In a message dated: Tue, 22 May 2001 09:23:58 EDT
[EMAIL PROTECTED] said:
>pretty weak...but because I had been hearing others complain about not being
>able to move between companies w/ purchased modems,
The whole "Buy your cable modem" thing I believe started about 3
years ago when Bay Networks (now Nortel) struck a deal with Ciruit
City to sell the LanCity Cable modems for about $200 (they actually
branded them at the time under the NetGear name).
These cable modems were the old LanCity proprietary modems. If you
bought one for your M1 connection at home, but then moved to another
area serviced by a different provider, or even M1, which didn't use
the LanCity equipment in that area, then you were SOL.
>When you say DOCSIS is the standard, that leads me to believe that *all*
>cable internet providers will have to switch over to it...eventually.
Well, the don't *have* to, but it's in their own best interests to do
so. There was no standard before, and LanCity pretty much owned the
market. Motorola tried getting into the market, and spent millions
on advertising a product that never came into being. The cable
companies were also held hostage at one time by General Atlantic, one
of the only makers of the set top boxes for a *lonng* time. As a
result (more of the GA problem than the cable modem issue) the cable
providers banded to together and created what's now known as
CableLabs, the "authority" on Cable Provider Solutions and Standards.
This organization now "requires" standards for equipment and provides/
performs interoperability testing between different vendors
equipment. This is not limited to just Cable Modem/Data technology.
Anything you want to know about standards etc. related to cable
companies can probably be found here:
http://www.cablelabs.com
>In all states I have lived in (FL, NE & NH), I have never seen or heard
>of more than one provider offering service to a specific area at a time.
It's definitely not a common thing, however, in Boston, M1 is the
primary carrier, but then RCN came in. RCN started out as a
satellite based provider, but then began offering cable services as
well. I heard a report a while back on NPR about how the rates in
Boston have stayed competively low for quite a while now, because M1
*can't* afford to raise them, since RCN will then just scoop up all
their customers :)
>if you have any pointers (beyond a trip to the town hall
Not really, it's completely dependant upon the town/city you live in.
Every town/city has their own contract with the local provider. It's
entirely possible for 2 bordering towns to have the same provider,
but completely and drastically different contracts.
A guy I worked with at Bay who's been in the cable industry for 20+
years and is on his town's Cable Advisory Board told me they teamed
up with the 2 or 3 towns around their's since they all had the same
provider, and worked together to all hammer out the same contract.
So they really leveraged their buying power by teaming up against the
cable company (M1 in this case) and got incredibly good deals for
their towns.
So I recommend that you check with your town hall. You could start
out by calling the town hall and asking them to fax you a copy of the
contract between the town and the cable company. That way you can
see what the contract says. Don't be surprised if the contract is a
10+ year contract. That's actually quite common in the cable
industry. It's possible that the contract was just signed this year
and doesn't expire for 10+ years. However, this does not mean all
hope is lost. All you need to find out is if it's a non-exclusive
contract. If it is, then there's nothing barring you from attempting
to bring in another carrier.
Hope that helps some.
--
Seeya,
Paul
----
It may look like I'm just sitting here doing nothing,
but I'm really actively waiting for all my problems to go away.
If you're not having fun, you're not doing it right!
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