The OFFICIAL DISH / HBO Thread

[Claude Greiner]

I know this is immediately affecting satellite customers on Dish, but I think this is the beginnings of the net neutrality struggle. There is a reason that internet providers are gobbling up content providers and delivery systems. AT&T buys DirecTV and Time Warner. Comcast buys Universal/NBC. Look for Disney to buy an internet provider eventually. They want to control your content from beginning to end.

I wouldn't be surprised, that in the near future, AT&T will move that if you have an internet provider other than AT&T, it will cost extra to watch their content using HBO Now. Or you can only watch in standard def from other providers. This will be a move to force people to buy their internet service to see their products.

I hope this is not the case, but I completely see AT&T doing it. Removing HBO from the only competing satellite provider is the first step.

If this shines a bad light on the AT&T/Time Warner merger for the Justice Department.....so be it!

Yes...All providers should be concerned.

Actually it’s going to be the other way around.

If you have AT&T internet, they won’t count HBO towards your data cap.

If you have Comcast for example, you can still watch HBO, but it will count towards your cap.

What’s going to happen is internet providers are not going to care about speed, but rather DATA.

They may offer “unlimited data” for everything else, except for streaming video.

You get AT&T, and if you use AT&T as your streaming provider, it does not count towards your data and you can get a cheaper plan with lower data caps.

If you have Comcast internet and want to get Directv now, you can but your data is capped unless you buy more or subscribe to a bigger bucket.

This is how the internet providers are going to get their video customers back.

Eventually we will see Directv now, and whatever Comcast and Spectrum offer as the 3 main streaming providers.

I can tell you right now that Comcast, AT&T and Spectrum are tired of their “internet only” customers who want cheap internet so they can stream with other providers.

Unless Dish Gets their 5G Network up and running for Sling customers, Spectrum, AT&T and Comcast will be the first to put them out of business when the time is right.

 

[glynnp]

.
Unless Dish Gets their 5G Network up and running for Sling customers, Spectrum, AT&T and Comcast will be the first to put them out of business when the time is right.

Better hurry up and get that $2.8 million.

Demand cash only

 

[Cheddar_Head]

Please take the Internet Neutrality discussion to the Pit where it belongs along with all the other political BS.

 

[TheKrell]

The internet is controlled by countless companies all over the world. Far cry from any monopoly.

How many broadband companies can you access? DSL has been left in the dust and it's either a cable TV company alone, or in some cases (such as mine) a fiber company too. Nobody else is competitive. I can chose from Cox, or Verizon/FIOS, but that's it. This competition is inadequate to keep my costs low, since they look at each other's price tiers and match them.

 

[Cheddar_Head]

How many broadband companies can you access? DSL has been left in the dust and it's either a cable TV company alone, or in some cases (such as mine) a fiber company too. Nbody else is competitive. I can chose from Cox, or Verizon/FIOS, but that's it. This competition is inadequate to keep my costs low, since they look at each other's price tiers and match them.

Count yourself lucky to have two broadband choices, for me its 10mb DSL or satellite, LTE isn't even an option where I'm at.

 

[kc1ih]

Instead of hammering Dish into accepting the programmer's sometimes outlandish demands, how about hammering our Congress critters to fix the laws governing retransmission: Take Action and Write Congress

This has nothing to do with retransmission, which applies only to OTA channels. Since HBO is not transmitted in the first place, there's nothing to retransmitt.

 

[NYDutch]

I was using retransmission more generically than just HBO, but yes, Dish does retransmit the signal that HBO supplies to them. We don't receive it directly from HBO.

 

[mwdxer1]

How many broadband companies can you access? DSL has been left in the dust and it's either a cable TV company alone, or in some cases (such as mine) a fiber company too. Nobody else is competitive. I can chose from Cox, or Verizon/FIOS, but that's it. This competition is inadequate to keep my costs low, since they look at each other's price tiers and match them.

DSL was left in the dust out here, as they would never run a mile down the road to this cluster of houses. We were promised over and over again like , yes we will be there in 6 months, or it is coming. Only to find out they did not do a thing. DSL is available one mile in each direction (Hy 101-Oregon). I got ticked off as Charter (Spectrum) started about 2012 with high speed. I did not want to go back to cable for anything, after dropping it in 1985 when I installed my big dish. But I had to. I am not sure if satellite internet was available then, but there was no other choice other that Spectrum. I would have been with DSL if they would have been honest. By the way, there is still no DSL here after another 6 years.

 

[edisonprime]

How many broadband companies can you access? DSL has been left in the dust and it's either a cable TV company alone, or in some cases (such as mine) a fiber company too. Nobody else is competitive. I can chose from Cox, or Verizon/FIOS, but that's it. This competition is inadequate to keep my costs low, since they look at each other's price tiers and match them.

