Too Poor to Afford the Internet
nytimes.com
nytimes.com
They are, as this piece points out, very popular places to access computers and the Internet, and many libraries offer a wealth of digital content. I can check out and instantly download e-books and audiobooks and movies from my library.
It's certainly conceivable that they might have transitioned less well. There is, after all, a healthy amount of government bureaucracy in the public library system, and that tends to stymie innovation. And then there's just the pain of transition. Bookstores have felt those pains hard; it's not that people don't want content, but they want content in different forms, and a lot of bookstores just couldn't move fast enough.
But I'm really glad to see libraries continue to be generally healthy, and important community resources.
My previous university has one that I have lifetime access to (UAE University) and my current university has an even better collection (GATech).
It's never made sense to me why, despite billions of dollars budgeted toward scientific funding, private companies make money charging for journal access. Why can't all that public funding also go toward funding the peer review, editing, and publishing?
If universities really, really cared, they could band together and set up their own journal publishing organization (many universities do have their own academic publishing arms, but a single-university journal publisher probably would be harder to establish respect for than one sponsored by a broad coalition of major universities.)
"There are those struggling to change this. The Open Access Movement has fought
valiantly to ensure that scientists do not sign their copyrights away but instead ensure
their work is published on the Internet, under terms that allow anyone to access it. But
even under the best scenarios, their work will only apply to things published in the future.
Everything up until now will have been lost."
Yes, I imagine they would. They would also probably be taken to court for breach of contract, and the courts would fine them a substantial amount. I would certainly hope that this would be the case - even the top 20 universities have to obey the law, and producing research has never been a valid excuse for choosing to ignore a law you don't like.
Criminal activity is not the answer here - nor should it ever be.
What the universities can do, if they cared, is re-negotiate their contracts with the publishing houses. Of course, this requires assigning a monetary value to the amount they care, which must be greater that the inevitable price increase they woulld incur for the change in access restrictions.
I also like the opportunity to get on with work in a quiet place without feeling obliged to buy a coffee.
The front in 1980 https://youtu.be/eAc59a90PBc?t=157
The SF central branch has a really good selection of programming/tech books. Also, having a library card enables access (as you note) to a wide selection of ebooks[1].
(I note, however, that the interface that you can use them through could use some redesign.)
e.g. My library system doesn't have a copy of any of the volumes of "Please Save My Earth," and that was a title that many libraries had if they had any manga at all, in my experience.
Libraries don't.
[0]https://www.reddit.com/r/books/comments/4txauf/internet_cant...
In theory, public libraries have been meant for people from all walks of life since their inception. But computer media have made them useful for a lot more things than intellectual pursuits, and it does seem reasonable that this would concern people. It's their taxes paying for it after all.
It would be nice if people on reddit would reflect on why it bothers them that people come to the library on drugs and watch porn, but reddit doesn't have a culture of people writing out three-paragraph justifications for their opinions. I thought that it was pretty clear, though, what people are actually bothered by from the comments you uncharitably labeled "complaining about the homeless".
I'd say rather than people preferring digital, its the browsing and buying experience of the same old printed matter that needs to change for them to stay competitive. Bookstores have until now been little more than warehouses that store books, and let people walk in and buy them. That same function is done better by Amazon.
What an updated bookstore needs to be about is the experience: Curation and recommendations so that you can find books that you didn't know you'd love (this is invaluable), a nice environment that makes you want to go there and makes books feel exciting. It should also hold events - launches, readings, discussions, exhibitions, workshops. It has to be more than a warehouse, basically.
This encompasses retail for all industries: Experience, service, novelty.
And a price close enough to that found online that you can get the close. Or you're going to get showroomed.
An alternative to having the price close enough is to have the price in the ballpark and have a sense of urgency such that the consumer will buy now. I have walked into Barnes and Noble and bought a book because I wanted it right then and I was out and about. Perhaps I could have had it for $5 cheaper on Amazon, but saving that $5 wasn't worth the wait.
Another alternative is to have (at least some of )the physical experience be purchased--hence the coffee shops in the bookstore--you can't get hot coffee via Amazon. (Yet?)
Yes, but at the slight risk of sounding ridiculous. Libraries were computerized long before the "Internet age".
From that, I inferred that "digital age" is being used to denote "Internet age".
The world really looks different if you only have a handheld device -- it's more read-only and because of caps and expensive mobile plans, you will use it less.
