Comcast to leave Detroit market

[rb336]

Hey! don't blame Duggan for this mess! He became Mayor while Detroit was broke! Go blame former Detroit Mayors of the past:

1. Albert Cobo, a racist bigot!

2. Jerome P. Cavanaugh, a cool city sell out and neigborhood buster.

3. Coleman A Young, A cussing racist bigot [[to White people)!

4. Dennis Archer, a proposed urban sell out,

5. Kwame Kilpatrick, a pimp!

6. Dave Bing, a lame duck sellout!

um, you missed the Judge [[Roman Gribbs)

[That Great Guy]

Hey! don't blame Duggan for this mess! He became Mayor while Detroit was broke! Go blame former Detroit Mayors of the past:

1. Albert Cobo, a racist bigot!

2. Jerome P. Cavanaugh, a cool city sell out and neigborhood buster.

3. Coleman A Young, A cussing racist bigot [[to White people)!

4. Dennis Archer, a proposed urban sell out,

5. Kwame Kilpatrick, a pimp!

6. Dave Bing, a lame duck sellout!

7 Duggan, left SMART grossly underfunded. But that too is not his fault due to MDOT cuts and high costs.

[douglasm]

To answer Hyperstyle's question, probably not. Unless you're in a situation where a government entity has installed fiber optic cable [[the local PUD has done it around here where I live), the city has a franchise agreement with the local cable company. One of the reasons for this is that it was the provider who built the infrastructure and the agreement protects it's investment.

[Cliffy]

So is Uverse not available in Detroit....

[Cincinnati_Kid]

Hey! don't blame Duggan for this mess! He became Mayor while Detroit was broke! Go blame former Detroit Mayors of the past:

1. Albert Cobo, a racist bigot!

2. Jerome P. Cavanaugh, a cool city sell out and neigborhood buster.

3. Coleman A Young, A cussing racist bigot [[to White people)!

4. Dennis Archer, a proposed urban sell out,

5. Kwame Kilpatrick, a pimp!

6. Dave Bing, a lame duck sellout!

Hey Danny, you forgot Louis Miriani, who took over the reigns of mayor from 1957-1962 after Cobo died, then went to jail for income tax evasion. There are some real choirboys on this list.

[That Great Guy]

Pitiful, first Barden then Comcast. All they care about is money and profits.

My bill is way too high

So, please support a property tax for this. Danny this is 2014, so everyone should have affordable internet and a property tax is the only way to do this

[SyGolden48236]

My bill is way too high

So, please support a property tax for this. Danny this is 2014, so everyone should have affordable internet and a property tax is the only way to do this

So you want to raise your property tax bill in order to lower your cable bill?? Just how will taking more money from your left pocket [[tax bill) in order to take less money from your right pocket [[cable bill) improve your bottom line? Or, do you mean you want other people's taxes, but not yours, raised to lower your cable bill?

Has cable TV now become a human right [[like free water)? Why not just give up cable? It is not a life necessity.

For those wailing about a so called monopoly and not having any choice; have you ever heard of Dish Network, Direct TV or Uverse? You do have choices.

[Scottathew]

What? Subscribers might have to change all their email addresses just because some corporate overlords want to shuffle their businesses?! How is that not sabotaging their own customers?

Anyone who uses their ISP's email needs to be educated!

Why artificially tie yourself to an ISP? Use a free service like Gmail, Outlook, or Yahoo. That way you can ditch your cable company and not have to tell your friends a new email address.

Back in the day, email was a nice service that your ISP offered you and had real value. Today, ISPs offer email addresses to tie customers down to their service.

[Scottathew]

My bill is way too high

So, please support a property tax for this. Danny this is 2014, so everyone should have affordable internet and a property tax is the only way to do this

Internet and Cable TV are a human right.

[Honky Tonk]

Internet and Cable TV are a human right.

Beauty...... I'm sending an e-mail to the UN.

[the rock]

GP has been beholden to Comcast forever. I might have been the first in the area to switch to WOW and now save about $120 a month for all services. So far, so good. Magic Jack helps, top.

[motz]

So is Uverse not available in Detroit....

It is available, however AT&T doesn't seem to offer unbundled UVerse internet speeds... WOW isn't in the Detroit market for a bunch of reasons, mostly that if you deploy a cable network in some of the less-dense portions of Detroit, the costs would outweigh the profits. WOW leases lots of cable infrastructure from Comcast or whoever still controls those lines, but the big money comes from them having to install what is known as "last mile" infrastructure, which is the connection from the hub to your home. Due to regulations, Comcast and other infrastructure owners do not have to lease that "last mile" infrastructure, which is why you only see a few smaller cable providers like WOW and company.

