OPINION & EDITORIAL
Charter cuts cord on wireless startups
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Also by Laura Brennan:
- Fair Trade practice virtuous endeavor (November 13, 2007)
- Landlords price out UW students (October 29, 2007)
- Charter cuts cord on wireless startups (October 15, 2007)
- SAFEride hardly lives up to name (October 1, 2007)
- Apple users of the world, unite: UW offers little support for Mac (September 19, 2007)
Related Stories:
- Get it, Charter? (September 7, 2007)
- Ditch Charter, get unhooked (September 14, 2006)
- Big Niche Network (October 1, 2007)
- Editorial: The long and wireless road (February 7, 2006)
- Big Ten foible fault of network, not Charter (August 31, 2007)
by Laura Brennan
Monday, October 15, 2007
I'd be preaching to the choir if I had to convince Madison readers of the total incompetence of Charter Communications.
As I write this, I'm huddling in a corner on the north side of my apartment — coincidentally the only place I can pirate a usable Internet signal from neighbors. To my total lack of surprise, my own service is out of commission for the umpteenth time. I'm hesitant to call Charter, mostly because I don't feel like sitting through a precious hour of looping advertising and clumsy automated menus. So I'm led to wonder — why must Madison, students and residents alike, be forced to pay exorbitant amounts for deficient service?
I needed a crash course on the technicalities of the problem. In accordance with state law — more accurately, a state-sanctioned monopoly — Charter can comfortably charge, well, pretty much whatever it wants.
The outdated and unnecessary law mandates that any new cable service provider must individually negotiate a contract with every town or city in the state that they hope to serve and frankly — who would want to do that? As a result, competition with Charter stands at nearly zero, with prices that are far from zero.
In recent years, Charter's dominance in the television market has taken a baby step back with the availability of DirecTV and DISH Network, yet satellite isn't a practical option for many students who move frequently or don't live in Madison full-time. But with the current state laws, the only practical competition must be through satellite, so if students aren't willing to deal with a hardwired satellite dish every time they move, they are out of luck.
Competitors in the Internet market, however, have been trying to "pass go" in Charter's monopoly. The competition-squashing state laws only apply to cable TV, so for years, mistaken consumers have merely assumed that because they didn't have options for cable, that applied to Internet service as well. In the past few years, Madison has been trying to set up citywide wireless to offer an affordable, portable and practical option to its residents. This attempt could be likened to David versus Goliath.
Mad City Broadband, one of the city's two wireless providers, offers wireless access for $24.99 to Madison residents, or for $14.99 to residents associated with the University of Wisconsin. With the click of a mouse, you can access Charter's website and order — "Only online!" mind you — their high-speed internet for $14.99 a month, but with a 5 mbps speed, in contrast to Mad City's speed of only 1 mbps.
With the same price, why would anyone want the inferior service? Therein lies the catch: always read the fine print. After the promotional period of six months is over, the price skyrockets to $59.99 per month, an increase of $44.99. Wouldn't that be a shock on month No. 7's bill?
Even with Charter's ridiculous price games, it isn't surprising that Mad City and ResTech, the city's other wireless provider, are struggling. Criticisms of their service range from its slow speed to total lack of signal in most parts of the city. The lower price for university affiliates is practically useless because the university offers free wireless in most of its buildings.
The biggest problem lies in a catch-22: The wireless service can't improve without more money to update transmitters, yet ResTech and Mad City are losing customers — and money — due to bad service. Where does this money go? That's right — Charter.
Although the state doesn't directly give support to Charter's monopoly over Internet service in Madison, it does so indirectly. Wireless signal strength partially depends on the number of access points, which are transmitters mounted on utility poles. However, many of Madison's utility poles are old and out of code. Without being updated, these poles cannot be utilized by ResTech and Mad City. As a result, the wireless service cannot even reach many parts of the city, and in the areas it does reach, there aren't enough transmitters to allow dependable service.
With a little research, one will find that the nooks and crannies of the issue are so complex it is nearly impossible to understand why Madison is still paying so much for so little. We can only graze the surface of Charter's customer service problems: obscenely long hold times, useless support technicians and missed service calls are only the beginning of Charter's total lack of customer respect.
The only way a change can be made is with a viable alternative to Charter's high-priced Internet service, yet Mad City and ResTech wireless have tried to do just that — and failed. These small companies cannot succeed against Goliath without Madison's support, as well as a major change in state law. So the next time your Charter Internet goes out, consider bypassing the whole complaint process and canceling your service altogether. The library isn't that bad, right?
Laura Brennan (lbrennan@wisc.edu) is a junior majoring in communicative disorders
Anonymous (October 15, 2007 @ 12:54am):
Charter's prices are ridiculous. Our apartment paid a $125 installation fee for the charter rep to come and hook up one cable box. (We installed the cable modem ourselves) The "technician" was in and out in under 15 minutes after showing up an hour late. Gotta love monopolies.