In cities there's a chance that libraries can help, but with rural poverty it's really a trap!
That's highly, incredibly, improbable. Anyone meeting such criteria probably always got a device.
I just gave the RPi as one example of a cheap example of a non-mobile-device for accessing the internet - there are of course lots of other ways, too.
But now you're supposed to go and spend $110+ on a Rasberry Pi and some computer equipment, and find a local hacker space full of rich white dudes and hope that they help you set it up rather than awkwardly avoiding you and quietly wondering how you got in? Class, race, and educational barriers aren't imaginary things that can be solved by the "maker spaces" with friendly utopian facades. In my experience, they're extremely judgmental, fad-driven, and can be overwhelming and demoralizing for those without basic technical knowledge or who don't check at least a few of the "are you one of us?" boxes.
Sure, there are a lot of old people at these meetups and maker spaces, sure there are a lot of women, sure there are a lot of ethnic minorities, people with kids, poor people, people with extremely unprivileged backgrounds, people who don't wear the typical "t-shirt jeans/khakis" uniform, and a lot of people who are just starting out and learning. But you start piling on too many of these "minority statuses" at once, and all of a sudden, it's a very different experience. Even if someone DID have the ability and knowledge to pull this plan together (I mean, I have a master's in software engineering and have been programming professionally for 10 years, but even I would have to do some serious Googling to set up a Rasberry Pi with my TV), why would they willingly put themselves in a potentially ostracizing and embarrassing situation? Very few people want to be the odd one out, or be the subject of speculation, or have their skills and worth questioned while they're in unfamiliar territory, outside of their comfort zone. Questioning why poor people aren't "taking advantage" of these opportunities that are so clearly available to you is just contributing to the problem.
Are american high prices the result of scummy pricing on the corporations' side or is it an actual infrastructural issue that prevents the ISPs from providing cheap connections to everyone?
In the US, many people have only one choice for an Internet/TV/phone provider. Some have two choices. It is exceedingly rare to find a place with three choices.
Telecoms are typically granted local monopolies. As a result, they can charge pretty much what they want. And they do. Even in markets with a duopoly, companies very rarely attempt to beat each other on price, it's not in their best long-term interest to (but I doubt they are outright colluding).
The only places where it is more expensive than the norm to build out is in more rural areas... but the telecoms sometimes don't build out there at all, so some people are stuck with whatever they can get with a copper phone line, or satellite Internet if they can afford it (that's very expensive as well).
In my area - Optimum wants $50 for 60/25, plus $10 to rent a modem monthly, plus other taxes and fees (most of them made up) that are nigh impossible to find out beforehand. For TV and phone as well, $90 plus rental fees for the router and required boxes for each TV However, Optimum is terrible at my particular house, but we're one of the lucky ones who can choose Verizon as well. Verizon wants $70 for 100/100, reduced TV service, and phone, plus all the fees above. The telecoms push the bundles very hard.
As you can see, this shit's expensive (adds up to $130).
Combine that with large regions of low population density and a lot of land, and we have very little competition in the vast majority of the country.
In the US, we get the downside legacies of a monopoly without the benefit of government control.
The last mile and regional infrastructure (poles, mostly) is owned by private interests, who tend to be dicks about sharing. There's also a regulatory tension between the Federal government and state governments.
In Baltimore, I paid about $50 for a 50mbps connection, or about 20x more than a subway ticket. Sounds like the ratio is about the same order of magnitude in Ukraine.
[1] A telecom field technican in the U.S. makes about $6,000-$7,000 per month, plus benefits. That's about 20x what the average Ukrainian in Kiev makes (according to the Internet).
[2] Fares on D.C.'s metro, which similarly cover only about 50% of costs, range from $1.75 to $5.90(!).
I'm not sure that's true. Let's say it costs VeriCast $500/year to maintain a single home's landline and broadband connections (including the stuff in the street), for which they charge the customer say $700 per year. Do they really have one employee per 200 connections (assuming $100k full-loaded cost per employee)? That would be 500,000 employees in the USA, if 83% of households have broadband. That's about the total number of employees of ComCast, Verizon and AT&T. But those folks provide other services (like cellular service). Where is my math wrong?
Even we accept that it is true, it's not relevant, because the price paid by the customer is as much about the willingness of customers to pay, as it is about the running costs.
