Charter Services Reflect

Lack Of Competition

To the Editor:

I recently attended a Charter Communications advisory board meeting here in Newtown to discuss my concerns with the levels of service that Charter is providing the community of Newtown. I have three specific examples where I think the people of Newtown are being less-well served by Charter’s offerings than Cablevision/Optimum’s customers.

I am writing to express my sense that Charter is offering a far inferior service-to-cost ratio to the citizens of Newtown than Cablevision/Optimum offers to our neighbors just a few miles away. I have extensive experience with technology, combined with my ten years of experience using cable Internet services, and have had the opportunity to evaluate both companies here in Connecticut since my home connection is in Newtown and therefore served by Charter and my work connection is in Westport and served by Optimum. I’ve have three specific examples where I think the people of Newtown are being less-well-served by your offerings than Cablevision/Optimum’s customers.

The first example relates to Internet speed vs cost. My most recent Charter bill was about $44/month for what’s called “3 meg” service. By comparison, my most recent Optimum bill was for $40/month for “30 meg” service. That’s Cablevision offering measurably ten times the download and upload speed for less then Charter charges. These speeds have been verified at both locations using Charter’s own speedtest software as well as the speakeasy server which is widely used for this purpose across the industry.

My second example relates to a customer service policy: when my old cable modem failed last year here in Newtown, Charter offered to sell me a new one for $60. When my cable modem in Westport failed a few months ago, Cablevision told me to come down to their customer center to pick up a new one for free.

My third example is another example of company policy gone wrong: whereas Cablevision/Optimum offers its digital TV subscribers access to HD content for free, Charter charges a monthly fee for the same privilege.

If there were normal avenues of competition available to the consumer in this business, as exist in every other business in the country by law, I would have the option of choosing my service provider for cable services. Seeing as the cable industry appears to be the only legalized monopoly allowed in this country, I do not have that option. As it is my understanding that [Charter’s] contract as a provider with the Connecticut Public Utilities Commission runs out some six years from now, my only real current option is to appeal to [Charter’s] sense of business fairness and to illustrate and contrast the way another local cable provider is serving their nearby customers as opposed to the way Charter is serving us here in Newtown.

I would like to see Charter offer competitive products and pricing in comparison to the other local cable providers. Thank you very much for your time and your attention. Please seek remedies so that we, as customers, don’t have to end up feeling so badly taken advantage of.

Richard Hilton

2 Sealand Drive, Newtown                                 September 17, 2007