Dylan Oliver (October 15, 2007 @ 8:12am):
I'm no fan of Charter's pricing, off-shore technical support or the fact that they try to sell you an upgraded service as you try to tell them that the service you have doesn't work.
But Mad City Broadband's failings are in no way to be blamed on Charter. You argue that Mad City Broadband needs more subscribers to support an 'update' of its WiFi transmitters, but these transmitters were only installed a year and a half ago. The only change in the meantime has been the discovery (gasp!) that WiFi mesh sucks for city-wide deployments. Mad City Broadband failed in its initial engineering. And CellNet is not what I'd call a small company to be pitied with 400 employees.
Anonymous (October 15, 2007 @ 9:59am):
Get a Sprint wireless card.
Mike Pruden (October 15, 2007 @ 10:07am):
And their response to your service outages and complants: "Would you like to save with Charter Telephone?" A service which have had several failed 911 calls il the Madison area? Ridiculous.
Anonymous (October 15, 2007 @ 12:27pm):
What about DSL - ATT or TDS? They weren't mentioned at all.
Also, if you lose cable service for 4+ hours in a day, I think state law allows you to get reimbursed for that day's service. You still have to call Charter, but there are a few consumer protections.
Anonymous (October 15, 2007 @ 1:18pm):
So you wont call charter to tell them your internet "like totally doesnt work" but you will steal someone else's connection.
Wonderful.
Anonymous (October 15, 2007 @ 2:38pm):
A high-gain directional wireless receiver may help you. Hawking has some good ones.
Anonymous (October 15, 2007 @ 6:20pm):
The writing is fine, Laura, but you did miss Charter's two competitors - TDS and AT&T. In other words, you skipped over two-thirds of the high-speed equation.
Were you short of time to do the research or just itching to take a shot, probably deserved, at Charter?
Metro WiFi is simply a poor technology for what you're looking for. Mad City Broadband, like many other attempts around the country, is struggling against the laws of both physics and economics. It would take a City of Madison subsidy of some sort to make it work out.
Why would we do that when we have three other companies competing for our business?
Anonymous (October 15, 2007 @ 8:36pm):
charter is overprice and garbage? shocking news to this reporter..in other news..the sun will rise and set tomorrow.
Anonymous (October 19, 2007 @ 2:27pm):
I think a better question is why DSL is not available to every resident of the city. Where I live I can only get charter or sattelite...what "great" options.
Anonymous (October 29, 2007 @ 4:00pm):
I understand your frustrations there, I went 7 months with my Cable Provider with repeat issues. The whole time I was calling Bellsouth daily asking them when DSL would be available, and they kept telling me "There's not enough demand in your area." Not enough demand? I think now back to a classic movie line, "If you build it, they will come." Come on Bellsouth, don't be a dunce in the corner.
After the first 7 months of hell (all of which were credited back to the account,) Insight (My cable provider) finally resolved the issue by rebuiling the tap our line came from, it took 12 field techs when finally the last one, an old vietnam vet to jockey the poll to figure this out, all these young guys just tweaked a filter or "Brushed" the line. 7 years later, I have yet to call in with an issue about my cable, be it video or internet, and am happy as a clam.
I will tell you this much, as for phone, if Charter tries to install you with what's called an MTA (it's literally a cable modem, with phone capabilities) instead of an NIU (Network Interface Unit,) do not go for it. The MTA's are 100% reliable, until the power goes out and you neglected to purchase a backup battery (Arris will not allow Charter to offer one with it, they demand you purchase it for an additional cost, an expense Charter isn't actually responsible for *gasp*.) If you have the backup battery, it's good for about 2 days of no telephone usage, 12 hours of phone usage. If they try to set you up with a traditional NIU, it's on the outside of the house like a regular phone box, and has it's own power supply through the cable line itself.
As for the failed 911, that's not always Charters fault for many reasons.
1) Power failure without a backup power source.
2) Customer moves the modem with them to a new location, but isn't updated in 911 databases because (a.) The Modem is assigned to the House, not the resident. (b.) Resident hasn't notified 911 of the Address change with this Modem's Serial Number.
3) In such situations as above in #2, it is The Customer and 911's responsibility to update the address information, not the VoIP provider.
And lastly, we need to stop complaining about our inoperable 5 meg, 10 meg, 16 meg services, and get the Government on the ball to catch up with Japan's network. The Japanese on average have a 60 meg internet connection per subscriber, with speeds as high as 100 Mbps down, 15 Mbps up for only $34.95 US. In the US, for those types of speeds, a subscriber can expect to pay as low as $399.95. What a shame.
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