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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 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.