FCC to ban cable company exclusivity at apartments

[rallynavvie]

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20071031/media_nm/cable_fcc_dc

Of course AT&T and Time Warner will attempt to overturn the decision, but probably in vain. They state that the ruling will hurt concessions that complex owners have negotiated with cable vendors. I'm not sure which apartments made concessions with exclusive cable deals that benefit their tenants but 100% of those that I polled when trying to find my apartment in Texas had monopolies on their cable, internet, and phone services. Only one of my friends lives at a complex that allows any cable vendor to be used.

Soon I shall have Verizon FiOS and no longer deal with Grande's terrible customer service and bait-and-switch or strongarm upselling BS. In fact from what I hear Grande is forced only on apartment complexes because they promise to maintain the phone and cable hardware and equipment on the cheap for exclusivity rights. I'm guessing they'll go out of business if this FCC ruling passes as it'll force them to provide proper service for the rates that they charge, which are similar or more expensive than most other cable vendors.

[lordsmurf]

Grande Comm is best when you live near the Austin-area headquarters. The further away you get, the more complaints you hear. Most all apartments I ever lived in were on contracts with various companies: Grande, Time Warner, and a few others I've forgotten. The exchange for this contract was usually something like a free T1 line dropped to the complex, for "free" Internet to the tenants. More often, the cable was "free" too, but your rent was much higher than simply having cable paid separately. To make matters worse, the quality was usually so degraded that you might as well not even have it. Strangely enough, I believe it's long been illegal for telephone to have such exclusivity rights, though I could be wrong. I never ran into that.

If you think FiOS is an upgrade to Grande, all I can saying is good luck. FiOS is basically shit on twice per week in every IT, telecomm and PR trade magazine that I've seen in the past year. If it's not service cutting in and out, it's customer service. If it's not that, it's billing. The whole thing seems FUBAR (in all caps). Grande is a smaller company that has a good following, so I doubt this would affect them any more or less than any other provider doing the same thing.

DirecTV and DISH do, or at least have in the past, made contracts with apartments much like cable does. You'll see a standard 18-inch or maybe a 3-foot dish, and it'll have up to a 32-port diplexer splitting it to the building.

Most complexes are unaware of FCC law, even 10 years later, with things such as the right to install a dish for yourself. I doubt this will be any different, and I'm sure there will be pissed off tenants being denied the rights granted them by law.

[thecoalman]

Huh... apartment isn't anything. Cable company here has a lock on the whole municipality. Hopefully same thing happens here as well. I'm a little tired of the no competition. I have comcast and have no complaints except the price, same plan elsewhere is significantly cheaper.

[rallynavvie]

Your experience with Grande vs FiOS are opposite mine

Three of my coworkers picked up FiOS for the internet only. Their excuse was if they missed a show on cable they could grab a torrent later. They've all had almost 0% downtime with their connection and are always pegged at their down/up speeds as they were promised. In fact the one who pays for the really fast connection (I think it's 30 Mb down?) has problems finding hosts that will serve things to him fast enough. However if there are enough seeders he doesn't even second-guess downloading a DVD-sized torrent.

After the good experience with their internet all three picked up TV with FiOS. The only downside is it's tough to use with HTPCs. There's a rumor floating around that one of the STBs has 1394 on it and encodes to MPEG2 in TS structure. Otherwise their TV service has been great, though it doesn't have some of the channel specials like NFL Network which is something I'd really like with my HDTV.

[smearbrick1]

We have the same situation with our cable company in my town. Unfortunately it is owned by some mom and pop company and not a larger provider like ComCast. We are screwed from both ends - poor service and a lousy price.

The only alternative is DSS. When I rented an apartment, the landlord tried to tell us that we couldn't put a DSS on our building. I found out it is actually illegal for them to forbid you from installing a DSS. When I took this nugget of information back to the landlord, they did something completely unexpected; they agreed! As long as I didn't drill any holes, I was allowed to install the DSS.

Until Comcast shows up in my neighborhood and lowers their prices across the board, not for the first 9 months, I will stick with DSS.