Comcast Swallows Delicious Regional Cable Companies
Mmm. Regional cable companies are delicious! Comcast has taken a big bite out of two of them: Patriot Media & Communications in New Jersey and Insight Communications in Illinois/Indiana (previously a joint venture.) Comcast stands to acquire 1,061,000 cable subscribers from the deals, most of them in downstate/western Illinois and parts of Indiana. Currently, the vast majority of Comcast's Illinois customer base is located in the Chicagoland area. New Jersey's Patriot Media brought far fewer subscribers to the deal, but those subscribers bring in a ton of cash. From Forbes:
Its customers generate twice as much cash flow as the average subscriber, said Comcast spokeswoman D'Arcy Rudnay.Get ready to be Comcasted! —MEGHANN MARCO
Insight, Comcast Splitting Joint Venture [Forbes]
Comcast to Buy New Jersey Cable Operator [Forbes]
(Photo: cmorran123)
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Comments:
Can't wait for Verizon cable to come to the area.
This development is COMCASTIC!
Cable in my area just switched to Comcast from the local "tele-media" which I believe was a part of Adelphia.
So far the transition has been smooth and I've yet to notice any negative lineup changes. In fact YESHD showed up the day before the season began which makes them ok in my book, although I'm sure I will regret saying this at some point...
My parents have Insight now, I'll have to warn them of the forthcoming Comcastic reaming and try again to convince them to switch to satellite.
I used to live in an area that had Patriot Media (Jersey). When I called up my local Comcast to sign up origially, they told me that Patriot Media was the cable provider that Comcast went through. I was kind of confused, and asked for more info. They basically told us that Pat. Media bought their cable from Comcast, and resold it to us. Honestly, if Comcast takes over that area, it only means slightly cheaper prices for the exact same service.
Patriot Media is expensive as hell, I begrudgingly pay $150+/month. Bring on cheaper prices I say.
Comcast is pretty great, actually. They merged with someone over here and cable has been getting better ever since.
I picked up a HD DVR box yesterday, works great. My high speed internet recently went from 6mb to 25mb.
I live in South Jersey and about 4 years ago Comcast took over Garden State cable and @HOME Internet. Personally, I couldn't be any happier. The cable service has seen no issues, we have free HBO, and our Hi-Speed Internet Speeds are typically nothing short of incredible considering the other options we have.
I wouldn't be too upset if I were you Patriot subscribers!
Comcast only offers a 2GB per month usenet limit, which for anyone who actually knows what USENET is used for, is completely ridiculous. However, Adelphia currently offers a 5GB limit. While not big enough for downloading anything great, it does have major advantages over Comcast.
And for the priveledge of this 3GB change, comcast charges $1 more a month. Yay.
yea, the newsgroups suck, but theres no limit on giganews!
All I know about Comcast, I've read here on The Consumerist (on my Insight cable internet). I was very distressed to hear that Comcast is coming to my relatively small town in Illinois to take over. I hope this sort of thing doesn't spread to my very decent cell phone service and excellent locally-owned bank too.
I feel sorry for these people. Especially being a current Comcast customer, I can really relate.
Fios...why doth thou forsake me?!
Desire-one
Comcast has just swallowed my cable ompany as well promising comcastic results all I got during this transition was worst customer service worst recepttion and a WAY HIGHER BILL. Comcast is not about it's consumers.Comcasitc more like corpcastic.
OH NO!!! I am an Insight customer, and they have reasonably good customer service except for one time when I was without internet for two days. Getting Comcasted is going to be one hell of a ride...
Hmm on one hand yeah I dont like paying a much higher cable bill. On the other hand I do understand that Comcast isn't a utility company. Therefore they dont necessarily have to lower the bill. As far as Verizon nah at least Comcast doesnt have you on a 2 year contract. And I wouldnt expect their service to be that much better. There standard installation has them using comcast existing cable to get service to you.
"Get ready to be Comcasted! -MEGHANN MARCO"
My girlfriend told me she was preggers....We refer to THAT as being "comcasted".