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Comcast keeps losing TV subscribers, but it has a new way to fight cord cutting.
As streaming video continues to chip away at cable TV subscriber numbers, Comcast is making some of its Internet speed increases available only to customers that pay for both Internet and video service.
Last week, Comcast announced speed increases for customers in Houston and the Oregon/SW Washington areas. The announcement headlines were "Comcast increases Internet speeds for some video customers."
Customers with 60Mbps Internet download speeds are being upped to 150Mbps; 150Mbps subscribers are going to 250Mbps; and 250Mbps subscribers are getting a raise to 400Mbps or 1Gbps.
Comcast says speed increases will kick in automatically without raising the customers' monthly bills—but only if they subscribe to certain bundles that include both Internet and TV service.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by arcz on Tuesday May 01 2018, @08:30PM (10 children)
(Score: 3, Informative) by takyon on Tuesday May 01 2018, @08:39PM (6 children)
What happens when people get all of their TV from a combination of free YouTube, Kodi, and torrents?
The value of "TV" drops right down to zero. The cost of Internet probably goes up, unless some competition takes place (I'll use the Musky Starlink when it becomes available).
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by Freeman on Tuesday May 01 2018, @09:32PM (3 children)
We get all our media from YouTube and Netflix. Plus over-the-air when the Olympics are on, for the wife. Not that I can get a wired solution better than dial-up where I'm located.
Joshua 1:9 "Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee"
(Score: 3, Insightful) by dwilson on Wednesday May 02 2018, @05:05AM (2 children)
I've always wondered how they categorize people like me.
I moved out of my parents basement when I graduated high school and went off to college, in early 2005. I'd never been a big TV watcher, and so never bothered to get a subscription with a cable or satellite service. I never even bothered with the rabbit-ears and farmer-vision I grew up with. I've also never had a netflix account, and use youtube mostly for the occasional music video or instructional program.
I'm not a 'cord cutter' in the strictest sense, because you can't cut what you never had.
- D
(Score: 2, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 02 2018, @01:33PM (1 child)
> I'm not a 'cord cutter' in the strictest sense, because you can't cut what you never had.
The term that I've heard being used is a "cord never".
A lot of "millenials" are in that category, and the cable companies have been confidently asserting that those cord-nevers will all get cable once they have children. Of course, that confidence was shown to be completely unwarranted, and over the last two-three years it started dawning on the cable cos that people prefer less abusive sources of entertainment. Therefore, they started to improve their service, lower their pricing, and treat their customers better. *long pause* Just kidding. They doubled down with increasingly terrible service, more below-the-line fees, various forms of forced bundling and lock-ins, and anti-Net Neutrality lobbying.
(Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Wednesday May 02 2018, @02:14PM
They doubled down with increasingly terrible service, more below-the-line fees, various forms of forced bundling and lock-ins, and anti-Net Neutrality lobbying.
The cablecos are doing the most sensible moves here. The people who don't care about TV (the "cord never" people you refer to) aren't going to be enticed into it just like I'm not likely to be enticed into watching Bollywood movies, so for them they can try forcing TV on them with things like this move to only give higher internet speed (something they probably *do* care about) if they also sign up for TV. And then, for all the people who love TV, you can make more profit by screwing them over more with lousier service (saves money), extra fees, nasty bundling deals (oh, you want this channel? You have to sign up for this special package that comes with all this other crap you don't want for $$$), and generally higher prices, plus of course anti-NN lobbying so they can use their ISP service to screw over customers who want use competing services like Netflix.
Luckily, the cablecos aren't really doing anything wrong here, and are just doing what we the people want. This is proven by the fact that we elected leaders who support this kind of corporate behavior, and who are completely opposed to Net Neutrality. If we didn't like this behavior, we'd vote for leaders who do something about it, but we didn't, so we're getting what we deserve.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Grishnakh on Wednesday May 02 2018, @02:01PM (1 child)
What happens when people get all of their TV from a combination of free YouTube, Kodi, and torrents?