This will end up being a good thing for us as consumers. It's a small step forward, since the actual services [[Internet, TV, phone) won't change, but it will be a new customer service department headed by new-ish executives who may or may not care about making you happy. Basically a nice reset button for the worst in class service we get from Comcast

[Lowell]

Put me in the camp of disgruntled Comcast customer. Ironically I got a call from Comcast just hours before this announcement trying to upsell my downtown office business account. [For the geeks out there I pay $137 a month for 25 mbps down and 12 up plus a dedicated IP Address, but what everyone knows is that the up speed is what one really pays for.]

We rarely get 12 up and a spot check just now even using Comcast's speedometer I got only 7 up. Additionally we get brownouts and spot blackout, usually mid PM, what we have dubbed as the 'afternoon break'.]

So I gave the poor guy an earful, making sure it wasn't personal to him but directed at his company, and said come back to me after you deliver what we were promised. He persisted saying I should call the company when that happens, perhaps the modem needs updating, they'll come out and check, run tests blah blah blah.

I told him I had done all that at least three times and had just given up because we don't have time to wait around and deal with their disruptions, hold time on the phone and intrusions into our space only to face the same issue a few days later.

I have a second downtown business account that is a residential cable and internet service. It is even worse particularly on the internet side.

I can rarely stream anything without continual freezes, the HiDef channels are frequently delivered at LoDef quality, or fade back and forth indicating throttling. Again I went through the time-consuming service visits, phone support attempts and again I gave up and just swallowed the fact that I'm stuck with a third world service.

Internet service is crucial to our economic competitiveness and well-being. It needs to made a public monopoly at the infrastructure level and the speeds and efficiency brought up the levels of, let's say, Korea the world leader. No wonder they are eating our lunch.

[Danny]

um, you missed the Judge [[Roman Gribbs)

Forget about him! He's more urban lame duck as Dave Bing!

[Danny]

Hey Danny, you forgot Louis Miriani, who took over the reigns of mayor from 1957-1962 after Cobo died, then went to jail for income tax evasion. There are some real choirboys on this list.

Forget about the racist! He paved the way for Cobo to keep more black folks away from Detroit business.

[Danny]

Put me in the camp of disgruntled Comcast customer. Ironically I got a call from Comcast just hours before this announcement trying to upsell my downtown office business account. [For the geeks out there I pay $137 a month for 25 mbps down and 12 up plus a dedicated IP Address, but what everyone knows is that the up speed is what one really pays for.]

We rarely get 12 up and a spot check just now even using Comcast's speedometer I got only 7 up. Additionally we get brownouts and spot blackout, usually mid PM, what we have dubbed as the 'afternoon break'.]

So I gave the poor guy an earful, making sure it wasn't personal to him but directed at his company, and said come back to me after you deliver what we were promised. He persisted saying I should call the company when that happens, perhaps the modem needs updating, they'll come out and check, run tests blah blah blah.



I told him I had done all that at least three times and had just given up because we don't have time to wait around and deal with their disruptions, hold time on the phone and intrusions into our space only to face the same issue a few days later.

I have a second downtown business account that is a residential cable and internet service. It is even worse particularly on the internet side.

I can rarely stream anything without continual freezes, the HiDef channels are frequently delivered at LoDef quality, or fade back and forth indicating throttling. Again I went through the time-consuming service visits, phone support attempts and again I gave up and just swallowed the fact that I'm stuck with a third world service.

Internet service is crucial to our economic competitiveness and well-being. It needs to made a public monopoly at the infrastructure level and the speeds and efficiency brought up the levels of, let's say, Korea the world leader. No wonder they are eating our lunch.

Every customer will get disservice whether it's from Cable TV to your water bill. Fascists corps. can change a little to keep its customers happy. After Comcast is out of our hare AT&T, WOW and Dish will run the show. Let Comcast sell their service to rich folks. They have no need for poor welfare and food stamps folks here in Detroit.

[Hermod]

Every customer will get disservice whether it's from Cable TV to your water bill. Fascists corps. can do change a little for its customers happy. After Comcast of out of our hare AT&T, WOW and Dish will run the show. Let Comcast sell their service to rich folks. They have no need for poor welfare and food stamps folks here in Detroit.

What kind of customer service do you get out of DWSD or the city hall?

[Honky Tonk]

What kind of customer service do you get out of DWSD or the city hall?

It isn't high-speed, I can tell you that.

[MotorCityTrikes]

I've had Comcast business class for two and a half years and I have not been happy at all. Speed is no better than regular service and customer service is a nightmare. You have to watch the billing like a hawk last Jan. they added late charges seven days in a row and the bill wasn't even due yet. When I called the rep. said.............. get this ............... it was a computer glitch. Hello! And they provide what kind of service? At night when I watch tv every ten minutes it skips a beat. Even when the contract is up I have no other choice.

