31 Years of the Digest ... founded August 21, 1981
Add this Digest to your personal
or 
The Telecom Digest for March 20, 2013
Volume 32 : Issue 67 : "text" Format
====== 31 years of TELECOM Digest -- Founded August 21, 1981 ======
|
Telecom and VOIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) Digest for the
Internet. All contents here are copyrighted by Bill Horne and
the individual writers/correspondents. Articles may be used in other
journals or newsgroups, provided the writer's name and the Digest are
included in the fair use quote. By using any name or email address
included herein for any reason other than responding to an article
herein, you agree to pay a hundred dollars to that person, or email address
owner.
Addresses herein are not to be added to any mailing list, nor to be
sold or given away without the explicit written consent of the owner of
that address. Chain letters, viruses, porn, spam, and miscellaneous junk
are definitely unwelcome.
We must fight spam for the same reason we fight crime: not because we
are naive enough to believe that we will ever stamp it out, but because
we do not want the kind of world that results when no one stands
against crime. - Geoffrey Welsh
See the bottom of this issue for subscription and archive details
and the name of our lawyer, and other stuff of interest.
|
Date: Tue, 19 Mar 2013 23:26:30 -0500
From: Neal McLain <nmclain@annsgarden.com>
To: telecomdigestmoderator.remove-this@and-this-too.telecom-digest.org.
Subject: Re: Verizon's Latest Plan For Cable Fees Could Lower Your Cable Bill -- Eventually
Message-ID: <51493A76.1070100@annsgarden.com>
Bill Horne <bill@horneQRM.net wrote:
> Verizon's Latest Plan For Cable Fees Could Lower Your Cable Bill -- Eventually
>
> By Alexis Kleinman
>
> What if, instead of paying for all of the hundreds of channels that
> your cable provider offers when you sign up, you could choose exactly
> which ones you want? That's definitely a dream of most cable
> subscribers, riled by ever-high fees. And while Verizon isn't ready to
> start offering a-la-carte channels, a new plan of theirs, reported in
> The Wall Street Journal, could take us one step closer to making that
> dream a reality.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/03/18/verizon-cable-fees_n_2901271.html
Good luck with that. I worked in the retail end of CATV industry for
25 years and I've been writing about it for another dozen years since
I retired. "The dream of most cable subscribers" is also the dream of
many CATV retailers.
Retailers are companies that sell video services to end consumers;
e.g., franchised cable TV companies, non-franchised "private cable"
companies, telephone companies (Verizon FiOS, AT&T U-Verse), and
satellite TV companies (DirecTV and Dish Network).
Programmers are companies that produce video programming and provide
it to retailers. Programmers fall into three categories: - Television
broadcast stations. - PEG (Public Access, Educational Access,
Government Access) channels. - Non-broadcast channels.
In any discussion of a-la-carte, the programmers hold the winning
hand:
- Broadcast station licensees have a legal right to force retailers to
carry their signals on the basic tier.
- Broadcast licensees have federally-mandated geographic markets
("Designated Market Area" or DMA). In any other industry, this
arrangement would be called a "geographic monopoly." In the
upside-down world of television broadcasting, it's called "consumer
protection."
- CATV franchising authorities have a legal right to force retailers
to carry PEG channels on the basic tier.
- Any programmer that owns non-broadcast programming and a broadcast
station licensee has a legal right to force retailers to carry the
non-broadcast programming on the basic tier as a condition for
granting retransmission consent for the broadcast signal.
As I've noted before in this space, if Verizon or any other retailer
wants to offer programming a-la-carte, it has to start by getting
Congress to repeal the grotesquely misnamed "Cable Television Consumer
Protection and Competition Act of 1992" and companion legislation
governing satellite retailers.
All that said, I have some doubt that a-la-carte would actually lower
retail prices anyway. My narrative about that is at:
http://theoldcatvequipmentmuseum.org/320/321/index.html
Neal McLain
Date: Wed, 20 Mar 2013 01:25:50 -0400
From: Bill Horne <bill@horneQRM.net>
To: telecomdigestmoderator.remove-this@and-this-too.telecom-digest.org.
Subject: Verizon, Cablevision emerge as unlikely allies
Message-ID: <20130320052550.GA4366@telecom.csail.mit.edu>
Verizon, Cablevision emerge as unlikely allies of cable-TV customers fed up with bundling
By Cecilia Kang, Published: March 19
Cable viewers have long complained about paying ever-higher bills for
hundreds of channels they don't want to watch. Now, in a twist, some
cable companies are beginning to agree.
Verizon and Cablevision are publicly pressing media companies that own
the programming to stop pushing them to distribute unwanted channels
and instead offer cable bundles based on what viewers actually watch.
If successful, the efforts could lead to cheaper options for consumers
and a sea-change in how the television industry has done business -
and protected its profits - for more than two decades.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/technology/verizon-cablevision-emerge-as-unlikely-allies-of-cable-customers-fed-up-with-bundling/2013/03/19/11fe0dac-900d-11e2-9cfd-36d6c9b5d7ad_story.html
-or-
http://goo.gl/4CYVE
--
Bill Horne
(Remove QRM from my address to write to me directly)
Sometimes I feel as cold as steel
Broken like I'm never 'gonna heal
- Lady Antebellum
TELECOM Digest is an electronic journal devoted mostly to telecom-
munications topics. It is circulated anywhere there is email, in
addition to Usenet, where it appears as the moderated newsgroup
'comp.dcom.telecom'.
TELECOM Digest is a not-for-profit, mostly non-commercial educational
service offered to the Internet by Bill Horne. All the contents
of the Digest are compilation-copyrighted. You may reprint articles in
some other media on an occasional basis, but please attribute my work
and that of the original author.
The Telecom Digest is moderated by Bill Horne.
This Digest is the oldest continuing e-journal about telecomm-
unications on the Internet, having been founded in August, 1981 and
published continuously since then. Our archives are available for
your review/research. We believe we are the oldest e-zine/mailing list
on the internet in any category!
URL information: http://telecom-digest.org
Copyright (C) 2013 TELECOM Digest. All rights reserved.
Our attorney is Bill Levant, of Blue Bell, PA.
Finally, the Digest is funded by gifts from generous readers such as
yourself who provide funding in amounts deemed appropriate. Your help
is important and appreciated. A suggested donation of fifty dollars
per year per reader is considered appropriate. See our address above.
Please make at least a single donation to cover the cost of processing
your name to the mailing list.
All opinions expressed herein are deemed to be those of the
author. Any organizations listed are for identification purposes only
and messages should not be considered any official expression by the
organization.
End of The Telecom Digest (2 messages)
Return to Archives ** Older Issues