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Una infografía sobre las 6 organizaciones que controlan Internet. Vía
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Las 6 organizaciones que controlan Internet
This NY Times column from March 28 reads like it was written by Comcast’s PR department.
Let’s look at author James B. Stewart’s article and try to figure out exactly how much Kabletown Kool-Aid he’s consumed…
1. Ignoring Comcast’s Role In Current State Of Cable TV
Early in the article, Comcast inheritor Roberts laments the current state of cable competition, in which a company’s presence is often determined by deals made with municipalities many moons ago.
“Cable is a relic of an antiquated model,” admits Roberts. “The result is we’re not in New York or Los Angeles. How great can that be?”
In a sense, he’s right. Comcast should have been in New York City and/or Los Angeles, but not as the sole provider like TWC is for much of those two cities. No, Comcast should have been able to compete with everyone else, giving consumers choice and compelling providers to compete on rates and customer service.
But Roberts can not wash his hands of the situation that he and his company-founding father before him played no small part in creating, and from which Comcast has benefited greatly.
Take the Philadelphia area, which has long been dominated by Comcast, but which used to have multiple other regional providers serving different parts of the region. In the last two decades, Comcast has gobbled up much of those companies, creating an effective monopoly in the area thanks to all those exclusivity deals each of the acquired providers had made in the ’70s and ’80s.
Furthermore, while Philly leadership pretends it’s about prettying up the city, a recent move to regulate and remove satellite dishes from buildings all around the city has Comcast written all over it.
And look at Boston, where the city is so ridiculously overrun by solely Comcast coverage that former Mayor Thomas Menino had to petition the FCC to allow the city to regulate the company’s soaring prices.
It is the cable industry, including Comcast, that sought these sorts of deals and guarantees, and which has allowed them to continue because they allow providers to get away with charging high rates and provide minimal customer service.
Roberts even admits as much later in the Times piece, when he says the only feasible way for Comcast to be a player in NYC is for it to buy Time Warner Cable, as it would be too expensive to run its own lines.
2. No One Asked Us…
Stewart then goes on to make a completely asinine statement implying about those who are against the Comcast merger:
The sheer size of the deal, and the intense public interest in unfettered Internet access, have galvanized an array of opponents, from Senator Al Franken, Democrat of Minnesota, to the Consumers Union to the Writers Guild of America…I suspect few of them, if any, are Time Warner Cable customers.
Let’s just look at how utterly, absolutely stupid of a statement that is.
First, I’m not going to speak for my colleagues at Consumers Union, but I happen to know for a fact that they — and many other employees of Consumer Reports, including myself, and several other Consumerist writers — have had, or currently have, cable and Internet service from Time Warner Cable. It’s a company based in Yonkers, NY, which is only a few miles north of NYC and many of CR’s employees live in areas where TWC is the only option. A simple phone call or e-mail to anyone at the company would have told Mr. Stewart so.
And then there’s the Writers Guild, which has a large number of members in New York City (that’s why there is a WGA East office in Manhattan, Mr. Stewart. All those writers for Comcast’s own Saturday Night Live and Tonight Show are probably TWC customers. That’s not to mention all the people who write for the soap operas, talk shows, and the various series that film in NYC. Again, I’m sure someone at the Guild, or the use of the author’s much-touted common sense, would have figured this one out.
I don’t know Sen. Franken’s current living situation, but I do believe he’s lived in NYC at some point in the past 25 years, since he used to broadcast his Air America radio show from Manhattan, and worked on Saturday Night Live in the early ’90s, which means he’s likely to have been a TWC customer at some point.
3. Personal Bias Is A Bad Measuring Stick
Let’s just assume that Mr. Stewart’s ill-informed attempt to discredit merger critics were based in actual fact and that none of these people concerned about a merger between the nation’s two largest cable and Internet providers have ever had to deal with TWC’s horrendous service.
What does that matter?
Did one need to be either an AT&T or T-Mobile customer to oppose that failed merger? Does he think that members of the FCC and the DOJ are going to say, “Well, I can’t be part of this decision because I’m a DirecTV gal”?
In fact, it may be best if the people making the decision have minimal experience with either provider, as their personal biases can’t get in the way. The last thing I want is some regulator deciding they will approve this merger because they once got double-billed by Time Warner Cable and somehow think this merger will stop such nonsense from happening in the future (Spoiler Alert: It won’t).
