I Thought As Much, Didn't you?
Ah ha! I thought so. Your local government could be the cause of your high cable bill.
Cities control the rights of cable franchises within their communities. They determine if a company can have a franchise there and charge customers fees etc and the company has to go to the city for permission to increase their fees. This is all old news to anyone who was in class with me in grad school in the communications department at Illinois State in the 1980s.
Today though I see that the FCC is finally realizing that some communities are actually blocking competition in the cable arena. For example, in my community there is no competition unless you get satellite service for which you need a city permit to even put a mini Dish Network dish on your house. The "other" cable company only supplies service to those outside the city limits and then only if you don't live near a copse of trees which can block the signal. But if you live in a town a more 20 minutes down the highway where they have both Time Warner and the local phone company offering cable programming the cost for Time Warner is a lot lower than it is for me. Why? Competition.
Why wouldn't city council want to deal with more than one franchise? Easy. It takes work, it takes time and poor babies but these people have jobs damn it! They don't have the time to hash these things out every year.
So the FCC is voting on Wednesday on whether to make it easier for competitors to obtain franchise rights. Competitors like Verizon, AT&T and so forth. Cable rates have gone up 93% from 1995 to 2005 and I don't know about you but my rates have gone up again this year.
It will be interesting to see how the FCC vote goes and even more interesting to see if anything comes of it.
Cities control the rights of cable franchises within their communities. They determine if a company can have a franchise there and charge customers fees etc and the company has to go to the city for permission to increase their fees. This is all old news to anyone who was in class with me in grad school in the communications department at Illinois State in the 1980s.
Today though I see that the FCC is finally realizing that some communities are actually blocking competition in the cable arena. For example, in my community there is no competition unless you get satellite service for which you need a city permit to even put a mini Dish Network dish on your house. The "other" cable company only supplies service to those outside the city limits and then only if you don't live near a copse of trees which can block the signal. But if you live in a town a more 20 minutes down the highway where they have both Time Warner and the local phone company offering cable programming the cost for Time Warner is a lot lower than it is for me. Why? Competition.
Why wouldn't city council want to deal with more than one franchise? Easy. It takes work, it takes time and poor babies but these people have jobs damn it! They don't have the time to hash these things out every year.
So the FCC is voting on Wednesday on whether to make it easier for competitors to obtain franchise rights. Competitors like Verizon, AT&T and so forth. Cable rates have gone up 93% from 1995 to 2005 and I don't know about you but my rates have gone up again this year.
It will be interesting to see how the FCC vote goes and even more interesting to see if anything comes of it.
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