Submitted via IRC for AndyTheAbsurd
New York State and the nation's second biggest cable provider (Charter Spectrum) aren't getting along particularly well. Early last year, Charter Spectrum was sued by New York State for selling broadband speeds the company knew it couldn't deliver. According to the original complaint (pdf), Charter routinely misled consumers, refused to seriously upgrade its networks, and manipulated a system the FCC used to determine whether the company was delivering advertised broadband speeds to the company's subscribers (it wasn't). Charter has tried to use the FCC's net neutrality repeal to claim that states can't hold it accountable for terrible service, but that hasn't been going particularly well.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by VLM on Friday July 27 2018, @04:05PM
Its also worth pointing out we're talking about vertical monopolies, USUALLY entire utility companies are not natural monopolies, merely a small segment of the company is a natural monopoly.
So there is a natural monopoly marketplace in running coaxial cables to every house; there is no natural monopoly in customer support, internet routing, billing, individual customer and plant installation and repair work (which is often done by contractors right now), network monitoring troubleshooting and dispatching, engineering services, blah blah. Most of the complaints come from the 90% of employees not working in a natural monopoly freeloading and not doing their jobs because the 10% of employees working in the natural monopoly field protect them.
A truly excellent automobile analogy would be imagine your roads, road signs, dealerships, gas stations, and manufacturing plants are ALL owned by either GM Ford or Toyota and they charge you whatever the they want (and it won't be cheap...) to repair potholes and if anyone complains you get both barrels of "well, roads are a natural monopoly so thats why you have to put up with terrible product from the factory; I mean, naturally, the same company that tightens bolts on the car assembly line "must" be in charge of filling (or not filling) potholes in front of your house, so I guess we can never change the industry, oh well its just so sad.
Medical care has some of this going on; also dentistry. In theory there's no reason the emergency room and preventative care have to be connected at any level of the corporate hierarchy at all. In fact my kids pediatrician works some miles away from my closest emergency room. However, for whatever reason they're all in one hyper-large corporation that oddly enough screws everyone over with ever higher bills, mostly because they can, no other reason.