Speaking of which…
4. The Grass Is Always Slightly Less Brown
Stewart seems to be living under the delusion that Comcast’s customer service couldn’t possibly be worse than TWC’s. He even cites J.D. Power regional ratings to back up his point, saying that TWC was the lowest-rated in almost every region for its pay TV service. And this is indeed true.
A summary of the JD Power ratings for Comcast and TWC’s pay-TV services. We’ve circled all the instances in which the two companies scored the same or in which TWC outscored Comcast. Note that neither company managed to do better than a 3 on the JD Power scale, indicating a score of “About Average.” Click chart for full-size.
And you’ll notice that of all the companies that rank or rate TV and Internet providers, Stewart cherry-picks one that sort of helps to make the case that Time Warner Cable is a bad company.
In fact, there are multiple sources that would have indicated the same thing, but which would have also shown that Comcast is just as bad, if not worse.
Circling back once again to our colleagues at Consumer Reports, whose recent survey of telecom providers turned up equally bad results for the two merger partners, and where Comcast received especially low marks for customer support.
Recent data from Netflix showing how Verizon and Comcast have allowed its downstream speeds to slow to a crawl during the last half of 2013, while TWC continued to provide adequate support for the service. Click for full-size chart.
And the folks at the American Customer Satisfaction Index, whose latest ratings of pay-TV companies and ISPs showed both Comcast and Time Warner Cable bringing up the rear in the two categories. Comcast was the bottom-scraper when it came to Internet service, while it allowed TWC the honor of being the caboose on the pay-TV train.
Neither company has provided any shred of evidence that customer service, billing, or reliability will improve post-merger. There has been lip-service paid to the notion that by combining their assets, they will be better able to invest in much-needed resources.
But given the potholed track record of these two companies, why would we have any reason to believe that savings on manpower, networks, maintenance, and content will be reinvested in improving customer service when all a merger would do would be to create an even larger company with minimal competition and even fewer reasons to provide competitive rates or customer service?
5. The Myth Of Geographic Overlap
Here’s the argument you hear repeatedly from Stewart and other cheerleaders for this merger: Comcast and Time Warner Cable don’t currently overlap, so it’s not really creating a monopoly.
It’s a valid point, and one that those opposed to the merger will have to repeatedly rebut in the coming months, but it’s a deflection of the bigger issues involved here.
Because the cable industry has virtually no competition — even the large satellite companies can’t compete in providing broadband services — they can get away with things like unexplained rate increases; new fees for old products and services; using customers as hostages in blackout battles with broadcasters.
Far from giving Comcast a reason to pass savings on to customers, a nearly doubled subscriber base could actually provide the company with an incentive to continue nickel-and-diming customers. An extra dollar a month from 30 million customers is a nice chunk of change at the end of the year. Data caps and usage-based pricing for Internet users would be a gold mine for the merged company, especially with consumers having few-to-no options for broadband service.
Stewart mocks the notion put forth by law professor and author Susan Crawford, among others, that a merged Comcast/TWC would create a “monopsony,” a company that would effectively be negotiating with vendors on behalf of an entire industry. The mega-provider would be able to demand the absolute lowest rates from networks and other providers, which Stewart sees as only resulting in good, claiming the future Comcast-zilla “has an incentive to pass at least some of those savings on to customers to increase demand for its services with lower prices.”
Again, we ask where he’s imagining this incentive coming from? If Comcast has no competition and customers can’t get their Internet and TV service elsewhere, why on Earth would the company not continue to chisel away at subscribers’ wallets?
6. Who Cares About The Broadcasters?
Continuing on with the discussion of creating a monopsony, the Comcast ad in the Time — because that’s what it is: a huge, effectively sponsored, story that only cost Comcast a few bucks to get Stewart to Philly and show him around its shimmering USB drive on JFK Blvd. — rightfully points out that antitrust law is intended to protect consumers, so why should anyone care about broadcasters and other content creators not getting their full due?
“It’s hard to imagine that the wildly popular ESPN or Netflix needs protection from regulators in Washington,” writes Stewart, ignoring the ripple effects and other problems associated with monopsony.
Say Comcast goes to Sony to discuss online streaming rates for it’s TV and movie studios’ content. The mega-company, which not only has cable customers, but Internet users, and a built-in TV audience on a major broadcast network, multiple news channels, and a slew of cable offerings, could use that leverage to guarantee it pays a lower rate than anyone else in the industry. This drives up rates for competitors, who either pass that cost on to customers or who have to be more selective about what they license for their customers’ use.
