Cable television

House of Cards: Season 3 Now Online

If you haven’t been following the antics of Frank Underwood and his rise to power, you’ve been missing one of best dramatic thrillers of the last few years. Frank, played by Kevin Spacey, is one of the most powerful and underhanded men in the US Congress. His dream to be Vice President was ripped from underneath him in the final seconds. But does this man get mad? No. He gets even.

House of Cards is a home-grown effort via Netflix. The first two seasons have been a plethora of shock and excitement. Some of the sexiest, classy ladies have been on board too. Robin Wright (years after The Princess Bride) plays Claire Underwood, Frank’s wife. She’s the wife every powerful man wants. Kate Mara plays a naive reporter who finds close ties to those powerful – perhaps those too powerful for her own good.

Season 1 got us hooked. Season 2 brought about such surprises most of us held our hands to our faces in shock. What does season 3 bring to the table? From the teaser Netflix put out last week there might be some trouble brewing in the Underwood household. Goodbye friends because I’m about to binge watch the entire series. Good luck to my social life.

–Tizz

Oh God No: How to stop a Comcast-Time Warner Cable merger

Friday morning Comcast executives approached the FCC with questions on what hurdles it would face if they pursued a merger with Time Warner Cable. The first thing to understand is cable companies share the lowest customer service ratings of any industry. Why? Probably because of the poor customer service, bandwidth caps, and outright denial that customers want fast internet speeds.

The thought of two of the least customer centric companies in America merging into one super Goliath of crappy service should be a scary thing to many. The two companies have a near duopoly on the cable market in our country yet have been known to have secret, sneaky ways of trying to keep a monopoly; TWC gets some areas, and Comcast gets others. “We won’t step on your toes if you don’t step on ours.”

What’s wrong with that? Less competition means higher costs, more absurd fees, and less incentive to progress. That all sounds like things we want, right? Wrong. The FCC has it’s work cut out for them over the holiday weekend. This is a good opportunity for the new chairman Tom Wheeler to prove pundits wrong and put the hammer down for the American people. Tom Wheeler used to work as a lobbyist for the cable industry so it’s fair to be a little concerned.

In 2011, T-Mobile and AT&T tried a merger and the FCC blocked them. That’s spurred fierce competition in the wireless spectrum as T-Mobile has revamped it’s Uncarrier initiative to provide more flexible and less expensive plans, as well as other features such as free internet for tablet users. This is a perfect example of why competition is a benefit to the rest of us.

With new gaming consoles like the Xbox One, the Playstation 4, tablets in 34% of households, and smartphone adoption rate in the US above 90% so many devices are now connected and rely on a consistent. Bandwidth caps will just mean more cost for less internet access.

-Tizz

You Hate Your Cable Provider… And They Don’t Care.

The cable industry has been getting worse and worse customer service scores. Your provider is even likely to be on the list if 5 worst companies to deal with. You would think that when 40% of your customers are upset you would do something about it, right? Not in this case, where they can rake you over the coals and charge you exorbitant amounts for service and there’s not much you can do about it. As an industry, they’ve given a proverbial middle finger to consumers as they know we have limited options. So what can we do about it? Read on to find out.

The cost to provide internet and phone service has been getting less and less over the years, yet our bills have been getting bigger. It’s due to the limited number of options you have in choosing a provider in this country. In reality, there are monopolies growing. Don’t worry, the government has ways of squashing those in favor of public interest, right? Wrong. The top providers have worked around that by putting into effect ‘private understandings’ to stay out of each others’ areas. If there is no competition, the consumers will have to pay whatever price is asked. If they’re the only high-speed internet provider available, then those customer service scores really don’t matter. Why change? They’re pissing you off and overcharging you, and laughing about it.

Need more evidence? How about AT&T who recently added a fee to your bill that’s expected to make them $500-600 Million each year. Comcast once held title of “Worst Customer Service” but instead of fixing things, they just changed their name to “Xfinity” and hoped you’d forget. Just look at the responses Comcast gives its customers. Time Warner Cable is selling packages that go up in price and go down in speed. Don’t expect the government to crack down, because each of the above companies have lobbyists which fill the pockets of government with cold hard cash.

Our only hope is companies like Google Fiber to come alone and change things. While it’s highly unlikely that will happen anytime soon, due mostly to the high entry fee of building cable networks, we can begin supporting smaller companies so they can provide us more choice in the future. Unfortunately, that probably means living with slower speeds for more money.