# Adelphia Cable Raising Rates 5.5%



## JAMHRR (Apr 12, 2002)

Yes, for the fourth time in 2 years Adelphia Cable is raising its rates in the Buffalo, NY area!!! This rate increase is 5.5% the total increase over the past 2 years is 22%.

The talk around the area is that Adelphia is using this to bail them out of their bankruptcy problems. Adelphia said that it's because of higher programing costs.

Once again, Adelphia customers are switching to Directv or Dish Network. Adelphia's Basic Cable subscriber base is shrinking.

I hope this helps put Adelphia out of business for good!!!!


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## pez2002 (Dec 13, 2002)

comcast will buy them out  


& Bring rates up Even More 






More & more people are putting dishes Up while Cable skyrockets


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## waydwolf (Feb 2, 2003)

> _Originally posted by pez2002 _
> *comcast will buy them out
> 
> & Bring rates up Even More
> ...


 Programming costs HAVE skyrocketed over the years, cable is taxed while DBS isn't, and cable has never had a history of lying to customers about costs and artificially keeping prices low to sucker anyone. What you see is pretty much what you get.

Now that stock prices are at crash and burn levels, there's no massive availibility of easy venture capital anymore, and the economy has taken a dump, and the states are headed towards taxing DBS the way cable and phone already are(which would be only fair), prices will have to climb to realistic levels.

People who go to dish will in ten years be very likely disappointed and go back to cable as fiber to the curb followed by fiber to the home, PVRs, all the HD of satellite and the HD locals on top of it, high speed data, interactive video on demand, and telephony make an all-in-one converged solution the obvious choice.

I also predict that we will still be listening to people b*tch and moan about the heads of the satellite companies, they will continue to try to do installations on the cheap without proper regional corporate infrastructures of supply and management, and they will be almost dead if not already gone except for the foreign programming market and the die-hards.

My experience has been that cable is the hands down long term tortoise while satellite which has been the speedy rabbit running PVR and HD right away will find they've played all their magical technology cards and have nothing left to wow people with given their inherent limitations.

Also, if you consider the FCC's long and growing tendency towards spectrum sharing, it is very likely that ten years from now, cable will have won the right to increase their systems beyond 806Mhz to 1450Mhz or even 2050Mhz. And the MVDDS will almost certainly have long since gone through by then as well using the 12.2Ghz to 12.7Ghz band and it is almost beyond obvious that the cable companies will have their monetary fingers in that too.

No matter what you will pay more, but you can't blame cable.


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## Mike123abc (Jul 19, 2002)

> _Originally posted by waydwolf _
> *
> 
> Programming costs HAVE skyrocketed over the years, cable is taxed while DBS isn't, and cable has never had a history of lying to customers about costs and artificially keeping prices low to sucker anyone. What you see is pretty much what you get.
> ...


Cable is not scared to show thier prices... They just raise them as much as they feel they can get away with.

How is fibre going to get to the home... venture capital has dried up, it is very expensive doing fibre to the home. Cable can do huge things with the systems they have now if they wanted to do so. A modern cable plant could easily do 250 channels of HDTV. With cable ready HDTVs coming out at the end of this year it will be easier than ever for cable to do so, but I bet they still will not.


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## Steve Mehs (Mar 21, 2002)

> Cable is not scared to show thier prices...


Around here they are. Everytime one of those drones from TW comes door to door the the price on the channel line up says '**Satellite customers- $34.99 for the first three months**' I really don't care what the price for the first three months is, I want to know the price afterwards. Something I've never been able to find out. Last time I checked they didn't even list the package pricing on their website. Cable had their chance in this house and they blew it big time. According to the tidbit I saw in the Buffalo News Adelphia cable will now cost around $45 for basic service. Last I saw the line up is comparable to AT100 and Total Choice not including the cd music channels. But I still have to find out what Time Warner prices are. Another big money loser, whoever took over old man Regis' job as head Adelphia scammer is refusing to carry Playboy.

Hey Jim, did you catch the cable v. satellite Action7 report yesterday on ch7? Too bad you didn't live 5-10 miles east, then you'd be here in Time Warner country


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## Mike123abc (Jul 19, 2002)

Well TWC in Wichita Falls has the prices on the web site:

http://www.twcablewf.com/

$39.00 for basic analog (77 stations)
$53.95 for basic + digital + music

$10 for premiums (have to have the basic digital package) HBO, Showtime, The Movie Channel, Cinemax, & Starz. 3.95 for Encore channels

Each extra outlet is $8.20

The everything pack from Dish is $74.99, the same from TWC in WF is 107.90.

With 2 TVs my cable bill got up to $116.10 plus tax and fees or about $129. TWC took a $5 rate hike this year. (note when I left TWC 2 years ago when my bill went up to $108 (I did not have all the movie channels)).


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## JAMHRR (Apr 12, 2002)

I don't care who buys Adelphia. I have Directv. Cable STINKS!!!

