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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: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 10 2021, @02:14PM
(same poster)
Anyways let's bring this to its logical conclusion. If this affects 'minority' communities more than it affects affluent ones perhaps it's because the minority communities are the ones that keep voting for the wrong politicians and those politicians keep limiting competition in their communities for whatever reason. Are you saying that minorities are less able to vote for good politicians than affluent people, that perhaps they're poor because they make bad decisions and that includes the bad decisions with respect to whom they elect?