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Fun Fact #721: Where Your Cable Dollar Is Going

Phillip Dampier July 19, 2012 Consumer News, Editorial & Site News, Public Policy & Gov't 7 Comments

Susan Crawford points us to this fun fact: While the cable industry wants to raise your prices to cover increased costs, one of the things they forgot to mention is more than $8,900,000 (so far this year) of your money was shipped straight to Washington to hand out to lawmakers. In the last quarter alone, the National Cable & Telecommunications Association has spent more than $4.5 million lobbying Washington on everything from repealing the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act to the Internet Freedom Act. If consumers are for it, the NCTA is against it. The ironic part of it is they put your money to work against your interests.

Imagine what you could do with $8.9 million — bringing broadband to the unserved, making service better for those who already have it, and keeping your broadband bill in check. Just sayin’.

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txpatriot
txpatriot
11 years ago

Lemme get this straight: when you pay your monthly cable bill, the money is STILL yours, even though you have “consumed” the cable service for a month that you just paid for?

Is that what you mean by “your” money?

txpatriot
txpatriot
11 years ago

Phillip: I don’t know what you do when you’re not running this website, but let me assume you for the sake of argument that you are a business owner. You sell a product or service of some kind. Once a buyer uses whatever product or service you sold them, they pay you for it. And once they pay you for it, what was “their” money now becomes YOURS, to do with as you see fit. They paid you for something; if they didn’t see the value in it or thought it was overpriced, they would not have agreed to the… Read more »

txpatriot
txpatriot
11 years ago

So what is the solution?

txpatriot
txpatriot
11 years ago

OK maybe I misunderstood the point of your original post.

You just posed a “solution” that addresses the lack of competition in the broadband last-mile market, but every one of those competitors could still spend a ton of their money on lobbying, which is the problem I THOUGHT we were talking about, and which was the topic of your original post.

Thanx

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