Current Events . TechnologyOn April 24, 2009 by Adam

A real sad group of people runs time Warner Cable and I feel sorry for all its customers. As once having the pleasure of doing business with Time Warner and other cable companies, I know that there is just no getting through to them. Comcast services the area where I live now and let me tell you that they are no better!

A few weeks ago, I was looking to cut costs wherever I could, so I called up Comcast to see what cable internet plans were available in my area. Once I finally talked to someone (a task in its self), I was told that there were two packages available. One at 6 Mbps and the other at 8 Mbps, priced at $49.99 and $59.99 respectively; Furthermore, I was told that the service in my area is fiber to the home! (I will eat my hat if it really is fiber to the home) To put all of this into perspective I currently am a DSL subscriber and am happily (at least now) paying $39.99 monthly for 12 Mbps.

The point of this small rant is that Comcast, Time Warner, and other cable internet companies are ripping their customers off and think that said customers don’t know any better. Here is the kicker. The community of Wilson, North Carolina has had enough of the nickel and dimming that Time Warner has been doing to them, so they set out to make their own high-speed internet provider. Greenlight, the internet provider created to compete against the monopolistic Time Warner, offers a range of packages to its customers from $35, 10 Mbps plan all the way up to an unheard of 100 Mbps for $300. This severely undercuts Time Warner’s business and instead of innovating, they teamed up with Embarq to stop Greenlight by having it banned by the State Government.

This industry really needs some innovation and competition. There are countries all around there world that are getting unimaginable internet speeds at pennies in comparison to what we pay for here in the states.