13 ms·

Comcast vs. the Cord Cutters

83 points by antr 13y ago

mrzimmerman 13y ago
I feel like this misses the point of people who no longer buy cable. I don't personally know a lot of people who do it to save money (I'm sure they exist). Everyone I know just prefers the convenience of watching when you want and not having to have a single dedicated device (a TV) where you can watch things. This isn't really any different than people ditching land lines in the late nineties and early two-thousands. It wasn't a question of cost so much as it was annoying to have multiple lines, numbers, and bills, not to mention one of those phones was only usable in a very specific way and the other could be used anywhere, whenever you felt like it.
- zacinbusiness 13y ago
  I also hate commercials. I won't even pay for Hulu+ because it has commercials. Commercials should exist to subsidize a free product, and they have no place in a paid product. I feel the same way about magazines. It's dumb that they are packed with ads and yet you still have to pay for them.
  - benajnim 13y ago
    I agree with your point that paid products should be commercial free, though what about the insidious placement of commercial products embedded within the content (song lyrics or any item with a logo on it in a movie or tv show)? It seems like those commercial placements are much harder to avoid in pop culture and will likely only increase in frequency in the future. It can skew the creative process of the artisans producing content and unless true commercial-free content is rewarded in some way, this is inevitable.
  - endeavor 13y ago
    I feel the same way about magazines. It's dumb that they are packed with ads and yet you still have to pay for them. This is basically the same fallacy as a Google user who thinks he is Google's customer. Magazine readers are the product for the magazine main business of selling advertising space. The reason they charge money is because paying readers are considered more valuable than non-paying readers. This sort of thing is why you'll often see magazine subscriptions selling for a few bucks on Slickdeals.
- orbitur 13y ago
  I'll agree here. The $50/month I'm saving by not having cable included isn't really going toward savings, and we could certainly afford it. It's just that it had a detrimental effect: we'd watch things that we weren't all that interested in, we'd sit through hours of commercials. My wife and I were generally annoyed with the whole experience, but because it was available and easy we were sucked into it. We cancelled the cable and we are less annoyed. We spend an extra 15 minutes downloading what we want, and we spend less time as vegetables just passively accepting what's coming down the pipe. Less time spent watching commercials that annoy us. It's very much worth it. (Although I miss watching live sports in HD... but not enough to pay for it)
  - zavulon 13y ago
    You can solve the live sports issue for the most part by getting free basic channels. You can do it in a lot of ways, one of an easy ones is get a $10 antenna. All local channels will be available to you for free, in HD. Then you can watch most sports: - NFL: all football games with your local team, and a lot of others. You won't be able to watch Monday Night and Thursday Night football, but if it's your local team playing, they'll have that game on a free channel. - MLB: depends on your market, but generally there should be at least one game a week on free channels. Plus, AL/NLCS and WS are on FOX. - NBA: less available, but there's usually two games every Sunday or every two Sundays on ABC. - NHL: usually one game a week on NBC. Also, there's plenty of other live sports on free channels - golf, tennis, soccer, etc. For example, Olympics are going on right now and NBC has two hours of coverage every night.
    - malyk 13y ago
      Each one of the leagues has their own league pass so you can watch online. That doesn't work well if you want to watch the local team due to blackout restrictions, but it does if you just a general fan or you've moved away from your home town.
      - EpicEng 13y ago
        Unfortunately the NFL does not, and that's what I (and most others) really want to see (in the US of course.)
- driverdan 13y ago
  Why not both?
zyxley 13y ago
My experience is only anecdotal, of course, but I don't have a television (and I haven't for some seven or eight years). I don't watch cable or local TV, and I don't have furniture or equipment arranged for "ten-foot" watching, so I have no reason to purchase something that's inferior to the not-quite-4K monitors I already have. (If I want to watch or play something on the other side of the room, I pull out a laptop.) It would take a truly absurd deal (a) to tempt me through the hassle of going out and buying a TV and supporting equipment, and (b) to overcome my instinctual distaste at the thought of rearranging all my stuff to have furniture positioned for actually watching one. On the other hand, if a cable company were to offer an Aereo-alike with assorted live television available over the web, I would probably pay for it even if it cost more than a cable bundle because it would be fundamentally more useful to me than screwing around with specialized hardware.
- stephengillie 13y ago
  On one hand, there's a social aspect to viewing an event simultaneously, and moderately large HDTVs of that resolution will soon be affordable. HDTV is basically just what monitors get called when cable and antenna demodulators are built in, especially larger than 32". They use the same HDMI plugs as many monitors, which is DVI in another shape (plus some extras).
  - bunderbunder 13y ago
    To many of us who don't own a TV, that doesn't ring true. We find sitting in a dim room to be an inherently a-social activity, therefore count the creation of a temptation to engage in activities that minimize interaction with each other among the disadvantages of having such an appliance in one's home. Which isn't to say that I have anything against video entertainment. But to me it's personal entertainment, the same as reading a book or playing playing Candy Crush on a phone. So I don't really draw a huge distinction between a room full of people staring at a 40" screen on the wall and a room full of people staring at 4" screens in their hands.
    - orbitur 13y ago
higherpurpose 13y ago
> Instead, the more we imbibe of all the glories available on streaming services, the more we’ll need to shell out for high-speed broadband service. You'd think that, normally, an ISP would try to upgrade the bandwidth for their users to stay ahead of the higher bandwidth requirements. In Europe, I've just upgraded to 100 Mbps about 3 years ago, and now I could upgrade to 1 Gbps for a little more. The only reason I'm not doing it yet is because my laptop (HDD) and router (802.11n) haven't quite caught up with this speed yet, and a lot of it would be wasted if I got it now.
- techsupporter 13y ago
