Hello, I am moving my wife and child into a new house. I’ve begun asking all the typical questions that come with being in a new location, “Who’s the water and sewer service with?” “can I build a fence without an act of congress through my HOA” etc. Along with that is : “Who is my cable provider?” but after finding the answer to this question, I couldn’t help but keep asking questions like: “Why is this my only choice?”
My friend is president of his HOA and tells me subdivisions can limit the number of servicers to get kickbacks from the cable providers.
In my case though the HOA tells me that they"don’t limit who residents get service from" in a tone that says" Time Warner? you got it!, AT&T? OK!.. whatever you decide sir I mean if that were the case EVERY provider would be in every subdvision that didn’t limit the number of cable companies there, right?
So my father lives in the same zip code and has AT&T . I want what he has, but Comcast is only available sooo “Why?” Is there anything I can do to bring a new provider into my area (mind you same zip code, newer area). Can I dunno “request” AT&T to move into our area for service, how does this work?
This question is confusing to me. I’ve never lived anywhere where there was more than one cable provider available. Satellite, sure. But my experience has always been that whoever owns the cable to your house puts the signals in them.
Probably 90%+ of the country only has 1 or 0 cable providers: they seldom compete.
What you need to look at is the services you want to buy. The basic 3 are:
TV, movies, news sports
Telephone service
Internet Service
Options for the first (TV, etc) are the cable service, the landline telephone service–but only if it has fiber lines, Dish, Directv, over the air stations, or via the internet (Netflix…)
Options for the second (phone) are the cable service, the landline telephone service, the cell phone services.
Options for the third (internet) are the cable service, the landline telephone service and the cell phone services. Here usually cable has the best service. The landline service is usually slow (unless it uses fiber). The cell phone services usually have very limited download limits.
Yep my parents have Directv because cable isn’t even offered out where they are. Comcast is the only one who offers cable around here, though my sister has Uverse about 2 miles from me. Still Uverse isn’t cable, is it?
It used to be that the cable monopoly, like the phone monopoly, was awarded to a single company to service that area.
After all, the alternative would be a dozen sets of poles and wires. hence, it was a natural monopoly. Some areas may have pole sharing rules or even wire-sharing, but generally it was an awarded franchise monopoly (i.e. license to print money and ignore customer complaints.)
Note that congress / FCC mae it illegal for HOAs and condo associations to ban private satellite dishes for individual owners.
I have service using telephone copper, I can get up to 3 HD channels at a time (counting PVRing and live views). Much better than satellite.
ATT may not offer service in your area because they haven’t yet upgraded their phone lines to fiber, or because you live too far away from the switching point. In my neighborhood they took years to get the upgrade to our street from the one next to us. Finally they got down to just seven houses on one side of the street – including mine.
There are areas right in my own county that no cable company will serve because they aren’t accessible. One provider estimated the cost at $30,000 per house.
Well, Technically percy, no it isn’t connected via coax it’s a much more efficient form of DSL so it’s coming in through the phone box to your house. But it’s still using a cable to get service to your house so it depends on your definition.
Ok, that uncovers some facts for me, but “awarded” by who?
That’s very interesting considering before my friend became president of his HOA they made him take his dish down, I’d like to know a direct reference to this law enacted. FYI I’m not being a douche, I’m genuinely interested.
Typically the local municipality, at least back in the 1980s, which is when cable TV became widespread in the U.S.
When I moved to Chicago in 1989, the area was a patchwork of different cable companies, each operating in a number of suburbs. In any particular suburb, you had one choice for cable TV; when I moved to Lombard, for example, it was Continental Cable.
Over the course of the past 24 years, through a number of mergers and acquisitions, the number of different cable TV providers in the region shrunk. Now, Comcast pretty much controls the region (though I think that there may still be a second cable operator in the city of Chicago). You can also get UVerse from AT&T, but as noted above, it’s technically not cable.
Hi and congratulations Kunilou, you hit the mark the closest in the spirit of the OP. I ask questions, lot’s of them and when I have such an invaluable resource as SD I don’t see why I shouldn’t find out what other ppl know about cable companies and why they are some places and not others, how are they in the position to be there in the first place? And what inhibits the same spirit of competitiveness that would put say, a new McDonald’s right across the street from a Burger King?
I guess this will start getting very political very quickly.
Well, as I noted above, a big factor traditionally has been that the cable companies would have to be licensed to operate in a community…and, by and large, most communities viewed cable TV as a utility, much like the phone company or the electrical utility. And, if the cable companies were going to go to the time and expense to wire a community for cable – which requires stringing cable so that it can reach most, if not all, locations in the community, as well as connecting that cable to their “head end” so that they can supply programming – the companies were going to want exclusive rights, at least for a period of time
That infrastructure is likely a major factor which inhibits “the same spirit of competitiveness” in cable TV. If a competitor comes into your town to offer cable, they’re going to have to go through that same time and expense that the first cable company did (since the current cable company isn’t going to let the competition piggyback on their system). AT&T can offer UVerse in many places because they’re using their already-existing infrastructure (i.e., DSL) to deliver similar services to the cable companies.
