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from the why-cable-companies-are-so-hated dept.
Reddit user demian87 recently posted a letter from Comcast notifying him or her of a new Comcast internet access pricing plan being trialed in Fort Lauderdale, the Keys, and Miami, Florida. According to this letter, Comcast will set a limit beginning on October 1 of 300 GB per household per month. Customers who exceed this limit will have to pay $10 for every additional 50 GB needed after that, or sign up for an unlimited data plan for an additional $30 per month.
Comcast spokesman Charlie Douglas confirmed that the letter is authentic, along with the company's new unlimited pricing plan. Douglas explained that "the company has trialed three other pricing plans since 2012 when Comcast had a static limit of 250 GB per month."
In a related development reported by the New York Times, Comcast will campaign to win over the quintessential cord-cutter class with new TV services designed to entice them into subscribing to its internet access service. Comcast will begin offering a $15-a-month TV service called Stream that includes broadcast networks and HBO for its internet customers. The new service will be available in Boston, Chicago, and Seattle later this year and across the company's coverage areas in the United States in 2016.
Stream looks similar to the Aereo service that carried over-the-air (OTA) television on top of the internet, but should perform even better because it operates on Comcast's managed network. Aereo lost a court battle to ABC and was forced to shut down, but not before proving that consumers would pay for crystal-clear OTA television delivered over the internet rather than get poor reception with an antenna. Stream improves upon Aereo by bundling a really cheap HBO subscription.
This story, "How Comcast is changing tactics in response to cord cutters" was originally published by Network World.
The article goes on to explore the usage of the majority of Comcast's customers and the expected usage of an average household that has cut the cord on TV service in favor of using only streaming services.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday September 06 2015, @03:46PM
> EVERYONE cut their cables. Just cut it. Let Comcast go bankrupt.
Not going to happen. Internet service is more profitable than television service. If people actually did what you propose, it would just increase Comcast's profit margin.
(Score: 1) by FreeUser on Sunday September 06 2015, @04:08PM
Not going to happen. Internet service is more profitable than television service. If people actually did what you propose, it would just increase Comcast's profit margin.
Internet may well be more profitable than television service, but it does not follow that cutting the cord will increase Comcast's profit. They are only doing this in areas where they have no broadband competition (another posted a link to the list of Zip Codes where Comcast is hosing their customers). If you stop paying for television and only pay for broadband (except in those areas), their profits will decline. Everyone should do this, so they only have one revenue stream instead of two.
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(Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday September 06 2015, @05:18PM
> They are only doing this in areas where they have no broadband competition (another posted a link to the list of Zip Codes where Comcast is hosing their customers).
I am the one who posted that. I fail to see how the fact that comcast can't gouge in areas where there is competition is relevant to the question of whether or not customers dumping TV service will make comcast less profitable.
The only possible argument I can think of is that comcast has amortized the cost of their cable plant over both tv and isp customers. But those are sunk costs anyway, that money is already spent. So calculations involving that sunk cost are just paper shuffling.
If ISP service is the more profitable line and the less profitable line goes away, basic math says the total business is now more profitable. Couple that with their demonstrated ability to jack up prices where they do have a monopoly and it seems like the best possible outcome for universal cord-cutting is no change and the more likely outcome is for them to increase gouging.
So I see Runaway's post as just angry fist shaking, not a useful course of action.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday September 06 2015, @06:42PM
If ISP service is the more profitable line and the less profitable line goes away, basic math says the total business is now more profitable.
Erm... no. Not if most of the people who have their cable service also have their Internet service already. If those people simply drop the cable service, Comcast will lose out. If they don't raise their prices in monopoly areas, that is.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday September 06 2015, @07:09PM
> If those people simply drop the cable service, Comcast will lose out.
Perhaps you don't understand that the reason cable tv is not particularly profitable is because the majority of your cable bill is passed through to the programmers. When you cut the cord you also cut comcast's costs.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday September 06 2015, @07:45PM
Not particularly profitable != losing money.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday September 06 2015, @10:15PM
> Not particularly profitable != losing money.
Never said it was. Go back. Read what I wrote.
Here, I will write it again in the vain hope that it will sink in this time:
it would just increase Comcast's profit margin.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday September 06 2015, @10:20PM
That does not follow, unless they are actively losing money on their cable service. As I said, most people who have their cable service already have their Internet service. Unless that is not true, and given all this, I do not see how they could possibly gain from people cutting the cord.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 07 2015, @12:14AM
You are clearly math impaired.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 07 2015, @02:07AM
Where are the specific numbers? You have not presented any, so there is not much opportunity to do real math.
You are making too many assumptions and being too vague. Someone above said: "Not going to happen. Internet service is more profitable than television service." So what? Just because X is more profitable than Y doesn't mean that Y isn't profitable whatsoever. If you want to show that cutting cable will actually increase Comcast's profits someone, go into more detail about why that is. Just saying that TV service isn't as profitable as Internet doesn't demonstrate anything. Again, this is assuming they wouldn't simply jack up their Internet prices, which they would. But the mere act of everyone stopping their cable TV services would not increase Comcast's profits by itself.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 07 2015, @03:48AM
You are clearly an idiot.
Unless they are providing it at a loss, they will receive less money if you stop paying them for tv.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday September 06 2015, @06:21PM
A lot of the people who have cable also have their Internet service, so they would be losing out overall.