  Why would an ISP do that, when any self-respecting business operator can simply instruct his or her call center reps to say the following: "Thank you for calling us, Higher Purpose. Your Internet is slow, Mr. Purpose? We can certainly fix that. I see that you are currently paying us $39.95/month for 10mbps service. How about we make that $89.95/month for 20mbps service? Besides, who will you switch to if you don't like the price?"
  - Alphasite_ 13y ago
    "Who would I switch too? Maybe any of your 12 competitors in this district." This isn't a US based anecdote, they do it because if they dont, their competitors will.
jftuga 13y ago
I am a recent cord cutter. I was paying $46/month for satellite that included only local channels and 2 or 3 Disney channels. I also had HD service. I now have a Roku 3 and am fortunate to live in a location where Aereo provides service. Unfortunately, the stream quality of Aereo is no where as good as Netflix. I can only hope this changes in the future. Also, my kids are now at the age where they are outgrowing Disney. I now pay about $16/month for TV. I feel like this is a major paradigm shift: Instead of paying for TV in dollars per day, I am now paying for TV in days per dollar.
tsotha 13y ago
Good luck with that, Comcast. Where I live there are two cable-basted internet providers, a wireless provider, and at least two based on the old phone system. Nobody I know pays more than $35/month to his ISP. And that doesn't include the cell providers, which are just about out of ways other than price to differentiate themselves.
- jjoonathan 13y ago
  Yeah, I couldn't shake the feeling that the framing narrative of coord-cutters was worse than useless (except as linkbait). We already know that monopolies can increase their prices until customers are getting nearly 0 utility out of doing business with them. That's why Comcast and TWC merged (how the hell did that get through the FTC?). That's why prices are going up while quality of internet service is going down. The only reason to blame rising internet costs on coord-cutters is to divert attention away from a reality that could land Comcast in legal trouble.
vonskippy 13y ago
"Cutting the cord, in Comcast’s universe, just doesn’t save you very much money." And this is why (in general) Americans are in debt. They don't understand that ANY savings, is savings. And that "just" saving 20,30,50 dollars a month adds up over 5-10 years. I went thru this with my daughters a decade or so ago. We kept track of all the "Gee Dad, it's only 10 bucks" conversations. At the end of the year we reviewed what they accumulated, which was almost nothing, their items were either used up, no longer needed/wanted, broken, or tossed away. On the other hand, the $1400+ dollars, all stacked up in a nice pile of $20's looked like (and was to them) real money, a nice weekend trip, a new bike, a new laptop, etc. I'm happy to say my daughters did much better after that living experiment. Unfortunately for most Americans, they just can't say no to the moment, and banks (and other service providers) are all to willingly to exploit their lack of judgement.
- sliverstorm 13y ago
  You miss what that sentence was actually leading to: Comcast has carefully set up pricing to get you whether you watch shows the old-fashioned way, on a boob-tube fed with a cable, or whether you prefer to veg out with Netflix on your iPad They aren't talking about "Oh it's only $10 more, so why not". They are talking about how you can't escape most of the Comcast Tax, even if you ditch cable. That's the whole theme of the article.
  - ChristianMarks 13y ago
    Insulting if you asked me.
- deleted 13y ago
  [deleted]
- MichaelGG 13y ago
  So was the actual utility from all those "$10 items" zero? I've spent more than $1400 on "needless" food in a year but I feel as if I've gotten a fair amount of value from it. I'm sure I would not trade all those meals for half of the price of a great laptop. Anyways, I think Comcast is getting at that they throw in Internet or TV for "free" with triple-play combos, so you literally aren't saving anything. In some cases, you actually pay more (for a limited time?) to decline services.
chiph 13y ago
I see an opportunity for a consolidated billing service. Right now, Netflix, Amazon Prime, Hulu, and all the others send separate bills. What if there were a central service so people only get one bill, and have an opportunity to create their own bundle of streaming services?
- sliverstorm 13y ago
  How on earth will you monetize that? Because I'm sure as shit not going to pay extra just to consolidate my bills.
  - jjoonathan 13y ago
    The local banks have spent enough money over the years advertising their "automatic bill pay" schemes that somebody must see value in them. Good luck beating them at that game, though. They've been at it for at least a decade.
    - sliverstorm 13y ago
      "Automatic bill pay" with my bank does have some value! But they give it to me for free, as a perk to attract my business. Much like free checking, which banks also advertise.
  - brm 13y ago
    Ad space on the bill for movies and tv shows that are coming soon? Not great, but probably more effective than a billboard on Santa Monica...
  - chiph 13y ago
    You go to them and say "You can outsource your billing department to us for less than you're paying now."
  - nitrogen 13y ago
    You already pay 1-3% extra to the credit card processor; a bill consolidation service could take a cut of that (perhaps by acting as a credit card themselves) without affecting the price you see.
revelation 13y ago
The hypothesis here seems to be that Comcast will be charging internet users more than warranted to subsidize TV. Did the author consider that at one point Comcast might realize theres no point in artificially extending the life of technology that has been lapped in the past century? Of course we all have our fingers crossed that this eureka moment comes before the bumbling kids that make up their leadership team have lobbied or filtered and "traffic shaped" the internet to death.
- twiceaday 13y ago
  The specifics don't matter. Comcast has a goose that lays golden eggs and they will extract as much money from it as possible. There is nothing to "realize".
- hayksaakian 13y ago
  Fiber is unlike newspapers, CDs and VHS, among other things practically replace with online versions
aroch 13y ago
My ISP charges me a $10/month fee for having non-bundled service (only paying for internet). Still better than the +$30 I'd be paying for the bundle...So I'm only getting fucked a little. They'll try and manage to fuck customers no matter what as long as they maintain the power.
coley 13y ago
I've had problems with un-bundling all ready. I've had Comcast for almost two years now - the top internet service for 19.99/mo. Of course they tried to raise the price on me once but I was able to call and get it back down. The next time they raised the price, there was no 19.99 internet only option. The customer service agent checked and checked and checked, but "couldn't find it available in the system". There was, of course, a 19.99 deal for the same speed internet AND basic cable + HBO/HBOGo. So I'm riding this promotion out for as long as I can. Although they were required to send the set-top box, I asked them not to send out a tech to hook it up. I honestly couldn't care less about basic cable. The HBO Go on the other hand, I enjoy thoroughly. I was finally able to get around to watching Sopranos =]. Eventually they'll learn that story-telling isn't meant to be interrupted by advertisements. The content is gravely diminished when this happens. I find myself not caring about plot after so many commercial breaks. Made worse by the terrible, "coming up next on blah blah blah" hook. I can see some sports fanatics enjoying the 'luxuries' of basic cable, as I don't believe there are any fool proof options online yet - I also don't care.