[That Great Guy]

So you want to raise your property tax bill in order to lower your cable bill?? Just how will taking more money from your left pocket [[tax bill) in order to take less money from your right pocket [[cable bill) improve your bottom line? Or, do you mean you want other people's taxes, but not yours, raised to lower your cable bill?

Has cable TV now become a human right [[like free water)? Why not just give up cable? It is not a life necessity.

For those wailing about a so called monopoly and not having any choice; have you ever heard of Dish Network, Direct TV or Uverse? You do have choices.

No, I do not want others to pay for me. It is only fare that if I get something that someone else pays for then I should pay my fare share. We can't all pay the same for essential services. The internet is vastly changing by replacing older technologies making it much more of a necessity. Thus, the need to control monopolies by means of fair honest government policies.

The use of socialism where everyone pays on based on ability, need, costs and appropriate fair impositions works in many cases. The funding for basic health care, education and the support of infrastructures such as crumbling bridges and worn out public buses are some examples of this.

Comcast already pays for the low income voluntarily but not based on any proven need. So, I think government control is better because then we can have majority rule to break up the robber barons as wanted or needed.

[Honky Tonk]

No, I do not want others to pay for me. It is only fare that if I get something that someone else pays for then I should pay my fare share. We can't all pay the same for essential services. The internet is vastly changing by replacing older technologies making it much more of a necessity. Thus, the need to control monopolies by means of fair honest government policies.

The use of socialism where everyone pays on based on ability, need, costs and appropriate fair impositions works in many cases. The funding for basic health care, education and the support of infrastructures such as crumbling bridges and worn out public buses are some examples of this.

Comcast already pays for the low income voluntarily but not based on any proven need. So, I think government control is better because then we can have majority rule to break up the robber barons as wanted or needed.

Just like water, there are places to get it for "free".

[Jimaz]

What? Subscribers might have to change all their email addresses just because some corporate overlords want to shuffle their businesses?! How is that not sabotaging their own customers?

Anyone who uses their ISP's email needs to be educated!

Why artificially tie yourself to an ISP? Use a free service like Gmail, Outlook, or Yahoo....

You are correct! [[Until those services vanish too.)

... Internet service is crucial to our economic competitiveness and well-being. It needs to made a public monopoly at the infrastructure level and the speeds and efficiency brought up the levels of, let's say, Korea the world leader. No wonder they are eating our lunch.

You are correct! [[Until that service vanishes too. Oh, wait. Hmm. That's much less likely to vanish. Hmm.)

There is a conspicuous but seldomly acknowledged asymmetry here.

[Zacha341]

ABSOLUTELY! I have basically only been with two ISP providers since and I KNEW right away to never, ever use their email. I pay a very nominal yearly rate for a web based mail service. I've seen folks go from ISP, to ISP, changing emails. I'm off the cable grid - it's all too expensive so I just do ROKU and stream and use a converter box for my local channels. Problem solved.

...Why artificially tie yourself to an ISP? Use a free service like Gmail, Outlook, or Yahoo. That way you can ditch your cable company and not have to tell your friends a new email address.

Back in the day, email was a nice service that your ISP offered you and had real value. Today, ISPs offer email addresses to tie customers down to their service.

[erikd]

I believe your beloved City of Detroit granted the monopoly in exchange for money which they have no doubt already spent on Manoogian Parties and on Bobby Ferguson's yacht. I would expect that the monopoly will last a long time into the future, and you will continue to pay 'franchise fees' for this monopoly, extracted by Dear Leader CAY, if I remember.

Enjoy what your democratically elected mayor and council hath done to you, while surfing on Charter.

The cable monopoly in local municipalities is not unique to Detroit, and is actually the norm across America.

Sorry to disprove your your anti-Detroit rant of the day...

The cable industry is a patchwork of micro-monopolies. With cable TV, there's a massive fixed cost to enter a new market—putting in new cable lines. So, basically, whoever showed up first—or the company that bought them—has the legacy right of being the local cable company.
For decades, cable operators were allowed to set up exclusive regional franchises. A cable company would come into an area, and more or less tell the municipal area in charge of franchising that it needed an exclusive for the next, say, 12-15 years if it was going to build out lines.

The last reliable statistic shows that a mere 2-percent of American markets had a choice of cable providers.

http://gizmodo.com/5830956/why-the-g...-cable-company

[douglasm]

Yup In the town I'm a councilman in [[in central Washington.....no, the other one) we just approved a new franchise agreement with the current provider. Erikd has it right. If someone else want's to come in and build a new cable network, we'll sign an agreement with them too, but no one would want to. The build up costs are too high for the return.