Photo Credit: Shutterstock, Copyright Lichtmeister
February 14, 2014
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Talk about revenge of the C students! The nation’s biggest telecom
company, Comcast, which took over NBCUniversal a year ago, wants to buy
the second biggest company, Time-Warner Cable, to create an empire of
30-million subscribers. That’s a third of all American homes with cable
for its TV, internet service and telephones.
The merger has to be
approved by federal regulators as being in the public interest and not a
monopoly. How Comcast, the world’s
largest
media company and one of America’s most reviled companies threads that
needle will be a sight to behold. Here are 10 things about its record—on
customer service, profiteering, lobbying and sky-high political
connections—that you may not know.
1. Worst Company In America Lists. It’s bad enough that
both Comcast and Time-Warner are regularly cited on “worst company” lists and are at the
bottom of consumer surveys for subscription television services.
Consumerist,
which ranked it the third worst company in 2013, has a string of
reports describing the numerous ways that Comcast rips off
subscribers—overpromising and underdelivering—including CEO Brian
Roberts’s reply last fall
blaming
his customers for Comcast’s bad reputation, saying that it is noticed
only because a giant company like his gets lots and lots of service
calls.
2. Local Cable Already Is A Monopoly. As
most cable users know, cable companies already are a monopoly. There is
no alternative provider offering the mix of TV, internet and phone in
most locales. The nation’s business press thinks that’s fine and has
lauded Comcast—such as this
Forbes article—for
succeeding “by providing less customer service.” Industry spin like
that has lead to a phenomenon rarely seen in online journalism: torrents
of incredibly
detailed comments describing just how much people despise Comcast and wish there was competition for telecom services.
“Comcast is one of the worst companies in this country,” replied Sandi D to that
Forbespiece,
saying how she spent nine weeks to resolve issues and only got a
response after filing a formal complaint with the Better Business
Bureau. Another writer, Allawash, was billed for data speeds that
Comcast’s equipment wouldn’t deliver, telling
Forbes, “They are
relying on customer’s lack of knowledge to nickel and dime them.”
Commenter Craig Oren said, “Half of the [customer service]
representatives cannot speak English fluently.” Other websites have
dozens and
dozens
of comments following Comcast articles with examples detailing their
lousy experiences with the service, tech support and billing.
3. Their Pricing Is Predatory And Will Become Worse. Like big banks, Comcast is always looking for new fees and charges to top off its pricey monthly cost—which is
four times
as expensive as Europe. Last November, it announced a new $1.50
“broadcast TV fee” would begin in 2014 in addition to the monthly rate,
Consumerist
reported.
“Others, like AT&T and Charter have similar tack-on fees, but
unlike those companies, which have not benefitted in any way from
increased retransmission fees charged by broadcasters, Comcast also
happens to own NBC,” it said, making the point that Comcast already owns
much of the content—such as coverage of the Olympics—that it’s charging
double for.
What will customers receive for this fee? According
to TechDirt.com, more commercials, especially when people are watching
reruns of old TV series. “Basically, Comcast wants to flip the current
advertising system upsides-down and have older episodes of primetime
shows carrying the same commercial load as the most recent episode,” it
reported.
These are examples of why a deal giving Comcast—already America’s
biggest cable company and internet-service provider—more monopoly power
is bad for the public.
4. Comcast’s Contempt for Customers Is More Widespread.It’s
astounding to read what Comcast executives have said about how they
treat customers. Matt Strauss, senior vice-president of video services,
boasted to
The New York Post
in December that their on-demand video service system disables
fast-forwarding through commercials, which frustrates users but earns
Comcast billions more from ad sales. In another example of its greed
trumping the video viewers’ experience,
The Wall Street Journal reports
that it is talking to Netflix about making its shows available to
subscribers, but Comcast won’t give Netflix access to the best-quality
video streaming. “Netflix believes the technology is critical,” the
Journalreported last October, adding, “No deal is imminent.”
5. Comcast’s Antics Include Its Broadband Service.
Comcast isn’t just a TV company. It is a giant internet service
provider, as well as phone company for some people. When it comes to the
internet, TechDirt
reports
that Comcast “is still continuing its stealthy push toward capped
broadband.” Techdirt is referring to charging people by how much data
flows into their homes. The trade journals DSLreports.com said Comcast
recently raised prices in “uncompetitive” rural media markets in Maine
and Georgia. It said, “Augusta locals
tell the local media
they were surprised to suddenly see they had a 300 GB cap and had to
pay $10 for every 50 GB they travel.” Predatory pricing like that is
what
accounts for its $64.76 in revenues in 2013, with $7.1 billion in net profits.