JoshGlazebrook 13y ago
In my experience, I didn't cut my cable tv, but instead cut my home phone and ported the number to google voice to use with an ObiTalk device to have home phone for free. The retention department gave me their best "double play" package they had and I saved a whole $20 a month. Well guess what, the next month they raised rates on the DVR rental fees and upped a few other things effectively canceling out any savings I had. A few months later when the promo period ended, I had them switch me to a triple play (tv, phone, and internet) just adding a dummy phone number that is not even hooked up and it's cheaper than just having internet and tv. It's just completely ridiculous. And on top of this, of course my ObiTalk will cease to function in a few weeks when Google pulls the plug on the interface it used to make the free calling possible.
- js2 13y ago
  I signed up for a new number with Obivoice (unrelated to ObiHai), reconfigured my Obi to use Obivoice, then setup Google Voice to forward to the new number. Obivoice had a special if you signed up for two years of service for $60. Obi also just announced Anveo as their preferred provider to replace Google Voice. I really don't understand what Google's plan for GV is. I wish they'd just charge for it already.
ilaksh 13y ago
To me as long as you have only a few physical cables, or a few places to put the cables that are difficult to get to, buried in the ground, companies are going to take advantage of that, because you just don't have a lot of options. Its just not an option for most groups who would want to compete to get into that market. For it to not suck I think the physical circumstances have to change. Maybe there will be some kind of tech breakthrough with wireless technology. Or maybe we will change the laws so that everyone has the right to lay down a cable along any public road or freeway as long as it doesn't pose a significant threat to traffic. But seems like its hard to make a law that creates a fair and democratic situation when you have limited access to such a critical resource in fairly specific places in under the street. I mean, if there is already a place for fiber under the street, and you really need another line or whatever they call them, you can't dig another trench or whatever in the street. You have to put it with the other ones, in which case you are at the mercy of whoever controls access to that place where the lines go. If there really isn't a need for a new fiber line, then whoever controls the existing ones has a lot of power. Just seems like the fact that there is a specific place these lines go, and a big expense and regulation, is what is causing the issues with pricing. If this were someone's brain being wired up like this, by a heavily regulated and monopolized cable industry, that person would be retarded. I say we invent a glue or something that will attach a fiber strand to the street, a pole, or the side of a building, and declare open season. Just put them all over the place. Like a spider web, but on the street. LOL. Sounds crazy, but I think it might actually be workable if we keep it in a thin layer on the ground. And pretty much anything would be better than having our balls kept in a vice like this by a handful of giant companies and governments.
- w1ntermute 13y ago
  Is there any reason we can't use the sewer system instead?
- joe_the_user 13y ago
  The barriers to other companies entering Comcast's market are more legal than logistical - consider how Google hasn't had a problem entering the broadband market when they have been allowed to.
joe_the_user 13y ago
I don't even own a TV, I don't want any TV in any form and Comcast only offered me a deal with TV and Internet and sent me a huge settop box that I now have to store in my closet. And Comcast is the only broadband provider available to me currently (well, ATT may have become available after I started but they are their very own horror show).
- jseliger 13y ago
  And Comcast is the only broadband provider available to me currently In Tucson that was my experience, and it was frustrating. So frustrating that I sent letters to the president of Qwest Arizona. To Qwest's credit, his assistant did respond to my queries, and we kept trading e-mails about whether Qwest would roll out real services to my area. In the time I lived there, however, Qwest never did, and Comcast had a de-facto monopoly. Now I'm living in New York and have a couple potential providers, including Time Warner and RCN. I use the latter.
pairing 13y ago
I'm one of the cord cutters. I have Comcast internet and nothing else. I have an apple tv, Netflix, and an antenna with a tivo that gets me network television for free. I'll admit that the antenna is a hassle mostly because the NBC signal is terrible in the Bay Area, but when I don't need to watch NBC this setup is awesome. I'm hoping Aereo comes soon so I can ditch the antenna + tivo for a more stable broadcast to even further streamline my setup. I've had no urge to use torrents as this setup gives me much more content than I can consume. My main reason for cutting the cord is to save money, and it has saved me quite a deal of money over 3 years.
vitd 13y ago
To me, even if it's the same price or costs more, cutting the cord is worth it because a) you aren't giving all of the money to the cable company - some goes directly to the content providers and b) you get the same content without ads! So yeah, I'll save the $10/mo on basic cable and pay Netflix $8/mo just because it's that much less for the cable company, plus no ads!
- antimatter 13y ago
  Exactly my thought. I cut the cord 2 years ago and it's amazing how much more enjoyable the content I do watch is without ads.
barrkel 13y ago
data cap of 250 gigabytes a month That is truly miniscule for a 25Mbps connection. I'm on a 5Mbps connection and our household averages 300GB downloaded per month. Mostly to feed my GF's TV addiction, but still.
- adventured 13y ago
  What do you pay for the 5 mbps? I'm at $75 / month for 15 mbps, with a cable company called Shentel (50mbps is $140 with them). I see other people complain about paying $70x for 25 or 50 mbps. I'd love to have that value proposition.
  - barrkel 13y ago
    About 30 GBP per month (50 USD?), but it also buys me a static IP.
evo_9 13y ago
