Cable company and contract

per law we are being forced into letting cable company come on property and set up their lines. Using our lines set up in units to connect to their lines. With being forced. They believe we have to sign a 10 year contract with them. Because being forced we dont have to sign their contract. Has anyone created a contract with a cable company they would like to share. Dont care about their side I am concerned for association side. Unit owner should be responsile for wires to their unit. Cable company responsible for wires to unit owners wires. Association should not be responsible for any of it seeming unit owner is paying for the use. for some reason this company seems to think we should have a 10 year contract with them about the wiring and we or them. somehing is not right here. We will have a contract with them on they responsible for all their wiring.

Here is the issue with cable companies people don't understand. Often times the equipment needed for cable is extremely expensive for the cable company to install. Plus they have to pay for a specified Technician to service it. For them to decide to install or upgrade they must have a specified number of people who will pay for it. If they don't have example 100 solid customers to pay for the $1Million dollar equipment, they most likely will not do it. They can't justify the costs.

That is when they do what they are doing now. Making people sign an exclusive contract with them. Which is what I suspect is going on here. Your all attached basically to the same existing equipment. That is basically guaranteeing them to have that many customers. If your HOA is paying for cable, then that is the customer they will be aiming for to sign the contract.

There is very little government overseeing on some cable companies. It's a very hard thing to navigate. I would start out by calling other cable companies in the area to see if they offer the service in your area. Some are limited to the area. We can only have AT&T in my hood. My other neighborhood we had choice of 2 companies. I am not sure if your HOA will want to add individual satellite dishes for services. That can look bad.

So if your HOA does not pay for the cable service then it's up to the individual in my opinion. However, if it is part of the HOA dues, then they need to figure out what company to go with. Which I would still leave open NOT a 10 year contract. That is just too long IMO.

This is something you need to bring to your HOA attorneys attention. As long as the HOA don't have to pay a monthly fee to the cable company
you should be in the clear.

If one is signing a contract, the cable company should be paying the Association something for the exclusive right.

Cable is already dying slowly and with the roll out of 5G and more and more fiber connections it's days of dominating are doomed. Signing any long term contract for cable is a mistake.

Our HOA fees have included cable and security services since developer turnover. We use Comcast, which at the time (20 years ago) had an exclusive contract with our area of the county. When they negotiated a new contract about 4 years ago with Comcast (before I was on the board) they included high-speed internet. The security alarms are with a separate local company.

Comcast wanted a 10-year contract and for that they would have put fiber in from every "node" to every home. Because the association would only sign a 5-year contract, they put the fiber into the nodes from their switches but not fiber to every home. Homeowners are responsible for all communication with Comcast and for the wiring in their homes.

The package inludes basic digital cable, a dvr and two additional boxes, plus the "gateway" which is a modem/router. For an additional $25 you can get phone service. Any additional channels (HBO, etc.) are available at regular rates. Right now I think the cost that is rolled into our HOA fees is about $75 per month. There is a 5% yearly increase.

Comcast paid us a per-door incentive. I don't remember how much exactly, but it worked out to be around $5000 for the community. If you figure out the pricing, the incentive is almost equal to the total 5-year increase. So they didn't really give us anything.

I can see that adding this to your monthly fees if it's not already included would be an issue. However, taking it away from our owners would be an issue for us - everyone is used to "free" cable and internet. It's a huge selling point for home sales that cable, internet and home security are included.

We need to renegotiate the contract soon. But now there are competitors - only they all want a 10-year contract. I agree that cable is a dying product. However, our homeowners are generally older people who have trouble with technology and telling to to stream everything would be an issue.