Despite the generic viritol by your statement, I'm actually pretty proud of my job and its accomplishments. Comcast treats me well for my work. I don't work at that location, but I also wouldn't identify my specific location to anyone here either anyways.
If they worked harder, what would there be to gain? People already are angry at their poor customer service(which is pretty poor, but the same is true for every massive company), if they had an overwhelmingly stronger and faster internet, then people would be even louder with their 'monopoly' talk.this may be true, but i don't think they work as hard as they can, i know the technology, so i know for a fact that Comcast does not offer the best available, they offer a bit of whats possible, but lack any real motivation to advance the connection, if they did, a 1Gps symmetric connection would be easy, coax has plenty of room for it
Let's say the following, Comcast operated at a faster pace. You now decide between Comcast, providing somewhere around a 250Mbps connection rate, while the other providers are going to be either Satelite, which I shouldn't need to go into detail on, or A/DSL, which is still at it's current limits, because they, too, are not improving their speeds. With all the talk of Comcast being a monopoly, how does the landscape change if you have to choose between absolute shitty internet, and an awesome alternative?
A lot of infrustructure improvement is needed to accomplish the goals people request. It's not a simple upgrade of internal hardware and efficiency. Comcast started up on the east coast and bought up companies as it grew, taking over those companies infrastructure in the meantime. Is Comcast a perfect company? Of course not. I don't agree with a lot of the politics, net neutrality, and the like, but I do know that I work to provide the best of the services we have available for people, and in a lot of areas we are the best. And for that I am proud of.
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I guess I would ask what your solution is. Reclassify as a utilty? Ok, stability improves, but now you're charged based on usage. Is that your solution? If you want fast internet with unlimited usage then that's not going to exist in America, we're a country based on providing services and charging based on the quantity of them. Supply and demand.
Or maybe it takes a fuck ton of time to build appropriate infrastructure to provide it to the masses. You can't just dig up entire cities to provide it overnight.You may also have noticed that there's only two groups that can really offer incumbent ISPs a challenge are the following:
1) Google fiber
2) Local government
3) Other incumbent ISPs
In the case of Google, they are rolling out this service at a comparatively glacial pace. They have the cash reserves to float this potentially unprofitable venture, but they're not interested in rousing the ire of their existing competition by coming out strong.
As a company, I wouldn't spend the money to provide services to a small population either if it's not going to make the money back in returns. Many of those areas are already serviced by other cable companies too like Charter, Cox, etc. In that case, then I'm not sure what the problem is, people are already fighting the Comcast buying TWC, and they don't even compete in the same markets.Local governments on the other hand have a vested interest in quality network infrastructure, as they are more immediately answerable to their populations. Where ISPs don't actually serve large parts of the US because it's not profitable, cities like Longmont in your example have the capital to implement a system that people want, but corporate infrastructure is either poorly served, or doesnt exist. You'll notice that some ISPs have taken up lawsuits against cities who have done this, not because they're losing that city's market share, but because allowing public infrastructure of any sort sets legal precedent for a nationwide public carrier, and by possible extension, regulation as a title II service.
I'm almost curious who your provider is then. Stability could always be improved, but there's a lot that goes into it. While currently a multimedia corporation like Comcast focuses a substantial amount on innovation for all of their services, that would shift from that to stability, which would cost them more in the long run, despite if they reclassified as a utility and charged on usage.While i admit i'm inclined to suspect the worst of any ISP, It's hard to deny that the service provided presently is well below what they are capable of, both in terms of actual internet access, as well as customer service and pricing. And the monopoly-friendly nature of the industry leads to a number of fairly suspect operations, like some of my local ISPs who are soon going to implement a 10-15% price increase for all service tiers, while each tier can expect an actual speed increase of roughly 5%.
Currently paying 72 (soon to be 90) for 12D 4U (Soon to be 14D ??U)