I cut the cord 9 years ago; i didn't get rid of my ISP, i simply stopped paying for their TV programming. I prefer to spend my money on a faster internet connection and stream the shows or sports I want to watch thanks to options like Netflix and NHL Gamecenter. I no longer need Cable TV to buy the NHL package for example; nor do I need Cable TV to watch Breaking Bad or Game of Thrones. The author of this article is confused; it's not literally about cutting your cord with your ISP, it's about saying no to expensive programming we simply don't want anymore.
rayiner 13y ago
Why would you expect it to save you much money not getting the cable TV service? Most of the basic cable programming is paid for via advertising. The cost of the pipe is the same whether you get television or just internet.
mdmarra 13y ago
The prices that were quoted in the article are promotional prices for the first year of service to a new subscriber. It increases greatly (sometimes even doubles based on the package) after that first year.
theg2 13y ago
I tried to cancel the cable part of my package after the promo expired. After a few minutes, the then offered me $10 off my monthly bill and to extend the promo another year. The cable box will remain off and unplugged as we never used it but they're obviously just trying to keep their numbers up for some reason I can't comprehend.
- harshreality 13y ago
  Internet-only service costs within $10 of your TV+internet package? That's odd. You could have cancelled tv service and asked for a promo discount on your internet service. Calling with specific knowledge of a competitor's plan and threatening to switch to it gets you the best deals.
  - theg2 13y ago
    We have no competitor and the internet level of service is $20 more expensive than our current package.
- whathappenedto 13y ago
  I want to add something a lot of people don't know. When you have cable+internet, you end up paying about 20% taxes+fees on the final price. Some of that is government taxes, some are misc fees, but it's a lot more than your state sales tax. With just internet, there are usually NO taxes+fees, not even state sales tax. So even if cable+internet cost the same as just internet, you will still end up shelling out $10 more. The $50 cable+internet option will cost $60, whereas the $40 internet option costs just that.
  - theg2 13y ago
    The internet package alone is $20 more a month regardless of taxes and fees.
lbsnake7 13y ago
I got a deal from Comcast for 50mpbs down (their blast package) and the lowest cable with HBO. If I were to get just the internet, it would be the same price. In fact the deal I got lasts a year while just the internet lasts only 6 months and then goes to full price. It made more sense to just get the TV as well since getting local channels is kind of useful for news and weather.
ChristianMarks 13y ago
Smug, presumptuous article. I cut my cord over a decade ago and have no desire to watch TV or Netflix (especially not to watch MPAA films) on the Internet. I have no interest in paying a "Comcast tax," and if that means no movies or Internet television, fine. TV is verboten here. A time sink with an infinite opportunity cost.
- adventured 13y ago
  You do realize that what you just said comes across as very smug?
  - ChristianMarks 13y ago
    Why? I geniunely cannot stand television. I cannot force myself to watch. That goes for most films. It's smug to assert a preference and act on it?
    - jkelsey 13y ago
      Of course not. I have a similar philosophy. I think cable television is sham: tightly-packaged crap surrounding the few things I want to watch. Who cares if it's only $10 dollars more a month. It's the principal of the damn thing. With the Internet, I get far more freedom about the media I choose to consume versus the crap put down my throat with prepackaged cable television plans.
      - ChristianMarks 13y ago
        Right. There is the principle--and then there is the question of controlling your environment, of cognitive self-defense. TV and the associated paraphenalia introduces clutter and extraneous cognitive load. And it does this out of proportion to exposure--for me, at least.
    - adventured 13y ago
      I can explain the why. You're turning your nose up at something that the vast majority regard as a value culturally, but you regard as worthless (worse actually), and you elaborated it in several different ways in the same short post (and you elaborated your disdain again in the subsequent reply). I'd argue that would come across as being culturally smug across most of the TV loving country. You weren't just asserting a preference, you were putting down that which you don't like repeatedly. Whether one chooses to spend their time crocheting or watching TV is a strictly subjective value judgement. Is it better to laugh at a Seinfeld re-run, or Louis CK live? Better to watch Game of Thrones or read the books? Purely subjective, there is no superior choice. Are you trying to be smug? I have no idea if that's your character type, my point was that what you said comes across as smug. It sounds culturally elitist, as though TV is for the little stupid people (I know you didn't say those words).
JeremyMorgan 13y ago
One of the things that I'm surprised about is how WiMax didn't take off. I used it for quite a while and was really happy with it, but when I moved to a more rural area it didn't work. Still know people who use it happily. I am one of those who watches no cable TV but still pays for and deals with Comcast. It's a necessary evil in my opinion, and something I just live with. But WiMax providers could get their act together and smash them, I'm just not sure why they haven't.
- p1mrx 13y ago
  WiMAX is dead because LTE won the standards war. LTE data is currently crazy-expensive in the US, but that's not really a technical problem.
  - hayksaakian 13y ago
    you may be nitpicking, there's no reason a wimax like service (wireless internet) couldn't be provided with LTE wimax/lte is not the problen
    - p1mrx 13y ago
      Yes, that was my point; I'm not concerned by the death of WiMAX as a protocol, because LTE is functionally equivalent. The problem is that LTE is not currently a viable competitor to wired Internet services, because the providers have set the prices too high and the caps too low.
- hayksaakian 13y ago
  its a matter of expectations most people have experience with wired connections which provide consistent speeds with very good up time. nowadays, mobile web use is common as well. people live with inconsistent speeds and hit/miss availability (on ALL carriers). its a hard proposition to ask someone to compromise their consistency for small savings, or any political or philosophical reasons, and switch to wireless internet. I think the best solution is tethering, because when you're using your phone's internet your expectations are properly set. this will probably never happen however, as the wireless telcos are more than eager to charge you more for using your paid for connection on a different device.
joesmo 13y ago
In the scenario outlined, there are three people watching streams for $40 Internet only Comcast service. While $50 will add TV, what the article mentions but forgets to delve into is that if those three TVs are hooked up to a cable box at $10 a piece, the bill now becomes $80 (all pretax). That's double and it certainly warrants cutting out TV service.

