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Comcast already rakes in cash from consumers who usually have the "choice" between ATT with awful DSL service, or Comcast with awful cable modem service that is
by seanp2k 15y ago
Comcast already rakes in cash from consumers who usually have the "choice" between ATT with awful DSL service, or Comcast with awful cable modem service that is at least fast most of the time.
ATT: 1.5mbit in most locations and costs $20-$40/month not including phone line.
Comcast: costs $50-$200/month but you can get 6-100mbit in lots of locations.
To anyone who is going to try to play the "free market; let's see some competition!" card:
It's pretty impossible to do in this industry since ATT and Comcast OWN THE INFRASTRUCTURE THAT CONNECTS TO HOUSING. You really think that every city is going to let you either dig up miles of road or put up new lines on their poles? You'd even have to pay ATT/Comcast if you went the "running new lines" route.
The residential ISP business is ABSOLUTELY an oligopoly, and you'd need billions in funding to even have a chance at breaking into the market.
I hope Comcast dies a fiery death and I'm really glad to see Netflix killing them at their own game. VOD / cable boxes have been AWFUL with software that never gets updated even though they can do OTA updates and UIs that look like stuff the airlines used in the early 90s.
UX? What's that....
EDIT:
TL;DR Comcast isn't going to change much any time soon because they already make $50-$300/month in most cases...they have no motivation to change.
If netflix gets more popular, they'll just lower their bandwidth caps more to make you indirectly pay them for netflix.