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Verizon might buy Charter, which just bought Time Warner Cable
- Thread starter Vanillalite
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PHOENIXZERO
Member
Ewww, I've been mostly satisfied since I switched to Charter almost three years ago, no data caps, mostly reliable DL speeds that are 12.5 times faster than what I had with AT&T's DSL and less latency. I think the only thing a AT&T had over Charter so far has been less outages where Charter went down more in a year than AT&T's DSL did over the course of eight.
Have you checked lately? It's been 4Mbps since I've been using Charter and actually went up to 5Mbps last year in my area which still isn't great by any means and probably the one area I wish most for improvement. I got rid of cable TV near the end of 2015 and just have the Spectrum streaming app now but I could've sworn the that the boxes I had, had better looking UIs than that.
Shao Kahn Brewing a Stew
Banned
Get fucked Americans. Signed, The Corporations.
Canada will surely get affected by this. I mean, I was envious of U.S. and the amount of options you have, but now it seems like Verizon is slowly becoming Rogers.
Canada will surely get affected by this. I mean, I was envious of U.S. and the amount of options you have, but now it seems like Verizon is slowly becoming Rogers.
Razgriz-Specter
Member
It makes sense for Verizon given the AT&T/DirecTV merger last year puts AT&T in a very strong position.
As a ~20 year Charter subscriber, I wouldn't really care. I've had Charter internet since 1998 or 1999, and while their customer service has gotten much much better over the years, they're still laughably bad in a few areas that Verizon FiOS is much better in. I have DirecTV for TV At home, and while DirecTV isn't perfect, when I go to my parents' house (Charter subscribers) I'm still aghast that their cable UI is something out of like 2003. Seriously this is STILL the UI for charter cable:
It's actually worse, I think. My parent's UI has more bezel, and it's still in SD.
I haven't had Charter cable in nearly 3 years but they got rid of that shit in like '09 at the latest here around Birmingham.
Let's just say the last three years have been special. And the dust isn't even beginning to settle from the Charter merger...
I have a friend who has been in this boat and having to transfer out of state for a job he currently does from home 95% of the time. His family is struggling with the situation.
Hmmm....wonder if I know him. I know a handful of people in that position. I'm still waiting to hear on my relo, but I'm in a much better place to do it.
hipbabboom
Huh? What did I say? Did I screw up again? :(
I'm laughing my ass off (internally screaming) because I left Comcast (bought/renamed to Verizon) for Charter back in 2001 and look where this is going now 
Options in what way? Cell phone service is really the only space where we actually have options. Cable/internet it's more or less one or two options per city depending on the city. Hell, even if you're lucky to have a small regional cable/internet company like WOW, a majority of apartment buildings sign an exclusive contract with the bigger guys, so tenants can only get cable from them. (TWC/Comcast)
It makes sense for Verizon given the AT&T/DirecTV merger last year puts AT&T in a very strong position.
As a ~20 year Charter subscriber, I wouldn't really care. I've had Charter internet since 1998 or 1999, and while their customer service has gotten much much better over the years, they're still laughably bad in a few areas that Verizon FiOS is much better in. I have DirecTV for TV At home, and while DirecTV isn't perfect, when I go to my parents' house (Charter subscribers) I'm still aghast that their cable UI is something out of like 2003. Seriously this is STILL the UI for charter cable:
It's actually worse, I think. My parent's UI has more bezel, and it's still in SD.
For internet, Charter's downstream at 60Mbps without caps is pretty much fine. I used to have a 100Mbps service from tehm, but they retired it. Sadly, their Upstream is still 3Mbps I believe... Unchanged over the last 10 years. This is pretty terrible.
Charter is the only high speed internet provider in my city, so if Verizon were going to invest in laying more fiber I'd be fine with this.
UI seems to depend on the specific box. I just restored the same exact cable package from Comcast that i had until July last year, but they sent me a newer, much smaller cable box that has a slick UI, but the one i had only 6 months ago looks much like the one you linked. If your parents have an old box, they might have the UI they got whenever they got the box.
Septimus Prime
Member
It doesn't seem likely that they will. Why would they, when that costs them money and they have no incentive to do so by further decreasing already anemic competition while expanding their customer base?
thechristoph
Sir!
Does Verizon own any content-creating companies?
Comcast owns NBC / Universal.
AT&T owns Turner / Warners.
We are barrelling toward the point where the delivery mechanism will dictate our content... or the other way around I guess.
Comcast owns NBC / Universal.
AT&T owns Turner / Warners.
We are barrelling toward the point where the delivery mechanism will dictate our content... or the other way around I guess.
No it doesn't but it will look to buy something around that soon enough to keep content cost inflation in check for itself given TWX will be with ATT and CMCSA has NBC.
So I can imagine they go for a CBS/Viacom or maybe go for the big kahuna and after Disney.
That's why Verizon buying Charter doesn't make sense, they should just buy Comcast. They match AT&T that way.
They own go90 which is a content producer and they announced last summer they intend to purchase Yahoo! which also produces content (Was delayed this month because of their security breaches).
Although the Yahoo! deal is really stupid to me (Considering Disney bought Marvel for less money), unless they have some grand strategy to turn Yahoo around like they've been trying to do themselves for well over a decade. Ad revenue is the only way it makes sense to me, because they've been pretty unsuccessful as a content producer in recent years.
Compsiox
Banned
I didn't even know. That's awful.
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