83 points by antr 13y ago

I feel like this misses the point of people who no longer buy cable. I don't personally know a lot of people who do it to save money (I'm sure they exist). Everyone I know just prefers the convenience of watching when you want and not having to have a single dedicated device (a TV) where you can watch things. This isn't really any different than people ditching land lines in the late nineties and early two-thousands. It wasn't a question of cost so much as it was annoying to have multiple lines, numbers, and bills, not to mention one of those phones was only usable in a very specific way and the other could be used anywhere, whenever you felt like it.

zacinbusiness 13y ago
I also hate commercials. I won't even pay for Hulu+ because it has commercials. Commercials should exist to subsidize a free product, and they have no place in a paid product. I feel the same way about magazines. It's dumb that they are packed with ads and yet you still have to pay for them.
- benajnim 13y ago
  I agree with your point that paid products should be commercial free, though what about the insidious placement of commercial products embedded within the content (song lyrics or any item with a logo on it in a movie or tv show)? It seems like those commercial placements are much harder to avoid in pop culture and will likely only increase in frequency in the future. It can skew the creative process of the artisans producing content and unless true commercial-free content is rewarded in some way, this is inevitable.
- endeavor 13y ago
  I feel the same way about magazines. It's dumb that they are packed with ads and yet you still have to pay for them. This is basically the same fallacy as a Google user who thinks he is Google's customer. Magazine readers are the product for the magazine main business of selling advertising space. The reason they charge money is because paying readers are considered more valuable than non-paying readers. This sort of thing is why you'll often see magazine subscriptions selling for a few bucks on Slickdeals.
orbitur 13y ago
I'll agree here. The $50/month I'm saving by not having cable included isn't really going toward savings, and we could certainly afford it. It's just that it had a detrimental effect: we'd watch things that we weren't all that interested in, we'd sit through hours of commercials. My wife and I were generally annoyed with the whole experience, but because it was available and easy we were sucked into it. We cancelled the cable and we are less annoyed. We spend an extra 15 minutes downloading what we want, and we spend less time as vegetables just passively accepting what's coming down the pipe. Less time spent watching commercials that annoy us. It's very much worth it. (Although I miss watching live sports in HD... but not enough to pay for it)
- zavulon 13y ago
  You can solve the live sports issue for the most part by getting free basic channels. You can do it in a lot of ways, one of an easy ones is get a $10 antenna. All local channels will be available to you for free, in HD. Then you can watch most sports: - NFL: all football games with your local team, and a lot of others. You won't be able to watch Monday Night and Thursday Night football, but if it's your local team playing, they'll have that game on a free channel. - MLB: depends on your market, but generally there should be at least one game a week on free channels. Plus, AL/NLCS and WS are on FOX. - NBA: less available, but there's usually two games every Sunday or every two Sundays on ABC. - NHL: usually one game a week on NBC. Also, there's plenty of other live sports on free channels - golf, tennis, soccer, etc. For example, Olympics are going on right now and NBC has two hours of coverage every night.
  - malyk 13y ago
    Each one of the leagues has their own league pass so you can watch online. That doesn't work well if you want to watch the local team due to blackout restrictions, but it does if you just a general fan or you've moved away from your home town.
    - EpicEng 13y ago
      Unfortunately the NFL does not, and that's what I (and most others) really want to see (in the US of course.)
driverdan 13y ago
Why not both?

zyxley 13y ago

My experience is only anecdotal, of course, but I don't have a television (and I haven't for some seven or eight years). I don't watch cable or local TV, and I don't have furniture or equipment arranged for "ten-foot" watching, so I have no reason to purchase something that's inferior to the not-quite-4K monitors I already have. (If I want to watch or play something on the other side of the room, I pull out a laptop.) It would take a truly absurd deal (a) to tempt me through the hassle of going out and buying a TV and supporting equipment, and (b) to overcome my instinctual distaste at the thought of rearranging all my stuff to have furniture positioned for actually watching one. On the other hand, if a cable company were to offer an Aereo-alike with assorted live television available over the web, I would probably pay for it even if it cost more than a cable bundle because it would be fundamentally more useful to me than screwing around with specialized hardware.

stephengillie 13y ago
On one hand, there's a social aspect to viewing an event simultaneously, and moderately large HDTVs of that resolution will soon be affordable. HDTV is basically just what monitors get called when cable and antenna demodulators are built in, especially larger than 32". They use the same HDMI plugs as many monitors, which is DVI in another shape (plus some extras).
- bunderbunder 13y ago
  To many of us who don't own a TV, that doesn't ring true. We find sitting in a dim room to be an inherently a-social activity, therefore count the creation of a temptation to engage in activities that minimize interaction with each other among the disadvantages of having such an appliance in one's home. Which isn't to say that I have anything against video entertainment. But to me it's personal entertainment, the same as reading a book or playing playing Candy Crush on a phone. So I don't really draw a huge distinction between a room full of people staring at a 40" screen on the wall and a room full of people staring at 4" screens in their hands.
  - orbitur 13y ago

higherpurpose 13y ago

> Instead, the more we imbibe of all the glories available on streaming services, the more we’ll need to shell out for high-speed broadband service. You'd think that, normally, an ISP would try to upgrade the bandwidth for their users to stay ahead of the higher bandwidth requirements. In Europe, I've just upgraded to 100 Mbps about 3 years ago, and now I could upgrade to 1 Gbps for a little more. The only reason I'm not doing it yet is because my laptop (HDD) and router (802.11n) haven't quite caught up with this speed yet, and a lot of it would be wasted if I got it now.