It provides a barrier for entry to startup companies or new ventures from existing companies; makes it harder for smaller, regional providers to grow and compete; and could drive some companies — on both the content and provider side — out of business. Less choice, higher prices. That’s a consumer issue, Mr. Stewart.
Additionally, cable companies are the gatekeepers for much of the information entering Americans’ homes. With no current net neutrality rules, a cable company can literally decide what its customers can and can’t see. Even though Comcast is still obligated to oblige by the recently gutted rules through 2018, the above-referenced Netflix standoff shows that it has the means and the leverage to get around such weak-kneed regulations.
7. Someday My Cable Prince Will Come…
Stewart makes the fallacious claim of an “array of consumer television and broadband options” available to consumers, disregarding all studies showing that very few people have access to more than one cable provider; that satellite TV customers generally need a cable company to get broadband; that Verizon has stated publicly that it has no immediate plans to build out its FiOS fiber network into new areas of the country.
He even made me laugh a bit by speculating that Google may bring its Google Fiber network to New York City at some point in the next millennium. Verizon, which has the poles and the existing landline network all in place, has been trying to wire that city for years with FiOS and has barely made a dent in Manhattan and many of the more populated areas of the city.
I actually did a spit-take when Stewart tossed out the suggestion that Sprint’s pie-in-the-sky plan to provide wireless broadband service would someday be a viable non-cable option for consumers. At this point, that idea exists only in the speeches that SoftBank CEO Masayoshi Son gives to make the case for his own desired merger of Sprint and T-Mobile USA. Yes, widespread broadband Internet seems like an inevitable future for data to the home, but it’s unlikely to come from any of the major wireless providers who are currently too busy enjoying their tiered data plans and their associated overage fees. And the notion that Sprint, which has not been able to keep up with its competitors in terms of speed and reliability, would be the superhero to swoop in and provide competition to New Yorkers is just ludicrous.
You simply can’t wipe away all the problems with this merger with a few glib, biased complaints about how much you currently hate Time Warner Cable. You can’t say that the deal won’t create a monopoly because there already is one. You can’t pin your hopes for future competition on what-ifs and maybes.
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Una infografía sobre el consumo de noticias en Redes Sociales.
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El papel del vídeo en las comunicaciones de los trabajadores
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It’s not the first time that Comcast has waved the flag of its commitment to underserved populations right as regulators were poised to take a fine-toothed comb to its business dealings. Internet Essentials is now here to stay — but who does it really serve?
The Internet Essentials program is aimed at helping a niche that badly needs help.
Let’s say this up front, and clearly: expanding broadband access to lower-income households is a laudable and deeply necessary goal. In 2014, internet access is basically how everyone does everything. Need to apply for a job? Do it online. Need to access state and federal services? Do it online. Need to contact a school, do your homework, research something? Do it online.
Internet access isn’t just about the newest in entertainment (though it is that, too). It’s access to jobs, to education, to commerce, to news and information, to friends and family, and basically to the entire world at large. Being locked out of it due to high prices can be crippling in a hundred little ways, especially to a family with children who may be falling academically and socially behind their more moneyed peers.
The gap of the digital divide is real, and it’s persistent. The Pew Internet Project has tracked internet access for years. On average, 85% of Americans access the internet. But an average is just that: averaged. Breaking down the data by household income, on the other hand, highlights the disparity.
Pew’s research, from last fall, shows just how big that divide is, and the correlation is undeniable: the more money you make, the more likely you are to have broadband internet access.
Given how expensive a utility broadband can be, it’s not surprising that workers hanging onto the lowest rung of the economic latter have trouble buying into it. But as digital tools become more and more prevalent in the classroom, kids who aren’t well-versed in them are at a distinct disadvantage for catching up to their classmates.
So with Internet Essentials, Comcast really is trying to fill in service for a segment of the population that generally goes underserved. 300,000 families are using the service, according to Comcast’s most recent progress report, and that’s 300,000 families who weren’t connected before.
That’s the good news. Now here’s the rest.
There aren’t as many families benefiting from Internet Essentials as there could be.
While it’s great that over a quarter million families have enrolled, it could be a lot more. But somehow, Comcast just keeps managing to stand in its own way.
