Boss Hogg Lives! Okay, here’s the scenario: somewhere in a town probably deep down in the rural South, the politicians decide unceremoniously to dump part of the city’s utility system. The line given to the townsfolk, is that the utility system is losing money. This issue of losses is hotly contested, but the town fathers are able to stall off an independent audit to determine if the utility is really losing money. The only daily newspaper in town is owned by basically the same group of people that run the town – they’re all good ol’ boys – so it…
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The whole problem with Click! Network is that their management are idiots. They never have had any idea how to compete in selling broadband access. Click’s always controlled the wholesale prices that the ISP’s use to set their prices. They kept the wholesale prices higher than they should have been because they were trying to milk the bandwidth for all they could – trying to wring out every little last penny. And they always followed Comcast’s pricing rather than trying something innovative – like offering discounted service for low income, handicapped and seniors. And they always lagged behind in speeds,…
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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.
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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…
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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: ++++++++ This article, coming on the tails of Ms. Reardon’s magnificent piece rationalizing the unbearable goodness of the TWC – Comcast merger…
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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:…
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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…
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And yet another open letter to Click! Network management: One of your people called me a few days ago to talk about DOCSIS 3.0 I’m sorry, I don’t recall his name. He was under the strong impression Comcast just rolled out DOCSIS 3.0 here in Tacoma in December 2009. WRONG. As I told the guy, Comcast rolled out DOCSIS 3.0 here in the Seattle Tacoma area slightly over a year ago – mid-December 2008. Check out this thread on dslreports.com and please note the posts’ date: DOCSIS 3.0 available in Tacoma Yes, that’s right: Comcast rolled out DOCSIS 3.0 in…
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Comcast started offering DOCSIS 3.0 connections here in the Seattle-Tacoma area over a year ago. Where is DOCSIS 3.0 for Click customers? An open letter to Click! Network Management Sirs: Comcast started offering DOCSIS 3.0 connections here in the Seattle-Tacoma area over a year ago. At the time Comcast premiered it’s product here, I called Click! customer service and was assured you were “working” on our DOCSIS 3.0 upgrade and that it would happen sometime relatively soon. Well it’s a year later, and we still have no upgrade. Comcast customers get twice (or more) the bandwidth we do. Put this…
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I was looking at file sizes of Blu-Ray movies today. The average size of 320 current titles was 27 GB – for just the movie alone. You add in all the extras and what not that usually come with a DVD (deleted scenes, extra content, etc) and the size jumps up to an average of 35 GB per movie. Looking at Comcast’s proposed threshold of 250 GB before they bill you extra, that translates into viewing just nine Blu-Ray movies before you hit your limit – not to say any other internet activities. Just watch nine movies and you’ve blown…