Comcast responds to my open letter to CEO Brian Roberts
"Fight for your opinions, but do not believe that they contain the whole truth, or the only truth." Charles Dana
In my last note, I shared an open letter to Comcast CEO Brian Roberts on the occasion of Comcast once again increasing cable TV rates in my community, just as Verizon is preparing to compete at what it promises will be significantly lower prices. You can read this letter and some of the response I've received by clicking here.
To his credit, Marc Goodman, who's with Comcast in Boston, responded to my note with a defense of the price hike. Here's what Mr. Goodman had to say (with some parenthetical comments from yours truly): "After reading your column on Comcast, I wanted to address some of your comments as a representative of the company. Over the last year, Comcast has:
- Doubled the number of On Demand programs and movies. Today, there are more than 4,000 programs available any time of day or night On Demand. This total is thousands more than our competition's VOD offerings and includes unique programming, such as free movies from the MGM/Sony library, Patriots On Demand and more. On Demand is available at no charge to all Comcast Digital Cable customers and more than 75% of the On Demand programming is available for free. On Demand content that a consumer pays for consists of movies (in regular format and we're testing On Demand movies in HD). Also, a consumer can choose to watch a handful of CBS prime time shows that become available On Demand after they air for 99 cents. The unique content that Comcast provides via its On Demand service helps set our service apart from the competition. To put the popularity of On Demand in perspective, more than 1.4 billion On Demand programs were watched in 2005. That's up from 550 million in 2004. We've literally changed the way people watch TV and consumers have enjoyed how we put them in control. (JG: I'll concede that On Demand is a terrific feature and that I love the Patriots replay. But I'll nitpick by saying that I rarely use it and it is a feature that we're all paying to build whether we use it or not.)
- Added new High Definition channels, including TNT HD, Universal HD and others. Customers do not pay for HD programming. Unlike our competitors in the sky, customers only pay a monthly box charge. Also unlike our competitors, customers can have an HD-enabled DVR box that can record both HD and analog. (JG: I struggle with this argument. I'm not an HD user, so why should I pay more for my old-fashioned service? Also, aren't the HD customers paying for this investment with the $8.95 fee for the HD cable box?)
- Introduced value bundles in conjunction with the roll out of Digital Voice, our next-generation phone service. I mention this because the majority of our customers choose to have multiple services from Comcast. Existing customers could have both High-Speed Internet and Digital Voice for $69/month for 12 months. (JG: Sounds good, but I'm not sure how this affects a customer who isn't buying one of these value bundles.)
"For several years, there have been two direct broadcast satellite (DBS) service providers competing with at least one cable company in every community. As at least one of your readers noted, both DBS operators increased their prices as well year over year. (JG: Agreed. But the DBS companies are not a great option for broadband and, if you can't get DSL, buying broadband only from Comcast would be very pricey.)
"We face competition every day from a variety of different providers. Overwhelmingly, people choose Comcast as their broadband services provider because we deliver local customer service and the most innovative products, including Digital Cable with more than 4,000 On Demand programs - most of them free - and our new, IP-enabled Digital Voice service that includes a variety of advanced features along with unlimited local and long distance calling."
Thanks for writing Mr. Goodman. Let's see what other readers think about your stance. As always, you can reach me here.
Bye for now.
P.s., a number of more Machiavellian readers suggested that Comcast is increasing prices in order to build up revenue that could fund discounts once Verizon actually comes into the market. So, Brian Roberts and company take money out of our pockets now, just so they can give some of it back (and make me feel good?) later! Hmmmm. I don't think I like the sound of that.
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Comments
Mr. Goodman's letter makes it even more obvious just how far out of touch Comcast is with consumers (who wrote that thing, a really junior PR person???). It's this kind of obtuse greed that will eventually backfire in a spectacular way. I anxiously await a company that can serve consumers fairly by offering a service for a REASONABLE fee. It's great, Mr. Goodman, that Comcast is out bulking up its infrastructure and passing along those costs to customers for services that many of us NEVER USE. If history is any indicator, your days as a monopoly are numbered.
Posted by: Gillian on March 13, 2006 03:08 PM
You have to love this. We include more free stuff. That is why we increased your prices. We also added more items you can choose not to purchase. So we increased your prices.
What?
Posted by: bob on March 14, 2006 01:26 PM
I will be terminating my COmcast service in June when the new rate-hike goes up in favor of DSL and "the dish". I don't even watch 96% of the channels I have now. It's just a HUGE waste of money and TV is a huge waste of time anyway. I also plan to voice my displeasure with my governmental representatives including Consumer affairs and my congressman. Iplan to see if any of my repesentatives have been lobbied by Comcast, accepetd any contributions, or even rubs shoulders with industry reps. If they do, I plan to vote against them in the next election. I urge you all to pay attention, register and vote.
Posted by: Michael on March 27, 2006 08:01 PM
I can't wait until VoIP and IPTV become pervasive. My hope for IPTV- although I don't have much faith- is that the "pipe provider" will be disconnected from the content aggregator- just like going with Vonage for VoIP. In otherwords, it would be nice to have competition for the raw IP pipe between Verizon's fiber or Comcast's coax. Then I can pay a content aggregator a monthly fee for a package of channels and VOD content. This way there will be competition in the video content aggregator space just like there is in the VoIP space today.
Of course we all fear that disconnecting the raw IP provider from the content provider will require that the IP pipe provider allow us to set QoS parameters to our selected content provider. And they will fight any regulation to force them to do this with everything they have. Unless users can set QoS parameters, we'll have choppy phone calls and video with 3rd party providers.
I still think that we'll get there someday. From what I've read Korea and Japan is already showing us the way.
Posted by: Jack on March 28, 2006 12:30 PM
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