Even if we believe it's relevant, because the price customers are willing to pay vary with local incomes, experience tells us that local incomes don't tell us the whole story. People in London pay less for broadband (~$300 per year for phone and broadband, including taxes[0]) than those in San Francisco. I don't see how that is explained by labour costs.
Furthermore, labor costs are not about maintenance, but rather about investing in the infrastructure. And this doesn't translate directly into the price. They make way more money on that infrastructure in the long run.
Well for one you aren't adding in contractors. The people actually building the network aren't typically direct employees. The usual pattern is spend a ton of money to build out the network, earn it back through a number of years and then use the added cash flow to expand once more. Wireless networks are what the money is going to right now.
Regardless, you can look through all the various telecom quarterly reports to see where the money is going. They are for the most part profitable endeavours, but not especially lucrative (AT&T's latest quarter had a 8.67% net profit margin compared to 22.68% for Google).
I've lived in very affluent neighborhoods that have access to a single, shitty, ISP. So even when you can afford the inflated and outrageous prices you're still at the mercy of an incredibly corrupt and poor preforming corporation.
But why is it relatively more expensive? Have Indian companies rigged the rules such that they don't have to compete with each other? I thought Indian labor was relatively inexpensive.
Overall, I don't understand what's going on with Indian ISPs. For example, my traceroute to qoo10.sg (hosted in Korea) reveals traffic going from Bangalore to Delhi to London to Fremont (US) to Japan to Korea. For various other places that are supposed to be close by, I see traffic going all the way to Delhi and then coming back.
I think the demand for broadband is still very low here, and so, unoptimal strategies (from a network packet's POV) are good enough for our ISPs.
2) A network engineeering position that might cost a company $115,000/year in the US could be filled for $35,000/year in Ukraine.
3) Eastern european ISPs are much more "Adventurous" in terms of the low cost network equipment they use for core infrastructure. $1500 Mikrotiks in the same role where a US ISP would use a $15,000 Ciscos or Juniper. Building five to six nines uptime core router POPs with fully redundant -48VDC A and B power is not cheap.
Well, unlike US ISPs, they try to compete on price and there is a lot of competition. They kind of have to be much more adventurous in terms of cutting down costs of network equipment. But they also compete on quality, so it has to satisfy that too or you are out.
Given your quoted numbers, the price in Ukraine is actually higher at 5% of a monthly salary.
Of course the US doesn't have a monthly minimum wage (not sure how that works in Ukraine) so many people in the US might only have part time jobs paying the minimum hourly wage, hence they make considerably less than $1200 a month.
UPDATE It seems to be even less today at $5-10: http://money.cnn.com/2016/04/22/technology/access-from-att-d...
It's strange that the article doesn't mention this.
Of course, not all components of the prices translate proportionally. Salaries probably do, equipment probably does not.
Children in poverty often suffer from dysfunctional families that disrupt their studying and lack of life mentors to motivate them to pay attention in school.
If you could have supervised after school hours just for these kids to do their homework and maybe engage in a bit of self learning it would be much more useful than having home internet access.
In every case, the person consuming these resources either:
[a] pays for them on their own
[b] is provided them but paid by someone else, possibly in aggregate (family, government services, charity)
[c] not provided them at all, in which case they are no longer a productive member of society (or worse, near-starving, starving, or dead)
Ethics and economic systems notwithstanding, the first few are 'hard problems' that humanity has struggled with for millennia. Internet access is comparatively easy, because the marginal costs of distribution are low, but just like other 'utilities' and 'necessities', the capital cost is high.
One way to offset this is to create a market like for electricity, where multiple players, some private, some government-owned, compete at the supply-side and distribution-side, to provide capacity at prices that are close to the cost of (production+transmission) for the area.
Luckily, unlike electricity, water, food, or shelter, information can be duplicated, format-shifted, batched, compressed, time-delayed, and the like. If fixed-fiber-based Internet to arbitrary endpoints is too expensive despite the presence of a market, cache or store more content closer to the consumer on CDNs. If last-mile distribution is too expensive, switch to a different last-mile distribution paradigm -- this latter one is what public libraries (and public hotspots) currently accomplish. If bi-directional communication is desired, investigate peer-to-peer solutions. There's so much potential in LANs, WANs, sneakernet, (TV/radio/data) broadcast that goes untapped.
