Some West Hollywood residents will see their Time Warner Cable rates increase next month.
“They do an increase every year, and they’re doing it now,” said Kent Egenberger, the City of West Hollywood’s CATV supervisor.
The rate for the standard Time Warner Cable package, which is $51 a month, will increase to $53.49 a month. The rate for basic Internet service, now $55 a month, will increase to $58.04 a month. Time Warner routinely negotiates those rates with its customers, many of who pay less.
Annual increases are usually in the 3-5 percent range. Bret Picciolo, a Time Warner Cable spokesman, said that almost 70 percent of customers will not see any immediate change in rates.
“Our prices reflect the enhancements we have delivered to customers in the West Hollywood area (more HD channels, WiFi hotspots and faster Internet speeds), the higher cost of programming – especially local broadcast channels – and our investments in making our network and services even more reliable and robust,” Picciolo said in an email message to WEHOville.com.
Time Warner Cable and AT&T both have agreements with the state that allow them to use city streets and rights of way for cables in exchange for a fee. Those “franchise agreements” are not contracts, Egenberger said; they don’t bar other cable companies from offering services in West Hollywood. Time Warner Cable is, however, the only cable TV provider serving West Hollywood.
The city entered into a ten-year franchise agreement in 2004 with Adelphia Communications, which was acquired by Time Warner in 2006. Under certain conditions that franchise can be extended for five years. Under the agreement, Time Warner Cable is required to provide five access channels for use by the city, one of which is used to broadcast City Council meetings.
Comcast has made a $45.2 billion offer to acquire Time-Warner Cable, which must be approved by the U.S. Justice Department and the FCC to determine whether it will create a monopolistic situation that will have an adverse effect on consumers.
EDITOR’S NOTE: An earlier version of this story erred in saying that the FCC regulates cable television rates. Cable television rates are not regulated by the FCC.
I, as with Todd, have had fairly consistent internet service–until 2014, when the connection has repeatedly crashed, most recently yesterday and then for most of a day several weeks ago. When service went down several weeks ago, a rep in TWC’s dismal customer-service department told me there was an outage in the area (after another rep had categorically said there was no outage in the area). I’m direct wired with a less-than-year-old computer. TWC increased my internet-service price in: December 2009. December 2010. December 2011. August 2012. February 2013. August 2013. And now in March 2014. Good time to dump… Read more »
I’ve had fairly consistent internet service, but a couple weeks ago, the whole system crashed “in my area” for an entire day. Given how vital the internet is to me (and many others) it was a huge inconvenience. I certainly haven’t noticed an increase in speed and it often slows to the point that video doesn’t play well. And I’m using a direct-wired connection to a new computer running one of the fastest chips available. HD TV (and sometimes non-HD) pictures often freeze, the sound cuts out briefly or becomes staccato or the picture briefly tiles. It’s beyond annoying. And… Read more »
What a joke. I don’t mind paying a simple increase for services provided but what services. Almost every night at 6pm my internet signal slows dramatically sometimes it will even crash. I had to run a hard line to my desktop across the apartment as the wireless rarely worked and would crash on a daily basis. I would not even consider TV service through them ( much happier with dish ) but for internet I am stuck with the “high speed” internet option as I work on line from home. “High speed” ? How does Time Warner continue to offer… Read more »
I would not mind paying for a reliable internet & cable service that does not go out often. I have had a long history of unreliable service from TWC. I haven’t benefited from any “enhancements” or noticed any increase in my internet speed. I wish the FCC would take another look into the validity of the monopolistic behavior. Because I do not have another viable option, I feel tramped dealing with the lack of service, follow-through, and escalating cost.
Hum… the bills only go up. I must have missed the “enhancements” to service the spokesman references. If only Google would build one of its fiber networks here. With limited availability of AT&T U-Verse, the choices for internet provider generally boil down to one: Time Warner Cable. It’s not like sluggish DSL is much of a fall-back option.