techsupporter 13y ago
Why would an ISP do that, when any self-respecting business operator can simply instruct his or her call center reps to say the following: "Thank you for calling us, Higher Purpose. Your Internet is slow, Mr. Purpose? We can certainly fix that. I see that you are currently paying us $39.95/month for 10mbps service. How about we make that $89.95/month for 20mbps service? Besides, who will you switch to if you don't like the price?"
- Alphasite_ 13y ago
  "Who would I switch too? Maybe any of your 12 competitors in this district." This isn't a US based anecdote, they do it because if they dont, their competitors will.

jftuga 13y ago

I am a recent cord cutter. I was paying $46/month for satellite that included only local channels and 2 or 3 Disney channels. I also had HD service. I now have a Roku 3 and am fortunate to live in a location where Aereo provides service. Unfortunately, the stream quality of Aereo is no where as good as Netflix. I can only hope this changes in the future. Also, my kids are now at the age where they are outgrowing Disney. I now pay about $16/month for TV. I feel like this is a major paradigm shift: Instead of paying for TV in dollars per day, I am now paying for TV in days per dollar.

tsotha 13y ago

Good luck with that, Comcast. Where I live there are two cable-basted internet providers, a wireless provider, and at least two based on the old phone system. Nobody I know pays more than $35/month to his ISP. And that doesn't include the cell providers, which are just about out of ways other than price to differentiate themselves.

jjoonathan 13y ago
Yeah, I couldn't shake the feeling that the framing narrative of coord-cutters was worse than useless (except as linkbait). We already know that monopolies can increase their prices until customers are getting nearly 0 utility out of doing business with them. That's why Comcast and TWC merged (how the hell did that get through the FTC?). That's why prices are going up while quality of internet service is going down. The only reason to blame rising internet costs on coord-cutters is to divert attention away from a reality that could land Comcast in legal trouble.

vonskippy 13y ago

"Cutting the cord, in Comcast’s universe, just doesn’t save you very much money." And this is why (in general) Americans are in debt. They don't understand that ANY savings, is savings. And that "just" saving 20,30,50 dollars a month adds up over 5-10 years. I went thru this with my daughters a decade or so ago. We kept track of all the "Gee Dad, it's only 10 bucks" conversations. At the end of the year we reviewed what they accumulated, which was almost nothing, their items were either used up, no longer needed/wanted, broken, or tossed away. On the other hand, the $1400+ dollars, all stacked up in a nice pile of $20's looked like (and was to them) real money, a nice weekend trip, a new bike, a new laptop, etc. I'm happy to say my daughters did much better after that living experiment. Unfortunately for most Americans, they just can't say no to the moment, and banks (and other service providers) are all to willingly to exploit their lack of judgement.

sliverstorm 13y ago
You miss what that sentence was actually leading to: Comcast has carefully set up pricing to get you whether you watch shows the old-fashioned way, on a boob-tube fed with a cable, or whether you prefer to veg out with Netflix on your iPad They aren't talking about "Oh it's only $10 more, so why not". They are talking about how you can't escape most of the Comcast Tax, even if you ditch cable. That's the whole theme of the article.
- ChristianMarks 13y ago
  Insulting if you asked me.
deleted 13y ago
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MichaelGG 13y ago
So was the actual utility from all those "$10 items" zero? I've spent more than $1400 on "needless" food in a year but I feel as if I've gotten a fair amount of value from it. I'm sure I would not trade all those meals for half of the price of a great laptop. Anyways, I think Comcast is getting at that they throw in Internet or TV for "free" with triple-play combos, so you literally aren't saving anything. In some cases, you actually pay more (for a limited time?) to decline services.

chiph 13y ago

I see an opportunity for a consolidated billing service. Right now, Netflix, Amazon Prime, Hulu, and all the others send separate bills. What if there were a central service so people only get one bill, and have an opportunity to create their own bundle of streaming services?

sliverstorm 13y ago
How on earth will you monetize that? Because I'm sure as shit not going to pay extra just to consolidate my bills.
- jjoonathan 13y ago
  The local banks have spent enough money over the years advertising their "automatic bill pay" schemes that somebody must see value in them. Good luck beating them at that game, though. They've been at it for at least a decade.
  - sliverstorm 13y ago
    "Automatic bill pay" with my bank does have some value! But they give it to me for free, as a perk to attract my business. Much like free checking, which banks also advertise.
- brm 13y ago
  Ad space on the bill for movies and tv shows that are coming soon? Not great, but probably more effective than a billboard on Santa Monica...
- chiph 13y ago
  You go to them and say "You can outsource your billing department to us for less than you're paying now."
- nitrogen 13y ago
  You already pay 1-3% extra to the credit card processor; a bill consolidation service could take a cut of that (perhaps by acting as a credit card themselves) without affecting the price you see.

revelation 13y ago

The hypothesis here seems to be that Comcast will be charging internet users more than warranted to subsidize TV. Did the author consider that at one point Comcast might realize theres no point in artificially extending the life of technology that has been lapped in the past century? Of course we all have our fingers crossed that this eureka moment comes before the bumbling kids that make up their leadership team have lobbied or filtered and "traffic shaped" the internet to death.

twiceaday 13y ago
The specifics don't matter. Comcast has a goose that lays golden eggs and they will extract as much money from it as possible. There is nothing to "realize".
hayksaakian 13y ago
Fiber is unlike newspapers, CDs and VHS, among other things practically replace with online versions

aroch 13y ago

My ISP charges me a $10/month fee for having non-bundled service (only paying for internet). Still better than the +$30 I'd be paying for the bundle...So I'm only getting fucked a little. They'll try and manage to fuck customers no matter what as long as they maintain the power.

coley 13y ago

I've had problems with un-bundling all ready. I've had Comcast for almost two years now - the top internet service for 19.99/mo. Of course they tried to raise the price on me once but I was able to call and get it back down. The next time they raised the price, there was no 19.99 internet only option. The customer service agent checked and checked and checked, but "couldn't find it available in the system". There was, of course, a 19.99 deal for the same speed internet AND basic cable + HBO/HBOGo. So I'm riding this promotion out for as long as I can. Although they were required to send the set-top box, I asked them not to send out a tech to hook it up. I honestly couldn't care less about basic cable. The HBO Go on the other hand, I enjoy thoroughly. I was finally able to get around to watching Sopranos =]. Eventually they'll learn that story-telling isn't meant to be interrupted by advertisements. The content is gravely diminished when this happens. I find myself not caring about plot after so many commercial breaks. Made worse by the terrible, "coming up next on blah blah blah" hook. I can see some sports fanatics enjoying the 'luxuries' of basic cable, as I don't believe there are any fool proof options online yet - I also don't care.