Well, the reason for that is because of government as well. The reason is is the city contracts they have with the providers. If government stepped out of the way more, more providers could roll in. The only time government (in my opinion) should step in is to stop monopolistic mergers.

 

[Juan]

Actually it’s going to be the other way around.

If you have AT&T internet, they won’t count HBO towards your data cap.

If you have Comcast for example, you can still watch HBO, but it will count towards your cap.

What’s going to happen is internet providers are not going to care about speed, but rather DATA.

They may offer “unlimited data” for everything else, except for streaming video.

You get AT&T, and if you use AT&T as your streaming provider, it does not count towards your data and you can get a cheaper plan with lower data caps.

If you have Comcast internet and want to get Directv now, you can but your data is capped unless you buy more or subscribe to a bigger bucket.

This is how the internet providers are going to get their video customers back.

Eventually we will see Directv now, and whatever Comcast and Spectrum offer as the 3 main streaming providers.

I can tell you right now that Comcast, AT&T and Spectrum are tired of their “internet only” customers who want cheap internet so they can stream with other providers.

Unless Dish Gets their 5G Network up and running for Sling customers, Spectrum, AT&T and Comcast will be the first to put them out of business when the time is right.

As long as you watch HBO on VOD via Comcast it will not count towards any datacap

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[TheKrell]

The reason is is the city contracts they have with the providers. If government stepped out of the way more, more providers could roll in.

Why would you suppose anybody would enter a market already occupied by a cable company, and build out a whole new cable plant? That is very expensive and companies generally won't do it unless they gain monopoly power over a community. Yes, it still occasionally happens. Google Fiber comes to mind, as does FIOS in my neck of the woods. But neither Google nor Verizon are cabling up everybody. So for most of us, a monopoly cable provider is the only game in town.

Now, if cable companies were nice, they would allow other firms to use their cable for a small carriage fee. Is there a single cable company anywhere in the country that allows other firms to do that? In the case of POTS, the government is the only reason any CLEC exists at all. But twisted pair is just no longer competitive.

 

[dishdude]

Why would you suppose anybody would enter a market already occupied by a cable company, and build out a whole new cable plant? That is very expensive and companies generally won't do it unless they gain monopoly power over a community. Yes, it still occasionally happens. Google Fiber comes to mind, as does FIOS in my neck of the woods. But neither Google nor Verizon are cabling up everybody. So for most of us, a monopoly cable provider is the only game in town.

Now, if cable companies were nice, they would allow other firms to use their cable for a small carriage fee. Is there a single cable company anywhere in the country that allows other firms to do that? In the case of POTS, the government is the only reason any CLEC exists at all. But twisted pair is just no longer competitive.

I was all excited when Google announced fiber in Phoenix, but they ended up pulling out. FIOS is stopping their rollout in the NE as well, it's just too expensive to run fiber to each house. I think wireless is the future.

 

[EarDemon]

DSL was left in the dust out here, as they would never run a mile down the road to this cluster of houses. We were promised over and over again like , yes we will be there in 6 months, or it is coming. Only to find out they did not do a thing. DSL is available one mile in each direction (Hy 101-Oregon). I got ticked off as Charter (Spectrum) started about 2012 with high speed. I did not want to go back to cable for anything, after dropping it in 1985 when I installed my big dish. But I had to. I am not sure if satellite internet was available then, but there was no other choice other that Spectrum. I would have been with DSL if they would have been honest. By the way, there is still no DSL here after another 6 years.

Why would anyone even want DSL?

DSL is a dead technology. It’s the new dial up (and has been for some time) and the telcos know it, that’s why they are putting zero effort into maintaining it and upgrading it and even abandoning it.

Verizon, as much as dislike them, is probably the biggest, most successful and most advanced telecommunications company in the country. They max out at 15 Mb for DSL, and that’s only in a handful of lucky areas. I think 7-10 Mbps is the norm. The only experience I have with DSL is with my aunt. She lives around the corner from me and can get a whopping 3 Mb from Verizon DSL via a RT. If not for a row of pine trees, I could see her house from my back yard, and I cannot get DSL period, not that I would want it.

While AT&T and Century Link have made some half-assed attempts with VDSL, their max speeds offerings are still generally slower then the slowest speeds offered by cablecos. Verizon and AT&T only care around their wireless divisions and that will keep them afloat. Combined with the amount of fiber they own that provides backhaul not only for their own wireless services, but the backhaul for their competitors as well, even though around here nearly all fiber backhaul for cell sites is provided by Charter, I would imagine there are a lot of Sprint and T-Mobile cell sites around the Country using Verizon and AT&T. Companies like Century Link, Frontier and Windstream who are not in the cellular game will have a very difficult time surviving. Frontier probably has the best shot because of Verizon spinning off all of their Texas, Florida and California properties to them.

