You do not understand the consumer. I live in beaumont TX. When TW went to caps I dropped them (as well as the tv anbd phone). I went o ATT and they sent a letter after sending my modem saying they would have caps (funny compition). I called them to cancel my internet, phone and satellite tv. (also my yellow pages ads). They relented and gave me unlimited internet that they advertized.

I’ve seen these magical promises from providers time and time again. If only they deregulated us, gave us statewide franchises, allowed us to experiment with pricing formulas, gave us the freedom of the marketplace to merge into a Borg-like collective, it would be just beautiful, a place where bluebirds sing and there’s a whiskey spring. Sure… for them.

Consumers get the bill, bigger than ever, along with a whole mess of broken promises. Hell, Loretta Lynn couldn’t fit the number of broken promises we’ve reported on in the last year into just one country song! From FairPoint Communications, the Towering Inferno of phone companies, to AT&T’s statewide franchises that don’t lead to big savings, to Internet Overcharging experiments.

Fool me once, shame on you… fool me twice, shame on me (or to quote our former president… “can’t get fooled again.”)

I am a bit frustrated by your response to my comment.

First, you did not provide a citation in the APA style. I feel that APA is important because it attempts to specify the author(s), date of publication, and the party or parties responsible for releasing the information. It also acts as a filter in narrowing down where exactly the cited information can be found.

Second, the link you did post, in my opinion, does not verify any of the information that you have provided. It is simply a web page on the NCTA’s web site that shows a graph with numbers. Granted, this may not be your fault, as the NCTA does not do a good job of citation either. They list the source of the material as SNL Kagan. However, if I was using this data in a debate format then I would want to personally verify that the data was correctly represented.

Third, I think you even confuse yourself with your explanation of dwelling units versus homes.

“Some of NCTA’s stats used to say “dwelling units” because there are more dwelling units than there are homes in America. They actually passed 123.4 million dwelling units but the NCTA recently changed their stats to reflect just homes.”

Could it be that they “changed their stats” so that they would end up with a higher “passed” ratio? If there are more dwelling units than homes in America, then why downgrade the statistics? Does this mean that consumers who live in dwelling units but not in homes (apartment renters) don’t count as study participants?

Fourth, could you please provide citations for your DSL data? Even if those are not available for free, I might be able to access them through my university’s library resources. There might also be an individual who would be willing to pay to access the data to verify it.

Finally, could you explain this statement a little better?

“DSL penetration is not that high, but ithey’re still in the high 80% range.”

When exactly is DSL penetration considered high? Would that be in the lower 90% range?

http://www.allbusiness.com/government/government-bodies-offices-us-federal-government/6355927-1.html

The cable industry calculates the Homes Passed percentage by dividing the total number of TV households supposedly passed by cable into the total number of TV households in the country. But even a cursory comparison of Census Bureau and cable industry statistics shows that the distinctions between housing units, households and TV households were lost long ago in an apparent rush by the cable industry to demonstrate a comprehensive nationwide build-out.

In 2000, the cable industry in half a dozen states reported more TV households passed than the total number of households reported by the Census Bureau. For example, in New Jersey the cable industry supposedly passed 662,167 more TV households than the Census Bureau reported households. In the District of Columbia, the cable industry even said it passed more TV households (44,000) than the Census Bureau reported housing units.

Nielsen Media Research’s estimate of TV households for June 2001 (107.1 million) — used by the cable industry and the FCC for computing homes passed — actually exceeds the Census Bureau’s national estimate of households for the same period (106.7 million).

Now we really have a problem. Almost half a million

Kind of hard to beleive their data after seeing things like this. It needs to come from an independant company that has nothing to do woth the industry.

Source:
http://www.michaelchaneyisalwaysright.com/myowndatatobackmeup.aspx

119.8 million homes passed by high speed cable broadband service as of 2008. That’s virtually every home in America.

Some of NCTA’s stats used to say “dwelling units” because there are more dwelling units than there are homes in America. They actually passed 123.4 million dwelling units but the NCTA recently changed their stats to reflect just homes.

DSL penetration is not that high, but ithey’re still in the high 80% range. I sources I had were in for-fee reports from some of the major analyst firms. I have to look up a publically linkable source.

“At the direction of Congress, the FCC has issued an Annual Report in each of the last seven years describing the status of competition in the video programming market.[11]
One of the foundations of the FCC’s Annual Reports, and the most widely used measurement of cable availability, is the number of “Homes Passed” by cable.[12] The cable Homes Passed number is intended to reflect the percentage of American consumers who have access to cable services. Conversely, the remaining percentage reflects those consumers who likely have access to MVPD services only through DBS.
In previous Cable Competition Reports, the FCC has unfortunately accepted without review or challenge the cable industry’s claim that approximately 97% of homes across the country are passed by cable.[13] However, a joint report released in April of 2000 by the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) and the Rural Utilities Service (RUS), titled Advanced Telecommunications in Rural America: the Challenge of Bringing Broadband Service to All Americans (“NTIA/RUS Report”), questions the manner in which the percentage of cable Homes Passed has typically been calculated. The NTIA/RUS Report found that the actual percentage of Homes Passed could be as low as 81%”

http://archives.energycommerce.house.gov/reparchives/107/hearings/12042001Hearing433/Phillips741.htm

It seems that for a long time, the government has just been trusting the cable companies without data verification. When they tried to verify, they found different results, by what could be a large percent.

“The cable industry calculates the Homes Passed percentage by dividing the total number of TV households supposedly passed by cable into the total number of TV households in the country. But even a cursory comparison of Census Bureau and cable industry statistics shows that the distinctions between housing units, households and TV households were lost long ago in an apparent rush by the cable industry to demonstrate a comprehensive nationwide build-out.

In 2000, the cable industry in half a dozen states reported more TV households passed than the total number of households reported by the Census Bureau. For example, in New Jersey the cable industry supposedly passed 662,167 more TV households than the Census Bureau reported households. In the District of Columbia, the cable industry even said it passed more TV households (44,000) than the Census Bureau reported housing units.

Nielsen Media Research’s estimate of TV households for June 2001 (107.1 million) — used by the cable industry and the FCC for computing homes passed — actually exceeds the Census Bureau’s national estimate of households for the same period (106.7 million).”

http://www.allbusiness.com/government/government-bodies-offices-us-federal-government/6355927-1.html

It is a few years old, but from what I understand, the calculations are basically still the same and the data still is in dispute.

Please go re-read the messages and comment on the points, unless you have no answer.