You have probably seen the ad with a shot of cash piled on a table while a voice tells you how the evil cable companies don’t want you to have choice and don’t want millions of Floridians to save millions of dollars on their cable bills. The commercial ends with “Paid for by TV4US” and a url www.wewantchoice.com
TV4US is an astroturf – a front group paid for by AT&T that makes advertising that looks like it’s made by consumer groups. AT&T is building a VDSL based video distribution service called Uverse to compete with Comcast and instead of negotiating franchise contracts with every town they, as Comcast had to, they are lobbying Florida and other states to let them have video franchise contracts directly from the state, skipping towns, and deploying their service faster.
This would be all fine and dandy, the ad makes you think that more choice equals lower fees, except that AT&T has stated their Uverse service won’t be competing with cable companies on price. Thus the money argument is rendered useless. AT&T wants elimination of city franchise commissions in favor of state ones and Comcast doesn’t want the competition and doesn’t like AT&T getting off easy.
By the way Comcast also has a front group running ads on local tv here in South Florida and other places, I forget what their name is but the ad usually runs first then followed by commercial for a Comcast service.
“The notion of competing just on price doesn’t make sense to us,†said Jeff Weber, AT&T’s vice president of product and strategy, who added that the company will not lead on price.
CommonCause.org – Telecom Front Groups and Astroturfing
CommonCause.org – TV4US – ‘corporate money not citizen power’
BroadbandReports – AT&T Won’t Compete on Price
XChangeMag – Evolving the U-verse ecosystem
So Comcast wants to say AT&T is being unfair? Well Comcast and every other cable company has been able to skirt rules in regards to the telephone business. The non-sales tax taxes we pay for a traditional phone and cell phone are not applied to VOIP. Who is a VOIP provider? Comcast! So maybe Comcast and AT&T need to shake hands and leave it alone.
Let me see if I got this right…the phone company which gloried and profited for decades until their monopoly was dismantled is now throwing stones at cable? There is a good reason why the cable companies and phone companies are duking this out in a mudpit. They are both guilty of some shameful anti-customer behavior. BUT…the phone guys are looking to circumvent the local government scrutiny which the cable guys have been subject to for years. Maybe the answer is for all companies providing media services to have to face the cities they serve every five years or so. Cost? Well, last time I checked the markup on HBO is about 400%, so the next argument should be justifying profit vs. obscene profit. Yes…ATT, shut up. And while we’re at it, DirectTV sucks all around. If you have it, you are indirectly subsidizing Fox News and the rest of fascist Murdoch’s empire. I, for one, draw the line at Bart Simpson!!