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There’s been a discussion lately about the viability of Click.  It seems the Cable TV business is losing money – in part through the rising costs of programming content, and partially because of the way the city cooks their books, writing off capital construction costs of the network.

The wholesale internet business – where Click sells wholesale bandwidth to the three local ISP’s (Rainier Connect, Advanced Stream and Net-Venture) is making a whopping 60% profit!

Click’s idea is that the internet sales should subsidize the cable TV operation.   To me, that’s stupid.

Continue reading “Click! Networks should get out of the cable TV business”

C-Net’s Maggie Reardon wrote another PR-release, fluff piece for Comcast on the issue of the Comcast-Netflix peering/extortion issue.

In this supposed, “learned” explanatory piece, Ms. Reardon details all the thousand reasons Comcast embodies all that is goodness and right and how NetFlix is a horrible bandwidth hog, free-lunch expectant monster!  Yeah, right. 

Here’s the piece:  C-Net article: Comcast vs. NetFlix

It’s obvious who’s paying Maggie’s salary.  So I called her on it.

Yes Maggie, it’s obvious you are indeed a shill for the Telco’s.

A few years back, Ed Whitacre, who at the time was the CEO of AT&T, came up with the bright idea of creating a new revenue stream for his company.

He wanted to charge Google and others like them for connecting to his end users.  “They’re not gonna ride our pipes for free” was his battle cry.  There was a great deal of negative publicity and a huge outcry.  And so Whitacre’s plan went down in flames.

But it wasn’t forgotten. Continue reading “Another Love Letter to Marguerite Reardon…”

C-Net’s Marguerite Reardon’s at it again, with a new piece on the goodness of the FCC’s proposed rules on “Open Internet.”   http://www.cnet.com/news/fccs-position-on-net-neutrality-hasnt-changed/

She spends the whole article mouthing soothing platitudes from the talking points Comcast prepared for her.

I can’t believe anyone is so stupid as to believe these rules won’t terribly harm consumers.  So I can only guess that Maggie’s on Comcast’s payroll.  I felt strongly enough about it to leave the comment below on the C-Net website:

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This article, coming on the tails of Ms. Reardon’s magnificent piece rationalizing the unbearable goodness of the TWC – Comcast merger has me utterly convinced that Ms. Reardon’s 100% on Comcast’s payroll.

She regurgitates Comcast’s and Wheeler’s talking points, 1,2, 3 right down the line, without any measure of objectivity.

But of course, Ms. Reardon.  The FCC rules will change nothing.  We can rest easy. Continue reading “FCC’s Net Neutrality Rules Would Break the Internet”

Marguerite Reardon of C-Net wrote an opinion piece suggesting the Comcast-TWC merger would be a good thing.

http://news.cnet.com/8301-1023_3-57620361-93/why-a-comcast-merger-could-be-good-for-twc-customers/

I wrote the following response:

Maggie Reardon has obviously sold her soul to Comcast.   Her opinion piece is an embarrassment. It looks like most of it was copied verbatim from a Comcast press release.

I’ve never had TWC, but I have had Comcast and they have what can only be termed as horrible customer service. If TWC is worse, so be it, but to consider going to Comcast as an upgrade is simply asinine.

As far as Comcast being an innovator: if I had to name one single entity that’s holding back progress it’d be Comcast. The ostensible public face of Comcast is as phony as a three dollar bill. The truth is they are fighting progress tooth and nail, pouring truly obscene amounts of money into lobbying and PR, all bent to protect their failing business model – they are after all, predominantly a cable TV business. And the Internet is changing the world, and is in the middle of making cable TV obsolete.

Just like the automobile changed the world, making horses and livery stables obsolete, the Internet is changing the way the world gets its content.  Continue reading “Comcast – Time Warner Cable Merger Is Bad News For Consumers”

After years of operating in blissful ignorance of the markets they allegedly compete in, Click! has come to the conclusion that they’re in trouble and have to do something, and do it quick!

The fact that they haven’t upgraded their system to DOCSIS 3.0 – like Comcast did three years ago isn’t to blame. The fact that people are ditching traditional cable TV in droves – “cutting the cord” – in favor of streaming media over the internet (like Netflix and Hulu) isn’t to blame.

Nope.

According to a presentation at the Tacoma Utilities Board meeting last week, and based on a consultant’s study that is over two years old, Click! Networks has finally come to the startling conclusion that their cable TV customer base has stagnated and revenues are down — mainly due to Comcast offering bundled services. But wait, there’s more – they have a remedy:

“Click needs to offer retail ISP services directly to customers, which means competing side by side with the three existing ISP’s. The wholesale model where customers have to buy data somewhere other than Click is the primary reason for the total stagnation of sales that has occurred since Comcast added the bundle…”

What is the connection here? “The wholesale model where customers have to buy data somewhere other than Click is the primary reason for the total stagnation of sales that has occurred since Comcast added the bundle…”

I challenge Click to prove that.

The whole thing is asinine. The wholesale internet-service business model doesn’t have anything at all to do with stagnation of TV sales. Has anyone at Click! even heard of Netflix? Do they read the news? Have they heard of TV antennas? Continue reading “Click! Network Moves to Put Independant ISP’s Out of Business”