I moved from MD to Ohio 10 years ago. During my whole life in MD, Comcast was the only game in town, and there was no cable in many rural areas until at least the early 90s. Going way back, there were other companies in my area but I think they were bought by Comcast. So there was never any competition. Some of my unacknowledged paternal relatives were cable executives, but I can’t remember the name. Since Verizon was always the default phone carrier (though Verizon wasn’t named that until recently), I think they also have some TV services where I used to live.
Over the past 10 years, in Ohio, I have used 3 different services and there have always been at least 2 choices available. Started off with Insight, switched to WOW, switched to AT&T in 2008, switched back to Insight last year, and Insight became Time Warner. AT&T had the best services but also the highest prices after coming in low for the first couple years.
So, I don’t think it’s very uncommon to have only 1 provider or the choice of 2-3 or more.
There generally isn’t competition because cable is not like Mc Donald’s or Burger King-it’s more like the electric company or the gas company.
The franchises are typically granted by the city or the county, pay a fee to the city or county and may be regulated by the same state agency that regulates other utilities, The city/county may be divided into different areas, ( not usually by zip codes, which don’t necessarily conform to city or county boundaries) each of which is served by a different cable company. The franchises don’t have to be exclusive- Comcast could obtain a franchise where Time Warner is already providing services and build its own network, but they generally won’t because Time Warner as the existing company has an advantage. Many people wouldn’t bother to switch, and Time Warner can temporarily lower prices to lower the number who switch which makes it risky to for Comcast to build its own network, as they may not get enough customers to be profitable.
I thought this had something to due with federal deregulation. A LONG time ago, back before most people primarily used cell phones, MANY competing landline phone services sprang up. I used to sell phone services. I owned some websites that acted as “impartial” comparison engines that would compare all available local services and then sell them via affiliate link. I think I started back around 1999. I personally used a non-Verizon ( which is what my local area was after C&P and Bell Atlantic) service that I purchased from myself back around 2002. I also knew some entrepreneurs, including a local pro baseball player, who started “phone companies” around that time. There were at least 5 choices in my rural-ish area. Some pretty big names got in on the act as well- I recall MCI The Neighborhood, there was one called Talk America. This was after Local and Long Distance were completely separate and long distance companies started selling local, local selling LD, other companies selling bundled flat rate services, and so on.
IIRC, this happened, in part, because the local phone companies were required to lease their infrastructure to competitors.
This has also happened with electric, gas, and other utilities. I can go on a website now, put in my address and receive competitive quotes on the cost per KwH. I get mailers and door to door salesmen trying to switch my gas company.
I guess I just assumed the same happened with TV/Internet, which like you said is treated as a utility. If it’s treated as a utility, then I believe the monopoly is prohibited and they must share/lease the infrastructure in some way.
Every cable company I’ve had in the last 10 years has used some of the outside cabling that was laid by the company before. Even AT&T Uverse, which used the phone jacks and had something else going on with phone lines, mostly used the existing lines. I think they just ran something else from their box up to the box on my street. I don’t know how it works, but either everyone shares the wiring or each company only has to run it from a shared neighborhood infrastructure.
I’m not entirely certain. For one thing, the cable industry is overseen by a different federal agency (the FCC) than, for example, electrical utilities.
In reading through this FCC web page, it sounds like the 1992 Cable Act made some changes in how local municipalities can license cable carriers to operate in their areas. It says:
I bolded the part which says that governing bodies can’t give out exclusive licenses any more, but that’s only part of the puzzle.
It’s not clear to me if the FCC requires existing cable providers to allow other providers to piggyback on their systems (the way that, for example, many electrical utilities are now forced to do). I’m not an electrical engineer, but I’d suspect that how a new electric utility “provides” their service is very different from having competitive cable companies operating on the same cables as one another. If they are, indeed, forced by regulation to do so, I’d like to see a cite.
Except for one thing- you may be able to choose your electric or gas or water supplier but that’s a state or local requirement that they share the infrastructure.The cable industry is also regulated by the FCC - the FCC doesn’t require that the infrastructure be shared and it may be that states/localities can’t impose such a requirement. Or even that it’s not possible- because I for one can’t see how the same cable can carry Time Warner service to my house and Comcast to my next door neighbor’s. The electric service is coming from the same place, no matter who your supplier is. Different cable companies don’t even carry the same stations.
I just found this Wired article from a few months ago, which seems to shed a little light on the subject. It’s technically about broadband internet access, but that goes hand-in-hand with cable TV these days.
The article notes that lack of choice with broadband (and lack of broadband service entirely, in some regions) has come down to local governments and the utility companies which control access to the utility poles and underground utility conduits. These entities control the ability of a new ISP (which would, undoubtedly, also potentially be a new cable supplier) to build a network in an area, through regulatory hoops, or high rental fees to use the right-of-way.
All of this suggests to me that a new cable / broadband supplier in a town would, indeed, have to string their own cable (even if they might be able to re-use the cable that currently goes from the utility pole to your house).
I mean if that were the case EVERY provider would be in every subdvision that didn’t limit the number of cable companies there, right?