Infographic: Charter Cable's dirty tricks to kill community broadcast

Christopher sez, "We developed an infographic along the lines of 'The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly' to show how Charter Cable is engaging in predatory pricing to kill cable/broadband competition in one of the few places in the US people have a choice. You want to know why we don't have real competition in broadband and cable? Anytime a new entrant builds a better network, these big corporations run them out of town by dropping their rates for crappy cable. If the FTC/FCC bother to act, it will be years from now."

Charter Fights Dirty to Kill Competition in Monticello (Thanks, Christopher!)

I write books. My latest is a YA science fiction novel called Homeland (it's the sequel to Little Brother). More books: Rapture of the Nerds (a novel, with Charlie Stross); With a Little Help (short stories); and The Great Big Beautiful Tomorrow (novella and nonfic). I speak all over the place and I tweet and tumble, too.

MORE: community networks • corporatism • infographic • ripoff

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The Snowden Principle

MrBillWest

Yeah, Charter blows, but it is the only game in town. We only get internet and the most basic of cable and they charge out the nose. But I will give them a piece of my mind and cancel the cable. Who needs TV anyways? My state Reps will get a call too.
Eark_the_Bunny

REGULATIONS! WE DON’T NEED NO STINKIN’ REGULATIONS!
http://disqus.com/Kimmoth/ Kimmo

So, the idea is to get American politicians to do something about a monopoly that has a stranglehold on the hearts and minds of the populace?

Good luck with that…

Congrats to anyone like MrBillWest there who ditches the crap.
http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=1497341775 Noah Haskell Silbert

What does the ‘graphic’ part of this bring to the table, above and beyond the ‘info’ conveyed by the text?
imag

They are trying to get the populace to see the value in paying an extra $40 per month now for long-term savings and local benefit. That’s not easy.
Most Americans have been so successfully indoctrinated into the consumer culture that they will do practically anything to avoid a 5$ fee or charge, no matter the benefit to their community. On the other hand, the purchase of a $700 iPad or an absurdly expensive watch becomes cause for congratulations and envy.

I will be impressed if this organization can successfully convince them to pay more to fight off this attack by Charter.
IronEdithKidd

I’m never suprised to hear about shenanigans being played by Ma & Pa Kettle’s Cable Shack*.

*I had Charter before I had Crapcast. Their dish array was situated under a stand of pine trees. The trees were north and west of the dishes, meaning every time a little wind kicked up, pine baughs landed on the dishes killing a few channels and sometimes the whole collection of channels. If you called to get a credit for your outage, it never materialized on the bill. Asshats.
Lobster

Got to admit, Charter offers me a good price for good internet service and has been very polite to me on the phone. The only annoyance was that they added a few unnecessary steps to their installation process for the sole purpose of making it mandatory (and charging a fee for it). My installation guy literally showed up, made a phone call, and left because I did everything else myself but I didn’t have a tech ID number.

That said, it looks like Charter’s only interested in doing that until they can get away with ripping me off and ignoring me. :(
Jellodyne

Even if FiberNet is losing money, it’s probably a net gain for the city, due to the lower prices the taxpayers are paying Charter — and thus it’s worth continuing to fund enough to keep in business.
http://pulse.yahoo.com/_OAUXAA362EXWLYVMPJOKLFB5JQ Incipient Madness

Makes me glad I live in a place where there’s plenty of fiber optic infrastructure. AT&T U-verse isn’t perfect, but I know it’s being there as a competitor has kept the cable monopolies in line.