We're stuck here because right now telcos are a terrible market and the monopolies are granted at the wrong level; but also because we're assuming that getting direct, end-to-end connection from one of the big telcos is the only way to digitally communicate.
In the UK https://www.uswitch.com/broadband/packages/ shows the cheapest broadband package - which includes telephone line rental - to be £18 per month (average across the contract when delivered router is included). That's around $25 (you can get "free" with a telephone service).
What struck me was the kid in the header image has a swanky new laptop, the story confirms the kids bring their laptops with them. Could they pay their neighbour $10 to leech the neighbours wifi? Do they need swanky laptops or just an internet appliance (my work computer is a 3rd hand toshiba on WinXP! - good enough for net+email)?
Do people in the USA tend to go to libraries for wifi rather than [near] to a cafe or other private business leaking free wifi?
Our library gets a lot of Internet patronage. In our city the library has done a great job of transitioning into a third place. People like to use the "think of the poor children" card, but I see all walks of life there. It's a great place.
TWC is less noxious than Verizon though -- they don't block Netflix, etc in my area.
Why is there homework online? Has this been shown to be better in any way for children learning math or just a cop out by lazy teachers to be able to automatically grade the assignments?
I can't imagine learning math with anything besides a pencil and paper (yes even calculators are mostly bullshit).
- It provides feedback on how long students are doing each section, so they can identify if students are spending too much time on homework.
- It makes it interactive, which for primary school children helps keep education fun. They can even receive awards (gold medals, virtual stickers in their collection, etc) to keep them motivated.
But yes, pencil and paper are used for these as you can see the problem and write the answer, but do the work on your own, as needed.
I don't know if that's any better on an academic level as I personally loved puzzling out math problems on pen & paper (which I suppose you could still do in your notebook), but I definitely see the cost savings.
It's an extremely frustrating trend, particularly since on the whole students seem to uniformly despise these services, but education is highly budget-constrained and this is one of the areas where it really shows. It's either online homework or pay more in taxes/tuition.
Edit: while I'm making Pearson sound vaguely evil, I should mention that the cost of these services is usually mostly offset onto the students, as the textbooks come with a one-time-use activation code for the online service that effectively eliminates the used textbook market. Of course in K-12 public school systems, the taxpayers still end up footing the bill.
I do not use the word "hate" lightly. It is a strong word.
The whole point of a productivity improvement is to free up time to spend in other ways. Maybe it's a false efficiency, but it's very cynical to assume than any time teachers can free up by being more efficient at grading will be simply wasted. Generally speaking, teachers have a lot of other things they could do.
School is like a prison for kids. One form of punishment is detention - more school.
Also, "In the 2000 report, commissioned by the American Association of University Women, surveyors asked students between eighth and 11th grades whether they had ever experienced inappropriate sexual conduct at school. The list of such conduct included lewd comments, exposure to pornography, peeping in the locker room, and sexual touching or grabbing. Around one in 10 students said they had been the victim of one or more such things from a teacher or other school employee, and two-thirds of those reported the incident involved physical contact." - http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/explainer/20...
So, asking if something the public school system is doing is student focused betrays a fundamental misunderstanding of its purpose.
Absolutely. It doesn't work out perfect every time in every place, but it does a pretty amazing job of that given the poor level of funding and constant bashing from the entitled anti-union right. Freeing up parents is a wonderful side effect that has worked out pretty well for contemporary society.
If you're surprised that kids going through puberty are engaging in sexual activity, you must be living under a rock.
Do you have a source for this? According to an OECD study I found, the US spends among the most in the world per pupil on education.
https://data.oecd.org/eduresource/education-spending.htm http://www.politifact.com/florida/statements/2015/apr/21/jeb...
> Traditionally the United States spends big parts of its educational budget on non-instructional items such as security -- more so than some other nations.
Whenever I read about the US I'm absolutely terrified
And the "--more than some other nations." tag is just poor journalism without added context. I'm sure that the US spends more money on metal detectors than a lot of the small countries in the world. But that doesn't tell us anything useful.
His thesis is that the public school system is pretty much doing what it was founded to do in the 19th century: to hone down kids to be good, obedient, unthinking factory workers and military, to the lowest common denominator.
His "Underground History of American Education" expands on that quite a bit.
Most definitely worth reading.
They do a shitty job of that as well. To solve that problem school should be year round, start at 8am and end after 5pm. That way a parent can have a full time job without having to take their kid to school after their job starts and picking them up before it ends.