There are two major obstacles to getting low-income families enrolled in the program, according to outreach workers. The first is is the set of eligibility requirements Comcast lays out. To enroll in Internet essentials, families must:
Of those four requirements, that 90-day requirement is apparently the biggest stumbling block. Families who were overextending themselves to pay for a full-price Comcast package have to go completely without all service for three full months in order to reduce their costs. 90 days is a full semester of the school year — a long time for a family to cut itself off.
The other barrier is the enrollment process itself: Internet Essentials is separate from Comcast’s standard service. It uses a different website and phone number for enrollment and information. Consumers who call Comcast’s regular line and try to ask for the cheap internet generally get shunted into some kind of promotional triple-play package. Comcast representatives don’t redirect callers to the other phone number.
So the consumers most likely to be able correctly to sign up for Internet Essentials are high-information consumers who have the time and resources to use the internet to research how to get the best choice in internet access. And the target user of Internet Essentials is a lower-information consumer, potentially with education and/or language barriers, who doesn’t necessarily have the time and resources, or internet access, to do all the research over best choices.
It’s not just the enrollment that has a mismatch between “service on offer” and “needs that need filling.” Comcast has been touting their partnership with Khan Academy as a way to provide more free online education to low-income families… and while that sounds nice, the truth is, low-income kids aren’t the ones really using streaming online courses. College-educated men are.
Comcast benefits far more than low-income families do.
The other main problem with Internet Essentials is that it’s crap. A download speed of “up to 5 Mbps” is, by the standards of 2014, painfully slow. Those fancy online educational tools that are supposedly the main benefit of the program? Many of them don’t work so well on that connection.
In other words, Comcast is giving their low-income customers access to what they pay for — not access on par with what most other Comcast customers can buy. It’s both a fifth of the cost and a fifth of the service.
The focus on families with children eligible for free or reduced lunch is also a big problem with the program. Pew found that “internet non-users are heavily dominated by older adults.” No kids at home? No connection.
And what about when those kids grow up? Eligibility is directly tied to having children in the home. When Junior, thanks to his reduced-rate Comcast connection, graduates from high school and gets a full scholarship to State U, will Mom and Pop back home still be able to get e-mails from him? Slate wondered about that in a piece questioning Comcast’s motives back in January. Comcast exec David L. Cohen immediately fired back with a complete non-answer:
“As to the issue of families losing access when kids graduate, the piece ignores our commitment to continue to offer Internet Essentials to any family so long as there is a single eligible child in the household.”
And as to the issue of families losing access when kids graduate, the executive ignores families’ commitment to not producing infinite children, and eventually having a youngest who turns 18 and graduates, thus ending the parents’ eligibility.
Comcast, meanwhile, is not acting out of a sense of charity or philanthropy. They’re satisfting federal requirements to help bring broadband access to the poor. And Internet Essentials is only available where Comcast already operates — so Comcast isn’t spending a dime to run infrastructure to any place where it doesn’t already exist.
They sure get to benefit from looking philanthropic, though. Community outreach is a huge part of Comcast’s extensive lobbying efforts. And in looking to gain the blessing of federal regulators on their impending buyout of Time Warner Cable, “benefit to the community” is one of their best cards to play.
If Comcast succeeds in buying out TWC, they can argue, then that means they can expand the Internet Essentials program to 19 of the 20 biggest cities in the country. Since broadband access is a huge factor in the merger, Comcast wins from being able to claim that expanding their reach equals reducing the digital divide. If the poor and underserved get to benefit just as much as executives do well the merger must be a good idea, right? Right?!
And of course, every added customer for Comcast is, well, another customer for Comcast. Although actual provider choice and competition are terrible for everyone, options can be even more limited for lower-income families. It’s not just for reasons of cost; it’s because they’re generally renters, not property owners. Renters in multi-unit buildings generally have exactly one choice for TV and internet access: the company their landlord has signed a contract with.
Having Internet Essentials gives Comcast the leverage to go to a community and say, “we have this low-income program; sign more contracts with us so we can help disadvantaged families in your area.” And cities do. More reach, more leverage, less competition: a win all around for Comcast.
So is it just window-dressing?
Just because Comcast gets to win all around, of course, doesn’t mean low-income families have to lose. A terrible internet connection is still better than no internet connection, and over a quarter million families probably are better off now than they were before. That’s not a bad thing.
But as often happens with Comcast, the good news they’re selling isn’t the whole story. When it comes to the digital divide, and to fairly serving the underserved, there’s a long way yet to go.
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