Wednesday, February 18, 2009

February 18, 2009

It seems Comcast recognizes with competition it stands to loose heavily. And 2009 sounds like a year it hopes to get past quickly.

I can't say I blame them. And it doesn't help with investors leaving them. Companies like my other favorite are divesting themselves of Comcast stock.

Mr. Roberts has earned a new title besides CEO of Comcast. He's been called in many articles I've been receiving recently "The Dark Lord of Broadband". A guy who's as disconnected from reality as I've seen. And just when he thought 2007 and 2008 were going to be banner years for Comcast, people as myself rebelled and called them to the mat. Involving the FCC and other Government agencies. It's been a mess.

Yet there's a stunning disconnect between how fellow chief executives view him and what customers think. They see Comcast as arrogant, unresponsive, and overpriced. The company has managed to place last or close to last in just about every survey of customer service.


By blocking BitTorrent—in effect discriminating against those packets—Roberts had opened himself up to accusations that he was a censor and a monopolist who wanted to limit citizens' access to the Internet. He was painted as power-mad, unable to restrain himself.


"I honestly don't think we're bad people, and we have no evil intentions," he says. "We helped invent broadband."


Let me guess. Comcast gave Al Gore the idea for the Internet now? My how history has changed. Read the article. It was a good read.


I guess they really hate the Internet.

Cable’s costly infrastructure, optimized for hundreds of channels, can’t adjust to a world where entertainment is downloaded. They have to tame the Internet to survive.


People are looking at services which don't require cable TV. From Vuze to Hulu and more. Downloadable content takes control away from these guys. If you follow the money, those customers are bad for business.

Streaming video of everything from classic movies to hit TV programs to screaming music videos of '80s hair bands is available free at online portals YouTube and Joost, as well as Hulu.com (a joint venture of NBC and Fox) and the networking site MySpace, which is owned by the same company as Fox.


And now it seems by 2012 Korea will have an average Internet of 1 Gig putting American Internet providers to shame!

In America we think Charter's 60 Mbps Cable is fast, well in Korea the entire country will have 1 Gbps service by 2012, that's 16 times faster than Charter's fastest 60Mbps highspeed service. Currently, Koreans can get speeds up to 100 Mbps, which is still nearly double the speed of Charter's new 60 Mbps service.


Someday people here will wake up. The Internet is as important as public roads. Don't expect to succeed without improving the infrastructure.

Another reason our economy is a shambles.