JoshGlazebrook 13y ago

In my experience, I didn't cut my cable tv, but instead cut my home phone and ported the number to google voice to use with an ObiTalk device to have home phone for free. The retention department gave me their best "double play" package they had and I saved a whole $20 a month. Well guess what, the next month they raised rates on the DVR rental fees and upped a few other things effectively canceling out any savings I had. A few months later when the promo period ended, I had them switch me to a triple play (tv, phone, and internet) just adding a dummy phone number that is not even hooked up and it's cheaper than just having internet and tv. It's just completely ridiculous. And on top of this, of course my ObiTalk will cease to function in a few weeks when Google pulls the plug on the interface it used to make the free calling possible.

js2 13y ago
I signed up for a new number with Obivoice (unrelated to ObiHai), reconfigured my Obi to use Obivoice, then setup Google Voice to forward to the new number. Obivoice had a special if you signed up for two years of service for $60. Obi also just announced Anveo as their preferred provider to replace Google Voice. I really don't understand what Google's plan for GV is. I wish they'd just charge for it already.

ilaksh 13y ago

To me as long as you have only a few physical cables, or a few places to put the cables that are difficult to get to, buried in the ground, companies are going to take advantage of that, because you just don't have a lot of options. Its just not an option for most groups who would want to compete to get into that market. For it to not suck I think the physical circumstances have to change. Maybe there will be some kind of tech breakthrough with wireless technology. Or maybe we will change the laws so that everyone has the right to lay down a cable along any public road or freeway as long as it doesn't pose a significant threat to traffic. But seems like its hard to make a law that creates a fair and democratic situation when you have limited access to such a critical resource in fairly specific places in under the street. I mean, if there is already a place for fiber under the street, and you really need another line or whatever they call them, you can't dig another trench or whatever in the street. You have to put it with the other ones, in which case you are at the mercy of whoever controls access to that place where the lines go. If there really isn't a need for a new fiber line, then whoever controls the existing ones has a lot of power. Just seems like the fact that there is a specific place these lines go, and a big expense and regulation, is what is causing the issues with pricing. If this were someone's brain being wired up like this, by a heavily regulated and monopolized cable industry, that person would be retarded. I say we invent a glue or something that will attach a fiber strand to the street, a pole, or the side of a building, and declare open season. Just put them all over the place. Like a spider web, but on the street. LOL. Sounds crazy, but I think it might actually be workable if we keep it in a thin layer on the ground. And pretty much anything would be better than having our balls kept in a vice like this by a handful of giant companies and governments.

w1ntermute 13y ago
Is there any reason we can't use the sewer system instead?
joe_the_user 13y ago
The barriers to other companies entering Comcast's market are more legal than logistical - consider how Google hasn't had a problem entering the broadband market when they have been allowed to.

joe_the_user 13y ago

I don't even own a TV, I don't want any TV in any form and Comcast only offered me a deal with TV and Internet and sent me a huge settop box that I now have to store in my closet. And Comcast is the only broadband provider available to me currently (well, ATT may have become available after I started but they are their very own horror show).

jseliger 13y ago
And Comcast is the only broadband provider available to me currently In Tucson that was my experience, and it was frustrating. So frustrating that I sent letters to the president of Qwest Arizona. To Qwest's credit, his assistant did respond to my queries, and we kept trading e-mails about whether Qwest would roll out real services to my area. In the time I lived there, however, Qwest never did, and Comcast had a de-facto monopoly. Now I'm living in New York and have a couple potential providers, including Time Warner and RCN. I use the latter.

pairing 13y ago

I'm one of the cord cutters. I have Comcast internet and nothing else. I have an apple tv, Netflix, and an antenna with a tivo that gets me network television for free. I'll admit that the antenna is a hassle mostly because the NBC signal is terrible in the Bay Area, but when I don't need to watch NBC this setup is awesome. I'm hoping Aereo comes soon so I can ditch the antenna + tivo for a more stable broadcast to even further streamline my setup. I've had no urge to use torrents as this setup gives me much more content than I can consume. My main reason for cutting the cord is to save money, and it has saved me quite a deal of money over 3 years.

vitd 13y ago

To me, even if it's the same price or costs more, cutting the cord is worth it because a) you aren't giving all of the money to the cable company - some goes directly to the content providers and b) you get the same content without ads! So yeah, I'll save the $10/mo on basic cable and pay Netflix $8/mo just because it's that much less for the cable company, plus no ads!

antimatter 13y ago
Exactly my thought. I cut the cord 2 years ago and it's amazing how much more enjoyable the content I do watch is without ads.

barrkel 13y ago

data cap of 250 gigabytes a month That is truly miniscule for a 25Mbps connection. I'm on a 5Mbps connection and our household averages 300GB downloaded per month. Mostly to feed my GF's TV addiction, but still.

adventured 13y ago
What do you pay for the 5 mbps? I'm at $75 / month for 15 mbps, with a cable company called Shentel (50mbps is $140 with them). I see other people complain about paying $70x for 25 or 50 mbps. I'd love to have that value proposition.
- barrkel 13y ago
  About 30 GBP per month (50 USD?), but it also buys me a static IP.

