Smart meters are here to stay and will be implemented eventually nation wide. They must have control over your power supply. Its part of making you completely dependent on the system. It alows them to turn you off with the flick of a switch should you be labled a dissident, spy on you and track your useage (in order to label you a dissident), and the icing on the cake, they get to charge you far more money by implementing time of use billing. W/o smart meters they cant use time of use billing.
12 Fatal Flaws of Smart Meters
- Thread starter Cannabisworks
- Start date
Total Head
Well-Known Member
that's weird. when i worked for a top 3 cable co the costs of sharing lines is what kept cities locked into contracts. they couldn't bring someone else in without "startup fees" that the new company would have to charge because they are now having to rent all the lines and suffer the consequenses of years of poor maintenence by a different company. phone is different because regions are federally mandated to have a primary lec (local exchange carrier), meaning that company is required by law to provide phone there. very few places were able to make it "affordable" to bring in competition, and a lot of the existing contracts were skewed WAY in favor of the original company. you should count yourself lucky.
Cannabisworks
Active Member
what goes on between your end and contracts i dont see at the consumer end. all i know is i got way more choice and cheeper but the best was ...more choices instead of being told i have to buy or rent from 1 co...like our power still is and is the only one left like that. the only part i care about is my bottom line on what i pay....and im sure will never change with this power co
Electric rates in Texas plummeted. Rates are almost half of what I was paying ~3 years ago.
btw - The cable company is in competition with dish companies. That helps keep prices down.
Total Head
Well-Known Member
cable and electricity are not the same. electricity is billed "per use" whereas with cable you pay the same whether you use the service or not, and the cable company does not moniter that usage in the same sense that the power company does. also electricity is considered a necessity and as such is treated a bit differently when contracts are drawn up. long story short, cable is able to really rape people a lot more effectively then electric companies (although the argument can be made that cable's operating costs are a lot higher but the whole thing is for another thread). it's just apples and oranges.
the dish competition is very interesting, though. it's more of a target market because satellite doesn't offer the internet or phone options that many cable companies do, but they definitely carved out a nitch in the market. the whole "bundle" scam has really taken off, though. i can promise you that there is a large portion of people who bounce between cable and dish for years just so they can get the "new customer" promos, but i'm going off topic.
i'm not saying that local cable competition NEVER results in lower pricing, i'm just saying it's a different ballgame than electricity, and my experience has been that it usually results in nothing more than people realizing its the same old shit with a new hairdo. there's really not enough difference between major cable companies for it to be worth it because they all have their areas that they service well and other areas that they service poorly, and there's very little price variation regionally within the same company. the smaller companies may have better pricing but often can't afford the equipment upgrades that a lot of people demand. did you know that there are people in analog-only areas that still have analog hbo? it's one channel and it's almost ALWAYS the same price that the guy in the next town pays for digital hbo with 9 channels. it's just complicated with cable but i feel as though i've jacked the thread long enough. sorry about that.
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