Cable prices creep up
Posted by Joseph Brochin
The FCC released a study that shows the average monthly bill for cable TV shot up by more than the nations overall inflation rate of 3 percent.
Cable basic only service climbed to 3.3 percent, while basic-plus rose 5.2 percent and expanded-basic rose 6.2 percent.
Now the bright side of this is that this extreme climb is in places with no competition. In locations where communities have allowed competition the rise was much smaller, but no stats could be found to compare.
Opening up competition in our local communities in the cable industry is a must. We have to allow other competition in to stop these local monopolies. As time goes on and with all the mergers in the telecomm industry, you may see a push in the upcoming years to move into the cable world by merging or purchasing some regional cable companies.
Would this improve competition? Not sure yet. At least now we have a choice of going satellite TV, DSL with the local phone company, as well as VOIP with our ISP or other provider. But what happens when the local phone company gets its mits in the cable pot?
BellSouth is back with Mommy
Posted by Joseph Brochin
The recent approval of the BellSouth and AT&T merger brings the largest of the former baby bells bakc under Ma Bell’s wing. This is the largest telecommunications merger in history.
I will say that the FCC did not blindly allow this to happen. AT&T had to make concessions such as give up some wireless spectrum, offer very low cost ($19.95) stand alone DSL access, and observe network neutrality.
The later being the most important concern to consumer advocates.
If you recall from a previous post “Is the Ma Bell Monopoly Back”, I amn ot a big fan of the recent mergers between these giant companies, especially involving AT&T.
The deregulation for some time has made the industry more competitive and prices drop. It allowed for smaller companies to remain competitive with the “big dogs”. It also allowed these larger companies to move into areas that they where not able to before such as high speed Internet service and cable services. What this deregulation did was allow the larger companies to gain a foothold into these other segments of the industry which are now ripe for the picking.
How competitive can we expect this market to be when the FCC is allowing the same thing to take place AGAIN that they tried to prevent with the breakup of Ma Bell in the early 80’s and the deregulation in 1997.
I do not beleive there is any big conspiracy by AT&T or any of the other players in the industry to rule the world or anything like that. I think they are doing what a business should naturally try and do and that is dominate the market. It is up to bodys like the FCC to ensure that dominance does not turn into a monopoly like it did before.