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The cable company best known for serving suburban New York City has gone west with the purchase of Bresnan Communications
The new owner of Bresnan Communications is promising customers in Montana and Wyoming an end to anemic broadband service, but subscribers wonder who is going to pay for it.
Bethpage, N.Y.-based Cablevision is telling subscribers upgrades are on the way to bring faster broadband, better cable and phone service to 300,000 Mountain West customers formerly served by Bresnan.
John Bickham, president of Cable & Communications for Cablevision, told readers of the Billings Gazette improvements would arrive over the next year-and-a-half:
We’re going to start by increasing the number of high-definition channels we provide, with a goal of providing more than 100 free HD channels over the next 18 months. We will also be adding more movie choices and more free video-on-demand titles, including prime-time shows from leading broadcast networks.
High-speed Internet service in the towns we serve is going to get faster. Over the next 18 months, we will upgrade the speeds of our basic level of Internet service to up to 15 megabits per second, nearly double what they are today. And with our award-winning and top-rated phone service, we will be adding even more features, functions and value to the phone service available in these communities today, including access to an innovative Web site to manage account preferences, review calling records or check voice mail from any computer.
For many subscribers, the improvements cannot come soon enough.
One reader in Jackson Hole, Wyo., said Bresnan rarely provided broadband service at the advertised rates, noting their 8Mbps service really was closer to 3-4Mbps.
But residents in both Wyoming and Montana warn that if Cablevision plans to manage all of the spiffy upgrades with a rate increase, they’ll cancel.
“I’ll be watching my bill. If it goes up because of all these changes, I’ll drop you in a heartbeat,” wrote one Montana customer.
I’m in Jackson, WY, and service here is atrocious. I’d switch in a heartbeat if there was another option. There is a plan to run fiber into the valley, but I do not know how Bresnan will benefit. For the record, Qwest stinks too, especially just outside the city limits. Nothing has been upgraded here for many many years.
I have been with Bresnan for almost ten years. They have always been accomodating and professional. During a period of rennovation in my home, Bresnan arrived and went beyond the call of duty to get the cables where they needed to be. It was a daunting job – the three employees who did work at my home were great and finished in record time. One of the men came back a week later to make sure everything was working and did a walk through with me to show me where they had to change the route of some of the… Read more »
We’re no longer in the boom years of the middle class and never really were as everyone was mostly living off credit anyway. The sooner people realize Cable TV and their premium channels are a luxury and not a NEED, and stop paying the exhorbant rates to the Cable Co’s, the sooner they’ll eventually create packages and lower prices to match the reality of the market place. Simply put, as long as demand for their service stays the same they aren’t going to alter their business model. Hollywood and the production companies need to adjust as well to lower profits… Read more »
Scott: You have made several valid comments. And, you are so very right about supply and demand (Econ 101). As customers, we have a voice in this – if many voices are heard, hopefully, some of these service companies will listen and give the average consumer what they want and need. Why should they change their business model when business on their end is strong? It’s going to take a lot of “usses” and our strong voice. My job requires that I have access to cable television and high speed Internet. I added the digital home phone service because it… Read more »
Cathy, I can understand the requirement of needing it for work. I had a similiar deal locally where the cable company sold the bundle at the best rate possible, better then DSL + Satellite, until they went metered and charged per Gig on Internet. They thought they had the market locked, as they essentially did with minimal competition from the phone company. At some point more consumers need to step up and stop rewarding bad companies with their hard earned dollars. For me, it meant cutting the cord completely with the Cable company and going with the local telephone company… Read more »
I just cancelled my service with Bresnan Cable. Extended basic in western Colorado was running close to $60.00 a month. Cablevision did not raise our rates here, but instead removed 12 channels from the line-up saying that I’d need a converter box (at an extra monthly fee) if I wanted to continue to get the channels. Told them to take a hike. Simple fact is – there is NOTHING on TV that is worth paying that kind of money for – especially not in these difficult times. If more people just pulled the plug then maybe the cable companies would… Read more »
Hi Julie, I have to agree with you. My rates with Bresnan have gone up at least ten dollars a year and the movies have been the same for the exact ten years. Except on Showtime maybe even older. When I was going to cancel the cable it would of cost me about the same with all their downsizing fees. So now I am going to get rid of the whole package and get a cheap local land line and another internet service. I really enjoyed the service until the company sold out. It’s too bad, I think they will… Read more »
I am looking forward to the increase in upload speed. Optimum from Cablevision boasts broadband speeds of 15Mbs down / 2Mbs up. Bresnan’s upload speed is capped at an anemic 384k. Hard to believe in 2011 and all $60/month for broadband only package gets you a measly 384k upload.
The moment those Cablevision commercials appeared on TV my bresnan service declined. Did anyone notice that? I think they tweeked our mbps down to 8 so they can be our saviors and up it again when the crossover happens. Either way what a sham way of business. I am highly disappointed and already have a bad feeling about this deal. Are we going to pay more for the service we already had?
