Spectrum being kicked out of New York State question about ISP

So the PSC extorted $12 million from Charter.

In a sense, but only after Charter took a bunch of money from the State and Federal government to extend service to new locations, and then didn't do what they agreed to. My brother still doesn't have access to broadband in Cooperstown.
 
So the PSC extorted $12 million from Charter.

Charter stole first and always. New York finally had enough of their empty promises, and held their feet to the fire. Exactly the way ALL local areas should do the same.

It's way beyond time for these Robber Baron cable companies to be held responsible for high costs, and poor service.
 
My feeling is, if they weren't interested in serving the areas they agreed to serve, why not just say so, and let someone else come in and get the money to extend service to those areas?
 
My feeling is, if they weren't interested in serving the areas they agreed to serve, why not just say so, and let someone else come in and get the money to extend service to those areas?

Because these companies are counting on grabbing all the money they can, and hoping that they never have to provide good service at a good price. Up to now, it's worked out pretty good for them. Since they are basically all monopolies, they'd been able to do so for a very long time as people had no other recourse for service. People are getting smarter, there's more competition out there, and are finally fed up with empty promises after being essentially stolen from for years upon years.
 

Yeah, it’s all financial penalties.

Notice they didn’t say what areas they had to add 145,000 customers and apparently they have half of that number accounted for already.

So they go in, find the biggest concentration of homes not served and start with those areas first.

If they fall short, it actually might be better to pay the $2500 penalty per home, then actually run wires to some of these homes.

The government needs to step in like they did back in the 30’s like they did with the power and eventually phone companies and require every home to be served.

It’s just bull$hit that these providers pick and choose their areas based on population and how much money people have.

Never thought I would have 3 gig providers in my back yard!
 
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My feeling is, if they weren't interested in serving the areas they agreed to serve, why not just say so, and let someone else come in and get the money to extend service to those areas?

Because the areas are too spread out to be profitable.

Many of these areas people either have satellite Tv or another internet solution such as viasat or a cellular hot spot.

So they spend thousands to wire some of these homes, and all they are going to get out of it is a $45 internet connection. That doesn’t even guarantee every home.

Granted they will win some over from Directv or Dish, but a majority will want to keep what they have and want internet only.

If we didn’t have satellite Tv, a lot of these under served areas would have been wired years ago.

The other issue was that the government about 8 or 9 years ago had the recovery act that provided millions of dollars to ISP’s to provide service to under served areas.

All this did was allow Hughesnet rapidly expand their customer base at the governments expense.

Back in the day I could do 40 hughesnet activations per month.

After the recovery act, and everyone getting hit with letters and direct mail we are lucky to get 1-2 activations per month for satellite internet
 
Because the areas are too spread out to be profitable.

Many of these areas people either have satellite Tv or another internet solution such as viasat or a cellular hot spot.

So they spend thousands to wire some of these homes, and all they are going to get out of it is a $45 internet connection. That doesn’t even guarantee every home.

Granted they will win some over from Directv or Dish, but a majority will want to keep what they have and want internet only.

If we didn’t have satellite Tv, a lot of these under served areas would have been wired years ago.

The other issue was that the government about 8 or 9 years ago had the recovery act that provided millions of dollars to ISP’s to provide service to under served areas.

All this did was allow Hughesnet rapidly expand their customer base at the governments expense.

Back in the day I could do 40 hughesnet activations per month.

After the recovery act, and everyone getting hit with letters and direct mail we are lucky to get 1-2 activations per month for satellite internet

I think primestar31 got it right. It is mostly greed. In NY, if no ISP is interested in an area, the State gives money to the county to run fiber, which can then be resold/leased to small ISPs. The problem is, Spectrum/TWC said they would serve areas, so the money didn't go to the counties, but then Spectrum didn't actually serve all the addresses they said they would. This is what happened to my brother. Spectrum service is available less than 1 mile down the road, near Omegang Brewery. There are about 20 households that are not served between there and Milford. TWC/Spectrum told those people they would get get service years ago, but it never arrived. People use a combination of satellite, hotspot and WISP, all of which are not technically broadband. Spectrum got the money from the state, and the county didn't. I guess we'll see if the new LEO internet will actually be able to compete enough to finally serve these people because I am not sure Spectrum will ever bother, just like I am not sure Spectrum will bother to run enough backhaul to give my parents speeds above 30Mb in Morris, despite them paying the same as I would for 200Mb where I live.