Adelphia was charging me $8.95 a month for Local channels before DTV carried Local Channels in my area. Directv charges $4.99 a month if you have Total Choice Plus, which I do. Adelphia claims that they don't charge for Local Channels. If that was the case then why was I charged that monthly fee??

Adelphia can't carry locals in Digital like DTV. Even if you have digital cable, channels 2-99 are in analog. All the Dish Channels are in digital. CABLE CAN'T DO THAT!!!! and DTV has a cheaper monthly rate!!!!


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## DarrellP (Apr 24, 2002)

Around Portland you can not get a price sheet for AT&T. The price varies depending on where you live! If you go to the office supporting your neighborhood then you can get a price flyer. They have more convoluted pricing tiers and schemes than Carter has liver pills.


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## RandyAB (Apr 4, 2002)

Comcast recently bought out ATT in the bay area, so I am sure our rates will be raised soon. Look forward to the "New" cable system, until that happens though I cannot wait to get back to Directv once my contract ends with Comcast.


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## pez2002 (Dec 13, 2002)

> _Originally posted by RandyAB _
> *Comcast recently bought out ATT in the bay area, so I am sure our rates will be raised soon. Look forward to the "New" cable system, until that happens though I cannot wait to get back to Directv once my contract ends with Comcast. *


You have a contract with comcast for how Long ????


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## RandyAB (Apr 4, 2002)

It was actually with ATT, but it ends in two months.


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## JAMHRR (Apr 12, 2002)

I didn't think cable companies had contracts. That is one of Adelphia's biggest ad campaigns against the "Dish"


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## waydwolf (Feb 2, 2003)

> _Originally posted by Mike123abc _
> *
> 
> Cable is not scared to show thier prices... They just raise them as much as they feel they can get away with.
> ...


 One of the things that is in the opinions of the pundits in telecom hurting the industry is a glut of fiber. You're not laying single thin fibers in telecom, you're laying huge honking bundles of them. Dark fiber is all over the place and business is looking for any way they can to make money by lighting them up. Okay, so we need an actual economy pumping cash around for that, but things don't stay bad forever.

While incumbent MSOs don't generally worry as much about it, overbuilders like RCN and company see fiber to the curb/home as their way to get ahead of the incumbent in the long run of their competition. The cost of it however is not just in the infrastructure, but the premises wiring and installers who screw up a simple coax line are not going to learn the gentle art of careful fiber pulls too easily. And when they do, they will have to be paid well to keep them from taking the skills to telecom and networking which pay more for fiber skills. I've known line techs who worked fiber and made less than $14/hour when they could have made TEN times that easily during the telecom build-out boom.

On top of this, the cable industry's history of recent past has been that they will run HDTV and massively so. When they do a test run that goes well for demand, they expand. It becomes almost geometric in its appeal. One town, then the neighboring two, then four, and so on. Cable modem is now all over the place here in CT and before 1998 or so it was on the wish list. We in Meriden got it in 1997 IIRC. Some towns are still slow but Charter, Cablevision, Cox, AT&T, Comcast, Eastern CT Cable, and more are offering it in what seems like over three quarters of the state.

I may be wrong, but I was telling people to sell their Worldcom stock a year before the collapse and staunchly told fellow DSL people that it would NEVER kill cable modem but in fact lose ground to it, so I have a very strong feeling to stick with this outlook barring a major change. I'm keenly interested in MVDDS and so on though and how that plays out. We may see one hell of an upset from terrestrial wireless, but if they play it like they've played their slow-go then too little too late on the 3G bandwagon with phones, maybe not.

OTOH, who needs more car crashes from people watching Debbi Does Everybody #31 on wireless video while driving down the interstate?

Bring on the chaos!


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## Bogy (Mar 23, 2002)

> _Originally posted by JAMHRR _
> *Adelphia can't carry locals in Digital like DTV. Even if you have digital cable, channels 2-99 are in analog. All the Dish Channels are in digital. CABLE CAN'T DO THAT!!!! *


WHY NOT!!!!! Ok, let's stop shouting now. Do you really believe that your DTV signal is digital from the studio to your TV? Do you have a digital TV? You may have, but if you don't, then the signal is not truly digital, is it? If it's analog from the box to the TV it might as well be analog all the way. If the signal that is transmitted is analog before it is translated to digital for satellite transmission, then it isn't truly a digital transmission. One of the misleading statements by the DBS providers from the very beginning is that they were digital. Well, they are from the ground to the satellite and from the satellite to the ground. But there were always big chunks of analog signal in the conduit. It's less now, but cable gets pretty much the same signal to work with that DBS does.

There is no reason why cable CAN't send a totally digital signal, but they don't so that you can put in extra outlets without the box. And for those people who don't want "digital."

There also is no real reason why they should. In many cases a good analog signal can be as good or better than a digital signal. It is also very true that many cable companies are not sending a good analog signal, but that's a different story than that they CAN'T. What I have noticed is that my digital cable boxes dramatically improve the signal on those low numbered channels which are in conflict with local broadcast channels. So while they may be analog signals, they are virtually indistinguishable from the digital channels.