Think about this, Verizon the most prestigious telco in the country essentially gave up doing business in three of the biggest states in the US. Speaks volumes on the future of telco delivered phone and internet doesn’t it? They know they cannot compete with cable and the ROI on residential fiber just isn't there so they got out while the getting was good.

I spend a lot of time looking up and researching this stuff, while not prevenient, it’s not completely uncommon for folks who only have low speed DSL as a landbased options to also have either cellular or satellite as well. DSL for every day surfing and gaming due to the low latency and cellular or satellite for the raw speed of downloading larger files. I’ve hit 70 Mbps to 100 Mbps on rural towers on Sprint and T-Mobile LTE, HughesNet Gen 5 while rated at 25 Mbps, can see speeds up to 50 Mbps. Even with the caps, if you need to download a 3 or 4 GB file, it’s much faster to temporarily switch over to another WAN connection and download your file in minutes rather than hours or even days on DSL.

 

[EarDemon]

Why would you suppose anybody would enter a market already occupied by a cable company, and build out a whole new cable plant? That is very expensive and companies generally won't do it unless they gain monopoly power over a community. Yes, it still occasionally happens. Google Fiber comes to mind, as does FIOS in my neck of the woods. But neither Google nor Verizon are cabling up everybody. So for most of us, a monopoly cable provider is the only game in town.

Now, if cable companies were nice, they would allow other firms to use their cable for a small carriage fee. Is there a single cable company anywhere in the country that allows other firms to do that? In the case of POTS, the government is the only reason any CLEC exists at all. But twisted pair is just no longer competitive.

Time Warner Cable was forced into doing that as part of the AOL merger in the early 2000s, well before Time Warner Inc spun off Time Warner Cable into its own company. You could get Earthlink over Time Warner’s infrastructure. The few people I knew that had it didn’t have it for very long. When problems arose, the finger pointing game started. Earthlink would blame TWC, TWC would blame Earthlink.

If I was in charge of a cableco and a competitor wanted to ride on my lines, I’d tell them to get lost and go to hell. Invest in your own infrastructure and permits! RCN and WOW have taken that risk and from the sounds of it have been very successful cable overbuilders.

Not sure why everyone was all excited about Google Fiber. I am a huge Android fan, but Google is a terrible company and has poor follow through on most things. Google Fiber was never going to be the end all be all most people hoped it would be. Look at their past history. They tend to throw things at the wall and sees what sticks or just flat out abandon projects after the initial hype dies down. Google has been in the fiber ISP business for almost 8 years now and they only serve select areas of select markets. Their third market was Provo and that only happened because they bought out the existing fiber provider.

Google’s products and services primarily fall into two categories:

Failures (and they have a TON of them) due to abandonment like Google Buzz, Google Plus, Google Glass, Inbox

Successes due to buyout like Google Earth from Nvidia/KeyHole, Voice from Grand Central, Android from Andy Rubin and crew, Nest labs

Google’s business is data mining and advertising, they are not an ISP (Google Fiber) they are not a cellular provider (Project Fi), they mine your data for targeted advertisement. The only reason they are in those other businesses is to mine data.

 

[Juan]

Why would anyone even want DSL?

DSL is a dead technology. It’s the new dial up (and has been for some time) and the telcos know it, that’s why they are putting zero effort into maintaining it and upgrading it and even abandoning it.

Verizon, as much as dislike them, is probably the biggest, most successful and most advanced telecommunications company in the country. They max out at 15 Mb for DSL, and that’s only in a handful of lucky areas. I think 7-10 Mbps is the norm. The only experience I have with DSL is with my aunt. She lives around the corner from me and can get a whopping 3 Mb from Verizon DSL via a RT. If not for a row of pine trees, I could see her house from my back yard, and I cannot get DSL period, not that I would want it.

While AT&T and Century Link have made some half-assed attempts with VDSL, their max speeds offerings are still generally slower then the slowest speeds offered by cablecos. Verizon and AT&T only care around their wireless divisions and that will keep them afloat. Combined with the amount of fiber they own that provides backhaul not only for their own wireless services, but the backhaul for their competitors as well, even though around here nearly all fiber backhaul for cell sites is provided by Charter, I would imagine there are a lot of Sprint and T-Mobile cell sites around the Country using Verizon and AT&T. Companies like Century Link, Frontier and Windstream who are not in the cellular game will have a very difficult time surviving. Frontier probably has the best shot because of Verizon spinning off all of their Texas, Florida and California properties to them.

