Ten years of lousy service is something I do not easily forget. That was how long I had to rely on cable television for all of TV viewing. Before I ever signed up for cable television, I always expected the quality of the reception to be quite exceptional. After all, that's what their commercials said. In my opinion they were wrong. I was never satisfied with the picture quality.

For me, cable television service meant frequent price increases. It seemed to me that they were raising the price of the service every few months even though the service was not improving and they were not adding new channels to my programming package.

Although much has changed with cable TV service since I was a customer, I know that they have not changed their ways when it comes to frequent price increases. I live in an area where the only option for high-speed Internet service is provided by the local cable television company. Since I really do need high-speed Internet access, I am still dealing with frequent price increases imposed on me by the cable TV company today.

Since I was never satisfied with cable television, I decided to try satellite television back around 1998. After researching my options, I decided to sign up with Dish Network. I chose Dish Network because the programming packages they offered were more in line with my tastes than the packages being offered by the other satellite TV service.

From the very beginning I was very happy with Dish Network and I still am very happy with it today. I have had very few problems with my service and only one significant outage in the 9 years or so I have had it.

Don't believe what the cable TV companies say about satellite TV and the weather. The cable television companies want you to think that satellite TV customers lose their reception when it rains or snows and that just isn't true. We have had very few weather-related outages the entire time I have had Dish Network service and those were only with very heavy rain. Unless you live in an area that has frequent tropical downpours, you should not experience many weather-related outages.

Despite what the cable television companies say about weather-related disruptions on satellite TV, in my experience, it is actually cable television that is more subject to weather-related outages. I recall outages with cable that were caused by wind storms, ice storms and snow storms that brought cable TV lines down and left me without service for a day or two. In contrast, the weather-related outages I have experienced with Dish Network have been brief - lasting no more than a half hour at most.

Since you do not have to worry about wires or telephone poles being knocked down, outages are less frequent, and more importantly, a lot shorter with satellite TV when compared to cable television. I can recall cable TV outages that lasted for days following a major storm. Sure, without electric power, you are usually not able to watch TV, but in my experience, the cable TV outages always lasted longer than the power outages, and if you happen to have your own generator, you can continue to watch satellite TV even if the power lines are down.