6. Comcast Blames Users For Its Predatory Pricing. As TechDirt
notes,
price gouging in media markets where Comcast is the only provider is
accompanied by more ridiculous industry spin: Comcast “spokespeople
‘informing’ reporters that ‘most people’ don’t use that much data and
that sneaking in usage caps is the ‘fairest’ way to make sure data hogs
don’t use up all the Internet.” TechDirt’s bottom-line: “It’s just a way
to make users pay more for their services.”
7. Comcast says Americans Don’t Want Faster Broadband. That explanation for price gouging is the tip of the distorted public relations iceberg that its top executive roll out. A
Philadelphia Enquirer op-ed
by lobbyist David Cohen touts mediocre broadband speeds by claiming
that few people want anything faster. “The reality is that the United
States is leading the way in speed, reach, and access—and doing so in a
vast, rural nation that poses logistical connectivity challenges unlike
any other country,” he wrote, ignoring the fact that much of world has
far faster and much cheaper internet service. Comcast’s “triple-play”
monthly packages—for TV, internet and phone—
cost from $100 to $200, compared to France, for example,
where it’s $40 a month and download speeds are 10 times faster and upload speeds are 20 times faster.
As Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law Professor Susan Crawford
detailed
in Salon, the broadband service in the U.S.—provided by Comcast and
other telecoms—is far inferior to most of Europe and East Asia. “In a
nutshell, America has a series of regional cable monopolies controlling
the pricing and capacity of fixed high-speed Internet access (and every
other form of data reaching Americans),” she said.
8. Comcast Also Says People Don’t Want Alternatives. In that same
Philadelphia Enquirer op-ed, lobbyist Cohen says that Americans don’t need what a real competitor,
Google Fiber,
is offering—a one-gigabit per second connection via a fiber-optic line.
“Most websites can’t deliver content as fast as current networks move,”
he said, adding, “most U.S. homes have routers that can’t support the
speed that’s already available.” Nowhere in this dig at
Googledoes
Comcast’s lobbyist suggest that his company would upgrade the gear that
it’s put in millions of homes unless user paid more to do it.
“Consumers are demanding faster speeds, though,” TechDirt
countered.
“When someone like Google comes along and offers a gigabit connection
for $30/month, it’s delivering what consumers actually want: higher
speeds and lower prices… Comcast frequently throw(s) data caps into the
mix, which nullifies the positive effects of a speed boost.”
9. Comcast Wants The Next Big Telecom Monopoly.
Comcast’s corporate goal in its pending takeover of Time Warner Cable
goes far beyond subscriptions to television and video and today’s most
popular internet uses. They want to stand like sentries at a toll gate
that prevent people from crossing and using every emerging
broadband-based tool unless they pay its fees. “The cable companies,
with their inherently better bandwidth than phone company DSL lines, are
becoming natural monopolies for wired-line internet access except in
the few places where other providers have installed fiber lines,” wrote
Dan Gillmor in
The Guardian. Every era has its highways. In the late 1800s, it was the railroads and telegraph lines. In the mid-20
th century, it was telephones, highways and broadcast networks. In the early 21
st century, it’s the internet and broadband.
10. Comcast Has Political Friends In The Highest Places. By
any objective standard, Comcast’s proposed takeover of Time Warner is
not the public interest. But there are real reasons to more than suspect
that neither the Federal Communications Commission nor the Department
of Justice will veto the deal, citing anti-monopoly legal standards. The
company’s power and influence is enormous. Last year, after the FCC
approved the deal acquiring NBC Universal, FCC Commissioner Meredith
Baker was
hired
by Comcast. Top lobbyist Cohen held a fundraiser at his home for
President Obama in 2011 netting $1.2 million. And last summer, Obama and
other top White House officials, including Attorney General Eric
Holder—who heads the Justice Department that must approve Comcast’s
merger with Time Warner—vacationed at Comcast CEO Brian Roberts’
Martha’s Vineyard home.
As
The New York Post noted,
“A source told us the reception was ‘very relaxed, with no speeches.
People were sitting out on the terrace.’ Roberts has reportedly been
close to the president for years and endorsed the Affordable Care
Act.”
Steven Rosenfeld covers
democracy issues for AlterNet and is the author of "Count My Vote: A
Citizen's Guide to Voting" (AlterNet Books, 2008).
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