Funny coincidence: The same week that the city started running conduit in our neighborhood for municipal fiber, a Xfinity "account manager" came to our door and left a handwritten note saying great customer service was their goal and to call him if there was ever a service problem!
Funny how legit competition makes them sit up and take notice...
At some point after that, Xfinity dropped their gigabit service level from $190 to $70/mo (IIRC).
In theory we have competition, but the alternatives are: Century Link 40Mbps DSL, or Rise Broadband terrestrial wireless (which hasn't proven a very good alternative for my coworkers).
I think antitrust jurisprudence in the US is far too heavily focused on consumer prices to the detriment of all of the “intangible” benefits of increased competition. (Thanks, Chicago Schoool!) Things like quality, customer service, responsiveness, and even transparency and data privacy are important aspects of competition and very real benefits to consumers but are completely overlooked in the antitrust analysis.
I don’t care if I’m paying the “market rate” if I’m having to constantly argue on the phone about charges or to adjust my schedule to accommodate an 8 hour service window. Those negative consumer externalities wouldn’t exist (or would at least be far less frequent) if the market were more competitive.
I use (10mbps by now, I think) DSL exactly so I won't have to give the dickheads a penny. I do fine, websites themselves are much slower than my connection.
Funny how legit competition makes them sit up and take notice...
At some point after that, Xfinity dropped their gigabit service level from $190 to $70/mo (IIRC).
In theory we have competition, but the alternatives are: Century Link 40Mbps DSL, or Rise Broadband terrestrial wireless (which hasn't proven a very good alternative for my coworkers).