evo_9 13y ago

I cut the cord 9 years ago; i didn't get rid of my ISP, i simply stopped paying for their TV programming. I prefer to spend my money on a faster internet connection and stream the shows or sports I want to watch thanks to options like Netflix and NHL Gamecenter. I no longer need Cable TV to buy the NHL package for example; nor do I need Cable TV to watch Breaking Bad or Game of Thrones. The author of this article is confused; it's not literally about cutting your cord with your ISP, it's about saying no to expensive programming we simply don't want anymore.

rayiner 13y ago

Why would you expect it to save you much money not getting the cable TV service? Most of the basic cable programming is paid for via advertising. The cost of the pipe is the same whether you get television or just internet.

mdmarra 13y ago

The prices that were quoted in the article are promotional prices for the first year of service to a new subscriber. It increases greatly (sometimes even doubles based on the package) after that first year.

theg2 13y ago

I tried to cancel the cable part of my package after the promo expired. After a few minutes, the then offered me $10 off my monthly bill and to extend the promo another year. The cable box will remain off and unplugged as we never used it but they're obviously just trying to keep their numbers up for some reason I can't comprehend.

harshreality 13y ago
Internet-only service costs within $10 of your TV+internet package? That's odd. You could have cancelled tv service and asked for a promo discount on your internet service. Calling with specific knowledge of a competitor's plan and threatening to switch to it gets you the best deals.
- theg2 13y ago
  We have no competitor and the internet level of service is $20 more expensive than our current package.
whathappenedto 13y ago
I want to add something a lot of people don't know. When you have cable+internet, you end up paying about 20% taxes+fees on the final price. Some of that is government taxes, some are misc fees, but it's a lot more than your state sales tax. With just internet, there are usually NO taxes+fees, not even state sales tax. So even if cable+internet cost the same as just internet, you will still end up shelling out $10 more. The $50 cable+internet option will cost $60, whereas the $40 internet option costs just that.
- theg2 13y ago
  The internet package alone is $20 more a month regardless of taxes and fees.

lbsnake7 13y ago

I got a deal from Comcast for 50mpbs down (their blast package) and the lowest cable with HBO. If I were to get just the internet, it would be the same price. In fact the deal I got lasts a year while just the internet lasts only 6 months and then goes to full price. It made more sense to just get the TV as well since getting local channels is kind of useful for news and weather.

ChristianMarks 13y ago

Smug, presumptuous article. I cut my cord over a decade ago and have no desire to watch TV or Netflix (especially not to watch MPAA films) on the Internet. I have no interest in paying a "Comcast tax," and if that means no movies or Internet television, fine. TV is verboten here. A time sink with an infinite opportunity cost.

adventured 13y ago
You do realize that what you just said comes across as very smug?
- ChristianMarks 13y ago
  Why? I geniunely cannot stand television. I cannot force myself to watch. That goes for most films. It's smug to assert a preference and act on it?
  - jkelsey 13y ago
    Of course not. I have a similar philosophy. I think cable television is sham: tightly-packaged crap surrounding the few things I want to watch. Who cares if it's only $10 dollars more a month. It's the principal of the damn thing. With the Internet, I get far more freedom about the media I choose to consume versus the crap put down my throat with prepackaged cable television plans.
    - ChristianMarks 13y ago
      Right. There is the principle--and then there is the question of controlling your environment, of cognitive self-defense. TV and the associated paraphenalia introduces clutter and extraneous cognitive load. And it does this out of proportion to exposure--for me, at least.
  - adventured 13y ago
    I can explain the why. You're turning your nose up at something that the vast majority regard as a value culturally, but you regard as worthless (worse actually), and you elaborated it in several different ways in the same short post (and you elaborated your disdain again in the subsequent reply). I'd argue that would come across as being culturally smug across most of the TV loving country. You weren't just asserting a preference, you were putting down that which you don't like repeatedly. Whether one chooses to spend their time crocheting or watching TV is a strictly subjective value judgement. Is it better to laugh at a Seinfeld re-run, or Louis CK live? Better to watch Game of Thrones or read the books? Purely subjective, there is no superior choice. Are you trying to be smug? I have no idea if that's your character type, my point was that what you said comes across as smug. It sounds culturally elitist, as though TV is for the little stupid people (I know you didn't say those words).

JeremyMorgan 13y ago

One of the things that I'm surprised about is how WiMax didn't take off. I used it for quite a while and was really happy with it, but when I moved to a more rural area it didn't work. Still know people who use it happily. I am one of those who watches no cable TV but still pays for and deals with Comcast. It's a necessary evil in my opinion, and something I just live with. But WiMax providers could get their act together and smash them, I'm just not sure why they haven't.

p1mrx 13y ago
WiMAX is dead because LTE won the standards war. LTE data is currently crazy-expensive in the US, but that's not really a technical problem.
- hayksaakian 13y ago
  you may be nitpicking, there's no reason a wimax like service (wireless internet) couldn't be provided with LTE wimax/lte is not the problen
  - p1mrx 13y ago
    Yes, that was my point; I'm not concerned by the death of WiMAX as a protocol, because LTE is functionally equivalent. The problem is that LTE is not currently a viable competitor to wired Internet services, because the providers have set the prices too high and the caps too low.
hayksaakian 13y ago
its a matter of expectations most people have experience with wired connections which provide consistent speeds with very good up time. nowadays, mobile web use is common as well. people live with inconsistent speeds and hit/miss availability (on ALL carriers). its a hard proposition to ask someone to compromise their consistency for small savings, or any political or philosophical reasons, and switch to wireless internet. I think the best solution is tethering, because when you're using your phone's internet your expectations are properly set. this will probably never happen however, as the wireless telcos are more than eager to charge you more for using your paid for connection on a different device.

joesmo 13y ago

In the scenario outlined, there are three people watching streams for $40 Internet only Comcast service. While $50 will add TV, what the article mentions but forgets to delve into is that if those three TVs are hooked up to a cable box at $10 a piece, the bill now becomes $80 (all pretax). That's double and it certainly warrants cutting out TV service.