Charter Spectrum Begins New Charm Offensive To Address Cable’s Well-Earned Reputation For Sucking

Cable broadband giants like Charter Communications (Spectrum) and Comcast (Xfinity) generally don’t have to try very hard, because they enjoy a monopoly over broadband access across vast swaths of the U.S. That lack of competition traditionally results in high prices, spotty access, slow speeds, and some of the worst customer satisfaction ratings of any sector in America (an amazing feat when you think about the competition in banking, insurance, airlines, energy, and healthcare).

Charter executives are trying to salvage the company’s terrible reputation with a new charm offensive that includes, among other things, purported price cuts. Comcast-owned CNBC stenographs Charter’s charm offensive without much in the way of context or skepticism, including a hilarious quote by Charter CEO Chris Winfrey whining that the cable industry doesn’t get enough credit:

“For all the value that the industry’s brought over the years, and the service and reliability investments that we’ve made, we haven’t always gotten the full credit that we deserve, and in some cases, we did get the credit we deserve because we could have done things better,” Winfrey said.”

Charter’s been bleeding cable TV customers to ongoing cord cutting. But the cable giant also lost 149,000 broadband subscribers in the third quarter, thanks in large part to the Republican dismantling of a popular government assistance program that helped low-income Americans afford broadband.

But cable giants like Charter have also spent decade working tirelessly trying to demolish all local competition and regulatory oversight so they can price gouge captive customers. Charter’s service was so bad it almost got kicked out of New York State for failed promises and lying to regulators. It created a dodgy, fake consumer group to undermine community-owned broadband improvement efforts. They faced a $7 billion verdict a few years back after one of their technicians killed a customer.

The scorn companies like Charter receive from the public has been well earned. And while Charter is promising to change and lower prices, Reddit users note the price reductions are temporary, and they only apply if you sign up for a traditional cable TV service people increasingly don’t want.

Monopolization and deregulation means there’s no real-world incentive for Charter to improve across most of its markets. The combination of no competition and little functional oversight (courtesy of rampant corruption) means there is no free market competition, and it routinely shows.

CNBC, tasked with purportedly informing the public, simply doesn’t mention any of that as useful context, and pushes a lot of quotes like this completely unchallenged:

“When I think about Wall Street, I think about the customer,” Winfrey said. “If you focus on the customer, provide great customer service, save them money, provide value, then your capital market strategy, your regulatory strategy, all of that just falls into place.”

Charter, historically, does none of this. And Wall Street certainly doesn’t reward telecom companies for doing the kinds of things required to make broadband customers happy (costly broadband expansions into poor and rural neighborhoods, price cuts, or spending big on customer service). CNBC, Charter, and Winfrey all appear to operate in an alternative reality that looks nothing like the one we actually inhabit.