> So, asking if something the public school system is doing is student focused betrays a fundamental misunderstanding of its purpose.
It's implementation that's flawed, not the idea. Public schools are a grand concept and can work. They just need to fix the hours, get rid of the teacher's unions (don't like it? Great, go work somewhere else!), and hire proper teachers. While you're at it replace defined benefit plans with defined contribution one's so the full costs are accounted for rather than passed on to the kids in the classroom.
I also tend to think you should know the underlying math before you apply it on a computer. It seems like you're just learning which buttons to click on the program without that underlying comprehension. I can't imagine trying to understand calculus without being grounded in algebra first.
Then again, maybe what I've described is just a learning weakness in me.
Math builds on other math, and some amount of rote memorization and tedious by-hand work can sometimes be necessary to reach that 'aha!' moment where you understand the thing and its uses abstractly, and some of it can be useful to retain since you can do things by inspection. But so much could be cut. For instance, partial fraction expansion (mathematicians feel free to correct me) might just be wholely useless outside the group of people who enjoy such manual manipulation -- just have your computer do the inverse Laplace transform and get on with what you really want to do. Or have your computer do the expansion at the very least. More students could even reach the concept of Laplace transforms (my bet would be before high school) if they weren't slowed by so much tedium in earlier material.
Why does it have to be a modern math course and what part of elementary school math is "modern math"? Counting, arithmetic, algebra, geometry, and trigonometry, and even calculus are hundreds of years old.
> Humans are not going to advance the field, or even keep up to date, when it is insisted that students do everything their equally intelligent predecessors did plus new things.
I'm not saying don't use advanced technology, I'm saying you don't need advanced technology to learn anything from 1 + 1 = 2 through differential equations. It's a hindrance, not an asset.
> Something has got to go, and top of my list is a vast amount of pen and paper bullshit.
The idea that technology can solve everything is what needs to go. At some point people need to sit down and put the time and effort into learning. You can't automate and gamify everything.
I had trouble in 'traditional' courses. I completely missed algebra one year. Simply didn't get most of the concepts. I'd listen in class, I'd take notes, read the book, and do the homework nearly every night (Heh. Teenager). And I generally would do poorly on the homework, despite thinking I had done the process correctly.
With the online program, I still used pen and paper. Entered in an answer. The difference was I'd get immediate feedback on whether the answer was correct, and then get the option to try again.
The program had a system that would walk me through the problem, having me solve step by step, explaining on the way. It would repeat this process with similar problems as much as necessary. Then give a similar problem for me to answer for the homework.
In addition, there were study tests. These did not have the help feature (like the actual tests), but did give immediate feedback and suggested certain things you needed improvement on.
These things were really key to my being somewhat confident in math and passing the course. Of course, i'm pretty sure they could be software instead of online which would solve a single problem.
Now, I might be unique. I think I'm mildly dyslexic - I still mispell some simple words, get times tables mixed up, and have to think about right and left, for example. But the computer software (and calculators, to a lesser extent) help me know where I commonly have mistakes, much like spellcheck helps me out greatly.
I tried to teach a class on computers in my local library and that was often the hurdle. Adults who want 'computer training' are most excited about getting a job. But while it's easy to teach them to move the cursor and click on the browser, that doesn't do any good when they can't write enough to search, or read job descriptions, or write their resume.
https://www.alliedmedia.org/dctp/digitalstewards
A group of volunteers in Detroit are the pioneers in setting up mesh networks to provide connectivity to the poor. The recipe is to get some benefactors to sponsor one or two fiber connections, campaign with local businesses to open their connectivity and build a mesh network throughout the neighborhood.
I've met these people and have come away impressed and a little in awe of what they've done on - little or no money. They've also got some mean technical chops and have setup networks in other cities around the world like Brooklyn, Washington D.C. and India.
This is a program that gives people in subsidized section 8 housing super cheap broadband. It's a bout $5 per month and gets you top quality broadband, such as a cable modem. Very similar to the old lifeline phone lines.
The City of Edmonton provides free WiFi[1] in a number of places[2], albeit with more restrictions. These mainly seem to be at rec centres and LRT stations, but there are also some parks included.
If someone in Edmonton didn't have internet access and needed it, it's available without too much trouble.
