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It's no surprise that cable companies charge lower prices for broadband when they face competition from fiber-to-the-home services. But an article yesterday by Stop the Cap provides a good example of how dramatically promotional prices for Charter's Spectrum Internet service can vary from one street to the next.
In this example, Charter charges $20 more per month for slower speeds on the street where it faces no serious competition. When customers in two areas purchase the same speeds, the customer on the street without competition could have to pay $40 more per month and would have their promotional rates expire after only one year instead of two.
Stop the Cap said it examined promotional offers to new customers in the metro Rochester, New York, market, "where Spectrum faces token competition from Frontier's slow speed DSL service" and more robust competition in limited areas from Greenlight Networks' fiber service. Greenlight fiber is available in 23 percent of Rochester, while Charter cable is available to homes throughout the city, according to BroadbandNow. Greenlight prices start at $50 per month for 500Mbps.
"Charter's offers are address-sensitive," Stop the Cap founder Phillip Dampier wrote. "The cable company knows its competition and almost exactly where those competitors offer service. That is why the company asks for your service address before it quotes you pricing."
Am I the only one that's appalled at the Upload speeds? From the linked BroadbandNow page for Spectrum: Speeds up to:1,000 Mbps Download, 35 Mbps Upload
Previously:
Charter Must Pay $19 Million for Tricking Customers Into Switching ISPs
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Tork on Saturday June 05 2021, @06:29PM (4 children)
We’re talking about monopolies here, try to keep up.
🏳️🌈 Proud Ally 🏳️🌈
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday June 05 2021, @07:44PM (3 children)
Nice snark!
If the monopoly agreement in question doesn't allow this behavior, then the town can punish them with (maybe) fines and certainly cancelling their contract.
If , however, the monopoly agreement does allow this behavior (or the local government is not enforcing the agreement), then their beef isn't with Charter, it's with their local government. And the people can, if they dislike this behavior enough, punish them with being voted out of office (or maybe tar and feather them, then ride them out on a rail).
(Score: 2) by Tork on Saturday June 05 2021, @11:44PM (2 children)
🏳️🌈 Proud Ally 🏳️🌈
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday June 06 2021, @12:36PM (1 child)
I know of a recent example that refutes your claim.
In Cook County Illinois (which includes Chicago), the County Board decided that drinking sugary drinks was a "Bad Thing"(tm). So they imposed a tax on sugary beverages (adding about $0.75 to the cost of a six-pack of soda).
In just a few months, it became clear that the people of Cook County greatly objected to this new tax, and in order to save their jobs, the County Board reversed their decision (by a 15-1 margin). Toni Preckwinkle, President of the County Board, had been a serious contender in the upcoming Chicago mayoral race, but suffered a humiliating defeat at least in part because of her support of the "soda tax".
"Voting the representatives out" is very effective when the government rules against the consensus of the people. It doesn't work so well when most people don't care, and there is outrage only in fringe group echo chambers.
(And just in case someone wants to drage class/race/sex into the argument, it's clear that this change was brought primarly by the poor, for whom the extra $0.75 per six-pack was a significant issue. Regardless of the opinions of class-obsessed people who are over represented on sites like this one, poor people's votes count just as much as those of the wealthy.)
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 07 2021, @11:33PM
What's funny is the the strongest class obsessed people tend to be the more affluent ones. Just like the strongest race obsessed people tend to be white.