Charter Communications has taken advantage of its government-sponsored monopoly for long enough. Although we cannot comment on the quality of service they provide to other portions of the state in which they have contracts, the St. Louis-based company's ineptitude when dealing with Madison's downtown area has been nothing short of astounding.

Students have a laundry list of complaints against 2003's no-bid state contract winner, including:

– Atrocious customer service and prohibitively long hold times. Its allegedly faster online "customer service" department will probably tell you what a great question yours is for the phone lines.

– Employment of under-trained contracted technicians. Often, these contractors are not even capable of contacting Charter themselves should problems arise.

– A remarkably inflexible appointment schedule. Students are sometimes even asked to pay for the parking of contractors or delay service appointments indefinitely.

– Frequent outages, which are unexplained by any known apparatus.

– Overpriced service that, at approximately $60 per month for the Internet alone, is unreasonable for students. A federal government study in 2004 found that areas with true competition have experienced a 15 percent to 41 percent drop in rates.

– Frequent billing for un-received services that forces students to call in to get back their own money. Whereas an agent will offer deals to retain a customer, the deals accepted are often never applied to your account.

It has become evident that Charter is taking advantage of student clients simply because it can. Its government-sanctioned monopoly will not be challenged or improved unless students make it a political issue. If Charter is incapable of providing a reasonable standard of service to a significant portion of Madison, its contract with the city should be strictly scrutinized.

The Public Service Commission of Wisconsin complaint line can be reached at (608) 266-5481.