[0] http://www.epl.ca/hotspots/
[1] http://www.edmonton.ca/programs_services/open-wifi.aspx
[2] https://data.edmonton.ca/Facilities-and-Structures/Open-City...
On the other hand regulation is exactly how broadband rollout has been stifled in the past and present by incumbents, and is at least partly to blame why it's so expensive right now.
I want it deregulated and opened up to very serious competition. I also want our government to build reliable infrastructure (fiber) as much as is possible.
I'm not surprised that you feel torn. Those desires are in direct contradiction with each other.
Even if you're referring to splitting infra from service, there will still be regulation. You'll also see law enforcement becoming very interested in the fact that interconnects and the last mile are now government property.
Community internet could/should be owned by the community, separate from the government.
It could be structured as a private company, where shares are only owned by people within the community and then they have voting rights. Still community owned, but very separate from the more general government.
Interestingly this would also allow community members to invest in their own internet infrastructure directly.
Sure you can do all this with no Internet. But it will take much longer, requiring phone calls or in person visits.
Plus, want to try applying for a job with no Internet?
A person with no Internet at home (or on a phone, etc.) is doomed to be much less productive.
Like others have said, governments are moving things online. Some things, though available in person, are too far for travel and telephone hours are short. If you are working a couple of jobs, you might miss some work just to do basic things, which is really detrimental. Even simple tax returns give money sooner, which might be the difference between someone having housing and not.
Utility companies have started to charge people more if they get a physical bill instead of online billing. Reduced or witholding installation charges if you sign up for internet, cable, or whatnot online.
Maybe you just need a phone number. Increasingly phone books are becoming rarer, so you might not have access. Or the number changed, or you need some governement phone number that isn't listed. Maybe you simply need hours or a doctor's phone number. Internet provides this more readily.
More and more companies are using online only applications. I worked for a pharmacy that simply did not take paper applications or CVs. They did not have a kiosk in the store.
Libraries are great for access, until they are out of your range or you don't have one in your township and have to pay for a card. Many smaller libraries have too few computers, a short time limit (30 minutes), and a lack of privacy. Plus there are transportation costs.
Such transportation costs actually are most detrimental to the poor.
Now, most folks will have the biggest gain in entertainment. But really, this helps you be more productive as well. You can make small talk at work, you can relax after the day, interact with family, and other such things. It is good for mental health in some respects.
“Poor?” said Cordelia, bewildered. “No electricity? How can it be on the com network?”
“It’s not, of course,” answered Vorkosigan.
“Then how can anybody get their schooling?”
“They don’t.”
Cordelia stared. “I don’t understand. How do they get their jobs?”
“A few escape to the Service. The rest prey on each other, mostly.” Vorkosigan regarded her face uneasily. “Have you no poverty on Beta Colony?”
“Poverty? Well, some people have more money than others, of course, but . . . no comconsoles?”
Vorkosigan was diverted from his interrogation. “Is not owning a comconsole the lowest standard of living you can imagine?” he said in wonder.
“It’s the first article in the constitution. ‘Access to information shall not be abridged.’ ”
>my internet use at home
I'm guessing you're able to use the internet at work or school?
Do any libraries have some kind of persisted 'virtualized' environment that migrated between public-use machines?
For example, at the library I was at, you could not install software you needed - things were pretty locked down. And one day you may use machine #5, another day it might be machine #10.
Imagine you wanted to teach yourself programming. A few tools would need to be installed. I don't see how this would be possible in the library I was in (using public computers).
- 10 Mbps Internet service for just $9.95 a month + tax - No activation fees and no equipment rental fees - Option to purchase a computer for just $149.99 + tax - Access to free Internet training online, in print and in person - A wireless gateway, delivering in-home WiFi at no additional cost
https://customer.xfinity.com/help-and-support/internet/comca...
The former Adelphia areas that went to Comcast got marginally better (more uniform towards product offerings in line with existing Comcast), but are still overpriced shit, and the areas that TWC got worse to match TWC's existing shittyness.
Given how TWC is a toxic shithole of a company, and Comcast is barely any different, Charter has actually made a name for themselves for being customer oriented, not short term anti-profit like the other two, and the FCC happily allowed the merger.
Charter's pricing is generally lower, their customer support is generally better, and they actually rebuild areas they buy instead of letting them rot like TWC (and also Verizon, on the teleco side).
tl;dr if the companies refuse to compete, how is any of it considered "competition"?