They're already cracking down hard on Kodi, and YouTube is cracking down now on copyrighted stuff. For the others, they'll be sure to crack down one way or another: ban private VPNs, perhaps, or analyzing VPN traffic to see if it resembles bittorrent activity (should be easy to do; using your corporate VPN for reading email is not going to look like using a VPN through Netherlands to torrent a 4GB data file) and shutting it off, and for YouTube it's not going to be any different than renting streaming videos through Amazon.
The Internet may be global, but private end-user access to the Internet in the US is controlled by a very small handful of companies. If they want to set up a "Great Firewall", they absolutely have the power to do it.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 02 2018, @05:46PM
no, they think they have power. fuck with my internet enough and see how stupid i get.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 01 2018, @08:41PM
I'd have expected them to require "triple-pay", ie. add a landline spam wire, to get competitive data speeds.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by LoRdTAW on Wednesday May 02 2018, @02:12AM
The value of TV isn't dropping, the medium of cable delivery is.
(Score: 2) by ledow on Wednesday May 02 2018, @02:06PM
Who here doesn't own a TV?
I moved house recently, realised such things were pointless (in my country, there's free digital TV by aerial, cable or satellite, plus a bunch of subscription things that you can end up paying £100 a month for if you're not careful).
My TV viewing costs are:
- An old projector that someone threw out (120" HD screen anyone?)
- A TV licence (required whether or not you stream, record, or watch the "free" TV channels on any device)
- A £20/month internet-only connection (via 4G, with free Netflix, etc. data so you don't even use up your data allowance and it comes with a pretty generous allowance and never skips when it streams).
- A laptop I already had.
- (Optional) A subscription to Netflix / TVPlayer which both came with deals over Christmas. I paid £20 for a YEAR of TVPlayer. £5 a month for Netflix. Likely I will stop one or the other as I already have Amazon Prime anyway.
- All of the above are on "stop paying any time you like" contracts, not annual. I could get it a lot cheaper if I agreed to a whole year.
(TVPlayer is basically all the live TV that you'd normally get on free digital TV, streamed over the Internet legally, and a bunch of other channels, from any web browser or from an app, and things like a web-based PVR for your favourite series).
However, I was bombarded when moving in with things like Sky, Freeview, NowTV, etc. as well as telephony providers. When I looked into it, the installation charges alone were more than I'd pay in a year with the above. The ongoing monthly was twice as much as all the above (once you include the compulsory telephone line rental, etc.). The year after that, you could pretty much DOUBLE the cost because they have a captive audience on a contract. And I would have had to buy an actual TV and fit it.
I just looked at the numbers and shrugged and live off my 4G Wifi router instead. There are no messy cables. I didn't have to drill my walls (I could just paint one of them white...). I don't have to wire anything (but I can and have SteamLinked, ChromeCasted and even stuck a RetroPie on the projector and used the Wifi and wireless controllers). Hell, work threw out a SIP phone, so I even stuck that on as a "landline"... I've never used it but it has an 0845 number on a SIP account.
Hell, my "remote control" is an old Samsung phone I don't use anymore with an IR blaster function on it. It can control the projector, computers, an HDMI switch and has also done things like game consoles, DVD players, set-top-boxes etc. in the past all from one device.
To be honest, live TV is dead to me. TVPlayer will likely not be renewed. I'm not taken with Netflix but it's good for a short term to catch up with lots of things as-and-when I like. But I'm certainly not going to pay a fortune to get a huge TV, subscriptions, boxes, etc. to what is essentially an advert-funded service. It's not even worth buying an NVR or building a MythTV box etc. nowadays.
Oh, and every time I buy something on Amazon, I select the "No Rush" option, so after 4-5 deliveries that I don't need immediately, I basically get a free movie in my account.
Why anyone places any value in TVs as a technology, TV as a service, or as a normal household expense, I can't fathom. I did entirely without TV (of any kind) for several years, no problem.