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I have a question.

Usually you have to pay for every cable jack that they activate. If you have cable on one that they don't know about, it's considered theft.
That is bizarre!

Meh, it's the only way I've ever seen it done.

Now, that is not to say that you can't just buy a splitter and feed it another TV. We do it all the time. In my parents house we only had 2 activated cable jacks but we had 5 TVs that all ran cable.
 
@Robert
BT here have got in trouble for something like that - because they are contracted to own and maintain the phone lines, they have direct control from their HQ of the entire network in the country, and it was 'suggested' (ie, ruled but out-of-court) that they were using this unfair advantage to damage competition, monitoring customers line usage, lines being activated and deactivated at certain addresses, etc. that other companies didn't have the ability to 'see'.
 
@Robert
BT here have got in trouble for something like that - because they are contracted to own and maintain the phone lines, they have direct control from their HQ of the entire network in the country, and it was 'suggested' (ie, ruled but out-of-court) that they were using this unfair advantage to damage competition, monitoring customers line usage, lines being activated and deactivated at certain addresses, etc. that other companies didn't have the ability to 'see'.

In the time period I'm talking about, there was no one but AT&T. They were a monopoly.
 
I (By I, I mean my parents :lol: ) pay £30 a month for Telephone, Internet and Television. We use Sky, Pretty good but I think its only a UK thing?
 
Just be grateful with what you have rather than what you don't.

I have no internet at home...so it could be worse (on many levels)...you could be me!
 
@Robert
BT here have got in trouble for something like that - because they are contracted to own and maintain the phone lines, they have direct control from their HQ of the entire network in the country, and it was 'suggested' (ie, ruled but out-of-court) that they were using this unfair advantage to damage competition, monitoring customers line usage, lines being activated and deactivated at certain addresses, etc. that other companies didn't have the ability to 'see'.

In the time period I'm talking about, there was no one but AT&T. They were a monopoly.

Yeah, BT used to be that too, for many many years. Hence, they still hold most of their old control over the actual physical network.
 
^ Damn, how come customer service people don't show up here when I bitch about stuff?

Anyway, Supreme Admiral, in my experience, grandmothers don't know anything about electronics, but they act as if they're experts. I mean, how many posters here had grandmas that wouldn't let them hook up their Nintendo because "It'll mess up my TV." The best thing to do is just say things like "Yes, grandma," "You're right, grandma," and "I will, grandma," every few seconds without actually paying attention. Actually, that's a good thing to do every time they talk.

Although, all my grandparents are dead, so this isn't something I have to deal with. Well, I have an aunt that sometimes likes to bitch about things to me that are none of her business, but I just tell her to shut the fuck up and she does. Sometimes she complains to my dad about it, but he doesn't say anything to me because most of the time he wants to tell her to shut the fuck up as well.
 
^ Seems very expensive to me. We pay 60€ a month for 10/5mbit VDSL line and IP TV (with two receivers) with no bandwidth cap. My monthly transfer is always way over 2TB. ;)
 
Is everybody here on Prodigy or AOL? I pay $US30 a month. I don't know if I have a bandwidth limit, but I download stuff all day and I've never had to pay more. I'm on Cable which is only moderately fast, but still. $137 for a one month's Internet bill? Somebody is ripping you off big time.
 
Is everybody here on Prodigy or AOL? I pay $US30 a month. I don't know if I have a bandwidth limit, but I download stuff all day and I've never had to pay more. I'm on Cable which is only moderately fast, but still. $137 for a one month's Internet bill? Somebody is ripping you off big time.

I have to agree. I pay $60/month, but that also includes my cable. I've never exceeded any kind of bandwidth, nor do I even know if I have a limit. Seems weird to me.
 
^ Seems very expensive to me. We pay 60€ a month for 10/5mbit VDSL line and IP TV (with two receivers) with no bandwidth cap. My monthly transfer is always way over 2TB. ;)

I pay about $50 for 60 GB of bandwidth, so it doesn't seem expensive to me. Then again, I live in a country where the telecommunications industry's idea of "customer service" amounts to sending people excessively large bills and cackling from within their piles and piles of money. If you're really lucky, they may even bother you with constant phone calls from bored-sounding operators asking if you're happy with your service.
 
^ The idea of "competition" in telecoms here is to have 2 companies providing broadband - one cable and one DSL (and some small players who basically repackage the 2 big ones' offers). So yeah, high prices abound!
 
^ The idea of "competition" in telecoms here is to have 2 companies providing broadband - one cable and one DSL (and some small players who basically repackage the 2 big ones' offers). So yeah, high prices abound!

We're pretty much the same. On the one hand, there's Bell (DSL) and on the other there's Rogers (cable). Both are big megacorporations that offer roughly the same services and a roughly as expensive as one another, overall. Neither of them treat their customers well. :p

There are other options out there, but these two do dominate, so a lot of the time people have little choice.
 
How about that. Lack of real competition leads to higher price and less choice. Broadband sucks in the U.S., at least compared to Japan and South Korea. In those two countries not only does just about everyone have access to broadband, but the prices are lower and the speeds are much faster compared to those in the U.S. Not only that, but they don't ration bandwidth like many cable companies are starting to do. What we're seeing here is what happens when you let telecoms write legislation.
 
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