But if you live in a real rural area bunkered by hills and valleys that block the signal or if you can't get ALL the regional stations,then you will probably have to resort to cable or satellite.

[SP Cook]

What exactly is your solution to provide broadcast television to rural locations?

At the time, simple.  Build more broadcast stations and repeaters, such that OTA television is available to everyone.  There is NO technical reason that there are any dead spots in OTA television at all.  And, before you play the cost card, no, OTA television stations were a license to print money and made more than enough to cover their whole market, which, I would remind you, the airwaves belong to the public and are leased to broadcasters to serve the public interest as a public trustee.  (FCC code)

Today?  Also simple. If you have cable, or any alternative (DBS, linear streaming like FUBO, YouTube TV, etc.) you pay a "retransmission consent" fee to the networks and to the local stations, which remain mega profitable.  The Supreme Court (Fortnightly case) said this was wrong, but Big Media got Congress to change the law.  Repeal this, local TV=free. 

Any station uncomfortable with this can sign the license on the back and send it to me.  This is how TV worked for the first 40 year.  Local TV=free.

Cable is evil. It will always do the least possible.  Which is why it will lose the ISP wars just as it lost the linear video wars,first to "death from above" the mega-superior DBS, and then to streaming.

[bandit957]

What they really need to do is bring back analog TV.

[Scott5114]

Capitalism is evil. It will always do the least possible.

FTFY

[SEWIGuy]

What exactly is your solution to provide broadcast television to rural locations?

At the time, simple.  Build more broadcast stations and repeaters, such that OTA television is available to everyone.  There is NO technical reason that there are any dead spots in OTA television at all.  And, before you play the cost card, no, OTA television stations were a license to print money and made more than enough to cover their whole market, which, I would remind you, the airwaves belong to the public and are leased to broadcasters to serve the public interest as a public trustee.  (FCC code)

Today?  Also simple. If you have cable, or any alternative (DBS, linear streaming like FUBO, YouTube TV, etc.) you pay a "retransmission consent" fee to the networks and to the local stations, which remain mega profitable.  The Supreme Court (Fortnightly case) said this was wrong, but Big Media got Congress to change the law.  Repeal this, local TV=free.

I don't think any of this is reasonable honestly. And as Scott said, if you want to live in the country, there are trade offs.

[SEWIGuy]

Cable is evil.

And you really sound like a whack-job when you say this.

[bandit957]

I don't think any of this is reasonable honestly. And as Scott said, if you want to live in the country, there are trade offs.

This is why they need to bring back analog TV: because analog had better signals, which didn't break up like digital.

[SEWIGuy]

I don't think any of this is reasonable honestly. And as Scott said, if you want to live in the country, there are trade offs.

This is why they need to bring back analog TV: because analog had better signals, which didn't break up like digital.

And the rotary phone too.

[Scott5114]

I don't think any of this is reasonable honestly. And as Scott said, if you want to live in the country, there are trade offs.

This is why they need to bring back analog TV: because analog had better signals, which didn't break up like digital.

And the rotary phone too.

From now on I'm gonna need everyone to send their posts, along with a self-addressed stamped envelope, to my P.O. Box.