As far as the truly high performance signals, as soon as HDTV channels, like my locals, are available, they are placed in the digital range of channels. Cable has a much greater capacity to do this for increasing numbers of channels as they become available, and as HDTV receivers become more common.

BTW, my provider is Cox of Omaha. YMMV.


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## Mike123abc (Jul 19, 2002)

A common standard for cable is 750 MHZ of service bandwith. This is usually done by having fibre optics out to all the neighborhoods and then they have a box there that converts it to the coax. 750 MHZ is 125 analog channels. If they convert an analog channel to digital and use 256QAM encoding they can get 2 HDTV channels or about 10-12 standard definition channels.

So, if they are using 2-99 in Analog they still have about 25 channels left for digital. So, they could do something like 10 channels for standard definition digital for 120 channels, and 15 for HDTV for 30 HDTV channels without cutting back on the analog side.

For comparison to DBS, each channel on a digital cable system (256QAM) has as much bandwith as an 8PSK (like dish uses for HDTV) transponder. So, your cable has capacity equal to 125 transponders compared to Dish's 50 and Direct's 46 CONUS transponders (not counting Dish's 41 wing transponders).

Cable has the ability to stomp all over DBS if it wanted to, but they make the money as it is now without going to the extra effort. Next year TVs with digital cable built in with HDTV decoding also will make it easier than ever for cable to compete without you needing a settop box any more for every TV. But, I do not see them making the effort to be competative with DBS, they would have to cut their prices too much and why do that when you do not have to?


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## Jacob S (Apr 14, 2002)

Cable's ability to provide high speed internet access hurts satellite even if cable is higher with their pricing, because cable has what the customers want even if it is a little more. Also local channel availability on cable and not on satellite in some areas hurts satellite. The cost of the equipment with satellite hurts them as well, because some do not have a credit card to get the equipment for free. All of these things plus having to pay for maintenance to the satellite system (most do not have problems though) and being responsible if the receiver quits working and having to buy a new one makes cable the better choice for some even with the higher pricing. 

For those that live in the country, has high speed internet access available somewhere else other than the cable company, or can get locals on Dish, then it becomes the better choice in many cases.

Some have a satellite and go right back to cable because of running up their satellite bill. People make the mistake of ordering too many channels at once and then getting billed for it for the remainder of the month plus the next month plus they get a month behind then the satellite gets shut off. This is what happens most of the time when a customer gets disconnected and right back to cable they go.


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## Bogy (Mar 23, 2002)

As far as pricing, I have Digital Cable, my local and long distance phone, and cable modem. With the package price I get I couldn't afford to go back to DBS and Qwest. Actually, I love it every time a telemarketer calls me and tells me he can save me money on my (usually) long distance phone bill. My response: "Wanna bet?"
And no, I didn't leave DBS because I couldn't pay my bill, I moved and the deal I could get here was just to good to pass up. I'm hoping Cox's DVR service is in Omaha by the end of the year. That's all I'm missing right now. Cost: Same price as my current digital boxes.


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## catman (Jun 27, 2002)

When TWC come around in wisconsin here . I tell them . " give me your cell phone and I will Kick you from madison to wisconsin / michigan border . " one way of telling them to " drop dead" . I would not give up directv . People with cable , don't understand that their bill goes up and the samething is on the satellite .


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## Directv&TivoGuy (Feb 16, 2003)

these high rates just show you how much better it is to have a dish.


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## Bogy (Mar 23, 2002)

> _Originally posted by catman _
> *I would not give up directv . People with cable , don't understand that their bill goes up and the samething is on the satellite . *


I take it you mean the bill keeps going up on satellite. 
No, I really assume that you mean the same channels are on satellite, I think. But dbs prices do also occasionally go up as well, and for me personally, the only time my bill has increased is when services/channels have been added. Has that always been the case with dbs? Hey, going back to when I first had Primestar, before DirecTV, I've been around various boards concerning dbs for over 7 years now. If I were no longer satisfied with my cable signal, or it weren't economically viable, I would be back to dbs in a flash. But I am, it is, so I'm not.

I don't have a bone to pick with either format, and I'm not a loyalist to either format. I want to see them all improve, and the price to be kept as low as possible. If you think its a triumph of some kind that a cable company raised its rates, think again. The same market forces that cause cable to raise its rates will cause dbs to raise its rates, and if cable raises its rates, then dbs can also raise its rates and still maintain the same price differential.

Those of you who have dbs should be glad cable is improving, and support the improvements. That's the only thing that drives dbs to improve. You really think Dish and DirecTV ever add a channel or offer a new service or equipment just because they love you? They do it to remain competitive. They do it so that you don't leave them. And what I have seen in the past few years is that they are doing the minimum they have to. From some of the threads lately, you'd think Dish was being run by a cable company.


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