Plain and simple i could watch a you tube video before the commercials and now its nearly impossible and i dont have patience to bother anymore. I’m a computer guy and i know my cpu works fine. WTF kind of business practice is that?
I’m with you, Julia. I just got a card in the mail telling me I would need to get a box to continue receiving 4 channels on extended basic. Free for the first year, then you have to pay the rental free. Heck, it’s already $60 just for extended basic, no premium channels. I went down to the office and told the guy “I don’t want to pay for thisI’m already paying $60 a month” Wow, talk about bad customer service. He nastily said “It’s not costing you a penny for the box”. Well, yeah, after a year it costs,… Read more »
Actually, all you really need is internet. Screw cable, if you want to watch tv simply get a device that can support netflix like a ps3, xbox360, wii, wdtv etc… And pay a measly monthly subscription of 9.99$ + 2$~ for blu-ray rentals and a HUGE variety of shows to watch. Their streaming service is off the wall on the amount of content there is. I could watch netflix til my hair turns grey. Tv is dry anyway, if you want news, just go online. Also, if you are having any service issues Rhandy, its probably because they are in… Read more »
I also am fed up with the high prices of services for existing customers. The new Triple play for $99 is only for new customers while the existing customers prices continue to rise. Then if you want to down grade you will pay even more in service because you chose to have less services. Just a bunch of crap. If my bill continues to climb, I will cancel all the cable and only have internet and Net flix. The movies on on demand are mostly old movies anyway. Also the service is bad. Around midnight my service goes off on… Read more »
Jackie, here is what we pulled off with our cable company last month. We called and said “disconnect our services two weeks from today.” They tried to lower our price to stay and we decided to not agree to any of their offers at that point. Within a day or so, a Time Warner special retention specialist called and offered us their triple play for $79 a month for a year if we agreed to stay — a retention offer the usual CSRs could not give us. Had we not gotten a better offer, we could always rescind our request… Read more »
I have Bresnan in Ft. Morgan, Colorado it is one of the worst companies I have ever dealt with, they say free HD but only 5 channels are worth watching, all the other channels the picture quality is crap, The non HD channels ain’t worth watching, Blurry and have Ghosts
If I could go to Dish I would do it in a heartbeat.
I would not recommend Bresnan to any one, Worthless
We are waiting to see if Cablevision, the new owners, will actually pour money into Bresnan and fix the service that company currently provides in the mountain west. Cablevision is a pretty good company in suburban New York/NJ/Conn., so if they try to bring a similar service out west, you guys will be much happier. The question is, when?
Dick, I just had Bresnan’s Highspeed plus internet installed and though it has never been as as fast as the service claims(18/1 and I get 12/1 a majority of the time, sometimes less) it is still better than the 5M/896 I can get through qwest since I’m on the edge of town. Can’t comment on their tv service but there i’d go with dish network.
If you’re running Windows XP it may be worthwhile to look into your TCP/IP settings. You might need to enable Window Scaling and set a larger Receive Window to support the speeds of the Cable Connection. Granted, the area isn’t oversold and congested all the time.
Thanks for the reply, I’m having problems with Digital Cable not internet. For internet I use Qwest.
Wow, 5/1 is pretty good for DSL from Qwest in the more rural service areas. Frontier Communications couldn’t deliver anything above 3.1Mbps for me less than a mile from the Rochester city line.
I just got my final refund check from them in today’s mail – more than 2 months after disconnecting my landline.
Youre lucky to get 3/1 down. I could only get 1.5/796 when we were barely a mile outside the city limit, and I am in the city limit with the aforementioned 5/1 Down offer. As a side note Bresnan must be working on their service around here, speed has increased. @Smith6612 Im on windows 7 currently, must of been a bad week for them last week. Speeds have been blazing the last few days.
I’m in Grand Junction Co. The service is getting bad .First the T.V. change cannles we do not want them. Now they changed the the home page on the internet .I can not fine anything buts adds. Is this what we get for paying our bill on time ???
I’m in Helena, MT and am considered a Bresnan “Premier” customer, so I have it all. HD, all channels, and Speed Plus Internet. I play my PS3 all time. I had it physically connected to a router (getting 13mbps) – but it lagged some of the time. Removed the router and connected to Bresnan router directly with cat 6 cabling. Wow! I had the advantage in each game (getting 15mbps). This was great for 2 weeks, then Bresnan “caught on”. One night while in the middle of a game, my internet was shut off. Not disconnected from the PS3 network,… Read more »
I noticed that right off the bat when cablevision took over my internet speed
downloading has gone to arount 6 megabytes and uploading is 380kbytes.
I was getting 8.3 to 8.5 megabytes on bresnan for download speed
i have been with bresnan for years. pretty happy with the speed plus program. once cablevision took over, my online video content has been limited to one computer at a time. we used to be able to watch netflix in one room and my wife watch hulu on her laptop in another room. now we are lagging and our download speed varies daily.
there are other options out there and if they dont figure it out, we will be switching to mt sky or verizon wireless for data..