I Pit My Cable Company (RCN)

The BBQ Pit
1

Fuck you, RCN.

First of all, your little abstracts that are supposed to explain what the shows are about suck. At most, they have one sentence; at worst, nothing. Furthermore, half the time I look at the channel indicator it says “info not available.” There appears to be no rhyme or reason as to why these features work sometimes and not others. I’ll just assume, since I’ve been given no explantion otherwise, that it is due to your incompetence.

Secondly, the volume on the channels is completely fucked up. Before I had digital cable, every channel was listenable at about 20-25 volume. However, now some channels must be in the 30s, others in the 50s, and the HBO channels must be in the 80s and 90s to hear. On HBO you could get better volume with two cans and some string. Can’t you make it so that every channel broadcasts at the same volume? You could do this before I had digital cable, why not now with even more advanced technology? Are you just incompetent or do you just not care?

Finally, the cable box crashes at least 5 times a day - and sometimes as many as 10 times. Sometimes the box just freezes so I can’t change the channel or execute any other commands. Other times the box just reboots completely out of the blue, cutting off the signal and sending me to the analog signal - which happens to be telemundo. Can I tell you how much I love to be watching HBO on volume 84 and then all of a sudden I have some spanish program at an amazingly loud volume? There’s nothing like watching TV and having your channel switch to a spanish station at 4 times the volume.

I pay more money now for digital cables, but the service is garbage. So fuck you for either being amazingly inept or putting out a service before you were ready. No wonder you’re in bankruptcy proceedings you incompetent fucks.

2

Didn’t they just file for bankruptcy? That may be a clue.

3

RCN must be monitoring my posts because my cable box has rebooted 4 times in the last 15 minutes. Tinfoil hat on!

4

I have Comcast for my cable, and the problem there is not a lack of detail. Instead, if you get information on a movie you’ve never heard of before and are interested in you might get:
“Scaled Crusader: A re-hash of the 1950 movie Godzilla versus Superman. A dry plot and minimal action fill this unsatisfying remake of the original.”

WHAT THE HECK?? If even YOU think it sucks, why are you showing it? Why am I paying 40 bucks a month for content even you agree is terrible? Sheesh. At least have the balls to lie to me…

5

Kind of. They filed for reorgainzation under Chapter 11 after securing debt financing from Deutsche Bank. Why the Germans wanna own a crappy cable company that’s very likely to go under is beyond me. What I don’t understand is why Comcast hasn’t snapped up RCN already, like they have with many other cable operators recently. RCN has some pretty good big city markets that it would seem Comcast would be interested in. That debt load RCN’s carrying must really be a bear if it’s putting them off.

http://www.rcn.com/investor/pr.php?id=207

6

Pfft. Not even close. More like:

Or:

7

Comcast gets its blurbs from TV Guide, if you look at the info blurb screen, you’ll see that it’s branded with the TV Guide logo in the upper right corner. TV Guide has an unholy alliance with Comcast nationwide. So it’s TV Guide telling you that the movie sucks.

My gripe is that when Comcast took over from AT&T, the show descriptions were suddenly being held as if they were top secrets. Info only becomes available about 8 hours in advance, sometimes not that far, for the basic cable networks which have their schedules set months ahead of time. The premium channels are a little better, but for pete’s sake, I can get the info for the next two weeks’ worth of shows from the TV Guide website, so why do I have to wait until after TNT’s 9 a.m. rerun of “Charmed” has aired to find out the title and synopsis of the episode that will air at 6 p.m. that evening?

8

Heh. Loaning money to bankrupt companies with even halfway decent assets is among the lower-risk and higher-profit lines in the banking business. It’s known as Debtor-in-Possession financing (DIP - really!), and you get to be at the very front of the line if things don’t work out.

Few reasons.

