NY to Charter: Sure, we'll approve that TWC merger, if you boost our broadband speeds

Re: Proof will be in the execution

I'm betting that Syracuse, Albany, Buffalo, Rochester, Schenectady, and a few other bigger cities will all get gigabit fiber to the premises service.

The rest of the state will remain unchanged, maybe with the "optional install fee of $43,900 to bring fiber from the field to your horse barn, plus costs to have leprechauns push the photons down the fiber".

Meanwhile, our bills will go up to fund the "super expensive, contractually required, and don't help you at all one bit" rollouts in the big cities...

Re: Proof will be in the execution

Exactly what I was thinking, as was going to post about. Have an upvote.

"The state's Public Service Commission has signed off on the proposed $78.7bn mega-merger with the condition that the TWC-Charter conglomerate promises to increase the average network speed in New York state over the next four years."

TWC "promises".

Good luck with that expectation.

Suckers.

Re: Proof will be in the execution

Worked for two years in Upstate New York in the city 10 miles west of Elmira (I am under an NDA to not mention the company name, which is also happens to be the name of the town its headquartered in), I could barely get 16 Mbps with TWC. The only other option was satellite, the phone lines were so poor that not even dial-up would work right, let alone DSL...

After working in NYC for the two years before that, I am fully in support of upstate split just north of White Plains and either becoming a state unto itself or absorbed into one of the neighboring states.

Re: Proof will be in the execution

As somebody who has lived in New York City for the past 15 years and has been a customer of 4 or 5 different cable companies I know that this will make not one iota of difference.

My bill will remain at $50-75 per month (2-3x higher than in other countries) for an advertised 50-100Mbps service which will actually deliver 15-25 when it is working perfectly and <1 Mbps when it is stressed i.e. Friday and Saturday evenings, holidays, bad weather, etc.

This because the vast majority of users have cable service, not ADSL, and therefore share underprovisioned drops in building basements or street corner drops. Even friends with Verizon FIOS which is advertised as fibre to the consumer have constant issues. This is because most consumers have one or, at most two, providers to choose from and therefore the vendors have the monopolists contempt for competition, service, and pricing.

Re: NY Thruway pipe?

Drowning them in red tape until they cry "Mario".

More red tape just delays things and makes them more expensive, and if there's two things US ISP monopolies love doing, it's delaying things and making them more expensive.