Think about this, Verizon the most prestigious telco in the country essentially gave up doing business in three of the biggest states in the US. Speaks volumes on the future of telco delivered phone and internet doesn’t it? They know they cannot compete with cable and the ROI on residential fiber just isn't there so they got out while the getting was good.

I spend a lot of time looking up and researching this stuff, while not prevenient, it’s not completely uncommon for folks who only have low speed DSL as a landbased options to also have either cellular or satellite as well. DSL for every day surfing and gaming due to the low latency and cellular or satellite for the raw speed of downloading larger files. I’ve hit 70 Mbps to 100 Mbps on rural towers on Sprint and T-Mobile LTE, HughesNet Gen 5 while rated at 25 Mbps, can see speeds up to 50 Mbps. Even with the caps, if you need to download a 3 or 4 GB file, it’s much faster to temporarily switch over to another WAN connection and download your file in minutes rather than hours or even days on DSL.

Verizon dissolved their wireless division are now focusing on fixed wireless..which is hybrid landline/wireless service

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[ncted]

DSL wouldn't be my first choice, but it is still a viable solution with tech like G.Fast: G.fast - Wikipedia

 

[patmurphey]

Why would anyone even want DSL?

DSL is a dead technology...

DSL works fine here at 25mbs, compared to my local monopoly cable company's expensive options. Works fine for 4k streaming.

 

[navychop]

I wonder how many folks still use dial up modems- and how many sites support that.


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[EarDemon]

DSL wouldn't be my first choice, but it is still a viable solution with tech like G.Fast: G.fast - Wikipedia

Yes, I am aware of G.fast. It is not widely adopted and has no signs of ever becoming mainstream. Proving my point that DSL is a dead. The technology exists to make the service better, but no one is investing in it or taking advantage. On the flip side, cable companies deployed DOCSIS 3 a decade ago and have continued to add bonded downstream frequencies and remove analog cable channels and have been actively deploying D3.1 over the past two years and full duplex 3.1 is in development. The technology is progressing the providers are taking advantage of it. The same can't be said for DSL, at least not in the US.

DSL works fine here at 25mbs, compared to my local monopoly cable company's expensive options. Works fine for 4k streaming.

25 Mb? I haven't had a connection that slow at home in 10 years. I have 25 Mbps enterprise fiber at work, I know how slow it can be. If I have to download a multi gigabyte file I'll download it on my phone and then copy it off to my PC. I get 80 Mb from T-Mobile in my office. I don't care if cable is a monopoly or not. They offer gigabit service, the next fastest thing I can get is HughesNet, which I also have and if I can get 15 Mbps in the middle of the night, that's a win. I can't be mad at the cable company, monopoly or not for offering some of the fastest residential internet available on the planet.

If 25 Mb works for you, that's great. But it doesn't for me in this day and age. I can't speak for the other big cablecos, but Charter's starting speed is at least 100 Mbps in most areas with some areas and the eventual standard at 200 Mbps. From a perspective of pure raw speed, DSL cannot touch cable.

I wonder how many folks still use dial up modems- and how many sites support that.


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In a previous life my job had me on two of three area Indian Reservations. There is no cable or DSL on Indian land. There are no cell towers either, although Verizon seems to have them strategically placed outside of the reservation to maximize coverage, but there were still miles and miles of dead spots or 1X at best. The Exede/Viasat beam that covers my area is closed for new customers. For most it's either HughesNet or dial up.

This is going back when Spaceway 3 was mainstream and Gen 4 was launched but in it's infancy. Due to how congested HugheNet is during prime time, most people would drop HugheNet after their contract was up and get $10 dial up. The thought was why pay Hughes $60 or $70 a month for something that most of the time is not much better than $10 or $15 dial up.

 

[ncted]

I had 25Mbps VDSL2 for years at my household of 2 adults. About the only thing I couldn't do was watch UHD streams reliably. When I switched to 100Mb Spectrum DOCSIS 3 service, I really couldn't tell the difference aside from upload speeds (2Mbps vs 10Mbps), and lower latency (15ms vs 30ms for Spectrum). When I moved and got symmetrical 50Mbps fiber service, it was a bit snappier due to lower latency than either DSL or DOCSIS, but otherwise very similar. Certainly, cable internet is way ahead of DSL these days, but that is largely due to companies like Verizon and AT&T deciding to go wireless rather than investing in their copper infrastructure. The worst part of that is the lack of competition. While I have 3 wired Internet options where I live, most people do not.