topic Re: Advice about ISPs possibly price-fixing or being non-competitive? in About Our Community

Advice about ISPs possibly price-fixing or being non-competitive?

MichaelP841772 — Fri, 19 Nov 2021 21:12:39 GMT

Hello,

Any constructive advice on this subject, letter, or rewrites would be greatly appreciated.

I am looking for advice to whom I might write about possible LTE and 5G WiFi home internet price-fixing. I wrote originally wrote the below letter to explain the situation in my town. I live in the suburbs of a city of 40,000, just 1/2 mile away. I am a Verizon cell and landline customer currently.

The only major internet provider is Comcast/ Xfinity control consumer fiber, WiFi and cable broadband internet in our city at their inflated prices (after a low introductory rate) plus line fees, mandatory equipment lease fees (you cannot use your own modem), exorbitant early contract cancellation fees, etc. The normal monthly fees (not including required cellphone contract, taxes or fees) start at $65/ month for 50Mbps and go up to 110.95/month for 1200Mbps all with capped data usage.

Less then 3 miles away, Verizon has available Wireless WiFi Home Internet LTE at$40/month (with cellphone plan) or $60/ month without a cellphone plan and 5G 1Gbps(1000Mbps) at $50/month (with cellphone plan)or $70/month without cell plan. All plans are unlimited data. You can rent-to-own or bring your own modem.

Comcast leases the lower price services of Verizon, rebrands them as Xfinity at 2x to 3x the original price and will not allow the sale of the lower priced ISP plans even if you are a customer of Verizon.

I want this looked into. This is price-fixing and anti-competitive. People one mile away from me can sign up for these plans and people in my city are not allowed.

Article found in The Motley Fool

The Motley Fool November 8, 2021 Nicholas Rossolillo

“Seriously, Comcast's Evaporating Cable TV Subscriptions Don't Matter Anymore:

It's all about internet and wireless connections these days.

...Plus, there's a lot more to Comcast's “cable communications” segment than just the

primary screen in Americans' living rooms. Broadband internet is actually the company's

bread- and-butter, and that business line is still growing. So is wireless, which Comcast

licenses from Verizon's network and brands primarily to existing customers as

Xfinity Mobile. In total, Comcast's cable segment revenue increased 7.4% year over year

to $16.1 billion-- not bad for a business that is supposedly being “decimated” by the

streaming industry.”

Thank you very much,

Julie

Re: Advice about ISPs possibly price-fixing or being non-competitive?

ReTiReD51 — Sat, 20 Nov 2021 12:14:00 GMT

Ask your city officials for the facts because it’s not the ISP’s it’s your Local city governments that stifles broadband competition.

More than likely your internet provider “Comcast/Xfinity” had to negotiate with your city for access to publicly owned “rights of ways” so they could place their cables above and below public and private property. In addition, Comcast had to contract with other public utilities to rent space on their poles or in their underground ducts and conduits to lay their cable underground.

And I’ll bet before Comcast strung one cable wire and made huge investments in your town, they were probably guaranteed a Non-Competition Agreement by your city that keeps all other future ISP providers outside the city limits or makes it unaffordable for other competition to survive.

Re: Advice about ISPs possibly price-fixing or being non-competitive?

WebWiseWoman — Mon, 22 Nov 2021 12:55:57 GMT

We started this fight in the early-80s, when we were forced to buy TV in the OC... how funny is that they turned the OC into a cable show?

Most don't know but at one time we had to pay "toll charges" to call neighbors if they were in 714 and we were in 818...

So I went with GoogleFi years ago; I don't want to be with any other company who sells out...

#StaySafe

#WearAMask

Re: Advice about ISPs possibly price-fixing or being non-competitive?

EricC28201 — Mon, 17 Apr 2023 14:39:52 GMT

Lemme see...what's the term that was coined back in the 70's and 80's when Cable T.V. was getting started?...Government Sponsored Monopoly...something like that. It was deemed necessary because the product (Cable T.V.) was so good, but the overhead (infrastructure costs) was so high. The only way to make the service into a viable (profitable) business venture was for local governments to grant cable companies monopoly charters.

...guess they were too ~~stupid~~ shortsighted to write a grandfather clause into the deal to require periodic re-evaluation. Kinda looks like they're trying to repeat the whole Western Electric Bell Telephone scenario...but wait, that would be insanity!

Perhaps it's time for a grassroots economic movement to reign in Technology in general...even many geeks are calling for a moratorium on A.I. development.