Most importantly, RCN isn’t interested in selling – they want to reorganize as an independent company. They’ve reached a deal with their creditors. Basically, the banks (including the DIP lenders, of course) get their money back, and the unsecured creditors (bondholders and trade creditors, mostly) get the company. Preferred and common holders will get all but zippo. The way bankruptcy works is that outsiders can’t barge in, even with a better offer, under most circumstances. One of those circumstances might have occurred if the company hadn’t reached a deal with bondholders or if Comcast (or whoever) had a bid that reached all the way to the common, but no dice.

Next, RCN has some good cities, but their properties aren’t particularly attractive. The reason is that they are an overbuilder – basically, they’re the second cable company pretty much everywhere they are. Comcast and others are having enough headaches competing with the satellite guys – they don’t want the headache of competing with each other.

Additionally, RCN’s business plan is thought to be less attractive than it once was. The way they hoped to make money despite being a second cable company was to offer a suite of services – video, data and traditional switched telephony – over their fiber. But since everyone will be using VOIP in a few years (or at least the cable companies are betting they will) the switched telephony part isn’t as attractive as it was.

As noted in this thread, RCN’s customer service has suffered to the point that customers hate them almost as much as they hate regular cable companies. When they first started, they were hailed as heros. Lower prices, better picture, faster service, more accurate billing. But they screwed it up. Now they’re just another fuckin’ cable company as far as customers are concerned.

Finally, Comcast promised to spend at least a little time digesting ATT’s cable systems when they made that purchase. Whether they keep promises to customers I’ll leave to this thread for debate. But I’ll tell ya, Brian Roberts keeps his promises to investors (now watch – just to make me look stupid, he’ll lob in a bid for Adelphia tomorrow).

9

I remember one time when I had digital cable when I clicked to read the abstract of the “X-Files” episode I was watching – and, for no reason I could figure out, it was in French.

10

Heh. Except for that wild bid for Disney back in February. But I guess that wasn’t something that affected Comcast’s promises to upgrade and perform much needed maintenance on the AT&T plant.

[quote]
But since everyone will be using VOIP in a few years (or at least the cable companies are betting they will) the switched telephony part isn’t as attractive as it was.[/quote[
To be honest, I think the cable companies are fooling themselves with IP video. First, people are already dissatisfied with their CATV service. Their broadband IP services are another story, but the overall opinion people have of their cable companies is generally pretty shitty. And if they’re displeased, why would they want to subscribe to another service from the same company? Second, the fact that cable’s IP telephony isn’t network powered is a huge problem. When the power goes out people wanna be able to still use their phones; that’s what they’re used and have been all the way back to the days of Ma Bell. As more people go cellular for their primary telephone use, this won’t be as much of a liability, but as that happens, the market also goes away.

Plus, the RUS is sitting on 2.2 billion dollars right now that they wanna give away for FTTx deployments in small markets. Verizon has committed to spending 6 billion this year (which ain’t gonna happen since they haven’t got even a single network fully up and running yet - only that partial deployment down in Texas as far as I know); SBC says they wanna spend 6 billion onFTTx next year if they can get the regulatory crap straightened out to their liking. There are dozens of municipalities looking into building FTTx networks through their own municipal power corporations. Not to mention the publicly held power companies themselves (can you say Cinergy, which already has more than $110 million RUS dollars locked up), many of which are talking big about FTTx deployments.

Nope, the cable companies are fooling themselves with IP telephony. In fact, they’re gonna be battling more than the satellite guys for video services in short order, and, in my opinion, should be getting their core operations (video and then data) in order rather than moving horizontally right now. I’m not even sure they should be worrying at all about the satellite guys; I think FTTx is gonna kill that technology dead. Many of the feasibility studies I’ve seen (and had part in researching and writing) for FTTx, say that an FTTx deployment, to be successful, almost has to include video services in the initial package. That’s where the greatest dissatisfaction lies and where people have the most incentive to switch providers. FTTx deployments, if they wanna cut start-up costs should initially offer video and data services packaged together and after a revenue stream is built and take-rates are proven, then think about voice.

Anyway, thanks for posting, manhattan. You always have an interesting and informed take on what’s happening in my industry.