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‘Poor service and high rates’
Dear governor, Delegate Kilili and Docomo: I’m sure most citizens appreciate Docomo Pacific for its cable services but I am tired of the poor programing that is being offered. There are entirely too many black-and-white programs from the ’50s and too many reruns of old programs for the amount of money that people have to pay for cable TV. Even the movie channels are all reruns and there are virtually no black programs being offered by Docomo in the CNMI, even though there are some black programs offered in Guam. Why are Guam customers getting better programing for the same money? Docomo can do the CNMI better than that!
The people on these islands have always been at a disadvantage when it comes to TV services and it is still the same way almost 75 years later. We are still watching reruns of programs that are 50-plus years old because there is no competition for this market. But technology has changed things and it is now time for the programing to change too! I am humbly and respectfully asking Docomo to find the audacity to change! I want to see some up-to- date TV as we are paying good money just to watch TV! I hope you will respect this plea for you to provide better programing to the CNMI.
The average cable viewer pays about $60 a month, not including the movie channels, and I was informed that Docomo has over 67,000 customers in the CNMI and Guam. We are paying over $48.24 million a year just to watch TV! Yet our programing hasn’t changed or improved one bit since MCV had it and in some cases it has declined. Docomo is treating us just like monopolies do—poor service and high rates. The black and white programs that they pay pennies for from the 1950s and ’60s, shows like Gun Smoke and Andy Griffin, are over half a century old! If I sound mad, I’m not, just very disappointed that we are being played.
Docomo does deserve some kudos for sports and for their phone services as they are helping to keep phone costs competitive but they need to adopt MCV’s theme for cable and live up to it if they want to be “unbeatable”!
Ambrose M. Bennett
Kagman, Saipan
