Cable And Phone Companies Compete For Video And Bundle Services

There was a time in a world far far away where if you lived in a rural area like I did, the only way that you could derive top-notch television reception for the three or four network channels that were available, was to go out and buy the tallest antenna that you could secure. Then you had to either go up on the roof and mount it, hoping that the wind didn’t pick up and blow you off, or put it on a pole that was sunk into the ground on the side of the house. You had to then make sure you grounded the thing with a clamp around the pole and a wire that went off into the ground. You wondered how such a thin piece of wire might handle all of that voltage from a lightening strike. Then you found out that cable had come to town. People began screwing thick wires into a special adapter on the abet of their extinct television sets and they could get 50 or 60 channels if they wanted to. The only problem was you were still far enough out of town that you still couldn’t gather it. Jealous, you went out and spent your savings on a satellite dish. It was huge and heavy and had to be mounted on a pole. You had to have a special one; you couldn’t use the same one that had held up your antenna. A enormous black box came with the satellite and you had to pay for the special codes to program it, unless you knew someone in the business that could do it for you. Then you might have 120 channels but still nothing on that you wanted to watch.

Everything has changed now, of course, cable became available almost everywhere and the prices started going up soon thereafter until a couple of satellite companies started bleeding off customers with offers of all digital service, lower prices, free satellite dishes, and a wide variety of programming choices. Now it looks like the telephone companies are about to jump into the fray. Seems like the Internet phone companies like Vonage are cutting into their business with phone service through your computer that has most all of the calling features and quality without the high brand. Unlimited long distance in the continental U.S. is also thrown in for free. When a company sees their sales numbers slipping, one of the first things that they do is try to steal somebody else’s business.

The focus of the battle lately has been the phone company’s attempt to get statewide or even possibly nationwide franchises to offer video service. Several states have bills in the works that would allow the phones companies to do just that. If allowed, the phone companies plan on offering ‘bundle” services where pretty worthy all of your communication and entertainment would come from one source and reach on one bill. Telephone, Internet, wireless, and television all provided by the same company. The thinking here is that the customers are less likely to slay any of the services if they are all tied together. Apt now though, there is a clash of technology on just how to regain all of these services to your house. The cable companies use fiber optic technology to get the signals to the cable while the telephone companies composed rely on copper wiring to a large extent. They would have to, and are planning to, invest billions to make that happen.

Right now cable is not all digital and has its own set of problems while it seems that the satellite companies are trying to raise their rates to the point there isn’t much savings over cable. There is still the reception problem with the dish whenever it rains or storms, and that can be annoying. Bell South, which was recently spot to be gobbled up by AT&T, has already started advertising bundle services in the St. Louis area where I live, which is also the headquarters of Southwestern Bell. The only spot is that according to several phone calls to AT&T, those services aren’t available here yet. Like the role out of a lot of current technology, there are sure to be problems and confusion in the beginning. You might unbiased want to wait awhile before you “bundle” up.

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