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posted by mrpg on Saturday January 06 2018, @01:27AM   Printer-friendly
from the read-soylentnews dept.

Cable and satellite TV providers are ringing in the new year with an unwelcomed gift: higher cable bills.

Comcast, for instance, says customer bills will rise 2.2 percent, on average, in 2018. AT&T is raising DirecTV's prices by up to $8 a month in mid-January. Smaller providers are planning increases, too.

Over the past decade, prices for TV service have risen almost twice as fast as inflation, according to an analysis of government data. Data provider S&P Global Market Intelligence says customers' cable and satellite TV bills have soared 53 percent since 2007, to $100.98 in 2017.

Annual rate hikes are as guaranteed as death and taxes. But you can push back and trim your bill.

What are you gonna do instead, read?


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  • (Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 06 2018, @04:37AM (11 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 06 2018, @04:37AM (#618620)

    I used asktrim.com to negotiate down my bill. It worked a bit, but when all is said and done, I only have one choice for ISP, so it was a minor miracle that they were able to get it reduced at all.

    This whole net neutrality thing would be far less of an issue if everybody had multiple possibilities for provider and at least some of them were willing to put a real neutrality pledge into their contracts.

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  • (Score: 1) by bobthecimmerian on Saturday January 06 2018, @01:43PM (10 children)

    by bobthecimmerian (6834) on Saturday January 06 2018, @01:43PM (#618744)

    Agreed. Net Neutrality wouldn't be required if there were at least three broadband ISPs for every home.

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 06 2018, @03:13PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 06 2018, @03:13PM (#618769)

      It would still be a problem, it's just that under that scenario there would be at least some hope of market forces fixing the problem.

      Comcast is upgrading my connection here from 55mbps to 60mbps allegedly for free because of all this. But, the reality is that they previously hiked rates recently, this is just coming after the rate hikes because they know that we'll remember the "free" speed increase more than the rate hike.

    • (Score: 4, Insightful) by dry on Sunday January 07 2018, @01:32AM (8 children)

      by dry (223) on Sunday January 07 2018, @01:32AM (#618957) Journal

      Wouldn't be so sure. Those 3 companies are just as likely to reach an unspoken agreement to maximise profits.
      There's 3 cell providers here, all with basically the same high rates. Last month #4 showed up with cheaper rates and then the 3 incumbents dropped rates, on a temporary basis, to try to push #4 out of business. If they succeed, I'd guess the deals will stop.
      There are 7 gas station providers here, with perhaps 20 gas stations. Prices are always moving in lockstep and within a 10th of a cent to the same. Plus if there is an issue on the other side of the world, they all increase there prices within an hour, as if the gas in their holding tanks suddenly cost more. Of course if world prices drop, it takes months to work through the system.
      Even the grocery chains were just caught fixing the price of bread.
      Sometimes competition works, especially with a new player, generally it seams the companies would rather have 1/3rd of large profits with little innovation then little profit that they have to struggle for.

      • (Score: 2) by Justin Case on Sunday January 07 2018, @03:46PM (7 children)

        by Justin Case (4239) on Sunday January 07 2018, @03:46PM (#619178) Journal

        as if the gas in their holding tanks suddenly cost more

        You seem to have the illusion that prices depend on cost, or should depend on cost. In fact, cost usually only sets a minimum price because most people can't afford, long term, to sell something for less that it cost.

        Prices are always determined by:
        1. what the seller is willing to accept
        2. what the buyer is willing to pay

        Sellers are getting better at calculating #2 to several digits of precision, in part by using the government to remove your choices.

        • (Score: 2) by dry on Sunday January 07 2018, @05:02PM (6 children)

          by dry (223) on Sunday January 07 2018, @05:02PM (#619204) Journal

          Actually it is the grandparent who is under the illusion that adding another ISP will lower prices. This is even more of an illusion for ISPs due to the cost of entering the market. My observation agrees with you and gives examples of how established industries often come to unspoken agreements to have the same high prices.
          While businesses will happily corrupt the government to remove choice, even without government, they will do things like buy out the new competition or put themselves in a position of gatekeeper to maximise profits.
          Like so many things, the free market doesn't scale up all that well. Even communism works well under a small enough scale.

          • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 07 2018, @09:51PM (5 children)

            by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 07 2018, @09:51PM (#619296)

            (I'm the grandparent, just don't feel like logging back in.) I was being pedantic with my comment on three ISPs for every home. I realize that it won't ever happen because the cost of entry to a market that has an existing incumbent is too high. Densely populated portions of large cities will have multiple ISP choices, because the return on investment for running fiber optic cable is high even with competition. Everywhere else, broadband internet is a natural monopoly.

            • (Score: 2) by dry on Sunday January 07 2018, @11:09PM (4 children)

              by dry (223) on Sunday January 07 2018, @11:09PM (#619320) Journal

              What could work is something more like the road network, government builds the basic infrastructure for private enterprise to use. Even that has its drawbacks, eg later government borrows on the infrastructure, forcing it into debt, then declares it a failure and gives the infrastructure to the cable company because "private is always better"
              Human nature being what it is, I guess we're lucky to be where we are now.

              • (Score: 1) by bobthecimmerian on Tuesday January 09 2018, @06:19PM (3 children)

                by bobthecimmerian (6834) on Tuesday January 09 2018, @06:19PM (#620131)

                I live in Pennsylvania, and one of the things PA did right - to my surprise - was power de-regulation. Your local power company charges you transmission fees for your electricity, but you can buy the electrical generation from any of over fifty vendors. Before PA power de-regulation this way, I was paying $0.15/kwh. Now I'm paying $0.11/kwh. The hassle is that you have to shop around every few months, because most of the fifty companies get you hooked with a low fee and incrementally raise prices until you're paying extra. But as long as you pay attention, you'll save 20-40% over what you paid ten years ago.

                So something like that for ISPs might work, too. It might also sidestep the lawsuits by Comcast and Verizon to shut down municipal broadband. My non-lawyer's understanding is that Comcast and Verizon file a lawsuit claiming Sometown's ISP service pits a government-owned business against the free market, and state regulators inevitably get bribed by side with the corporations. But what if, instead, Sometown announces they're building pure infrastructure and allowing any ISP sell connectivity to users on it. Then they're not competing with Comcast and Verizon, they're helping them reach more potential customers (and in the process pitting them against each other).

                • (Score: 2) by dry on Tuesday January 09 2018, @07:14PM (2 children)

                  by dry (223) on Tuesday January 09 2018, @07:14PM (#620158) Journal

                  They did a similar thing with natural gas here. Mostly works but a lot of people got screwed by gambling the prices would keep raising and are locked into what are now high prices. The other problem that you hint at is overly complicated contracts that trick people into raising rates. Many (most?) people don;t seem capable of reading a multi-page contract with lots of fine print and getting all the nuances.
                  The big problem is that, especially in the case of the big ISP, the incumbent company doesn't want to compete as it easier to fleece the customers when there is no competition.

                  • (Score: 1) by bobthecimmerian on Thursday January 11 2018, @12:04PM (1 child)

                    by bobthecimmerian (6834) on Thursday January 11 2018, @12:04PM (#620901)

                    With respect to reading contracts and the fine print, I understand your objection. And really it wouldn't be an issue if the sole power company for each household was well-regulated. Maybe that is the best solution. But of course that leads to two very hard problems:

                    1. Actually regulating properly (no easy thing)

                    2. Convincing enough moderate and conservative voters that regulating properly is possible and moral.

                    Agreed that the incumbent ISP company wants its monopoly.

                    • (Score: 2) by dry on Thursday January 11 2018, @05:02PM

                      by dry (223) on Thursday January 11 2018, @05:02PM (#620980) Journal

                      Yea, the regulating well part is hard, big businesses can be experts at following the letter of the law while breaking the spirit of the law.
                      Another potential problem is if/when the government changes, putting those anti-regulation, pro-private business people in charge. Here the Province owns the electric company. It worked well for 50 odd years, then we got a government mostly interested in low taxes and a balanced budget. One of the ways they succeeded with balancing the budget was by simply forcing the electric company to pay huge dividends to the government, putting the electric company billions into debt and raising electric rates. They also forced it to start construction on a multi-billion dollar dam without properly considering if it is needed. Long time goal was likely proving that public owned utilities don't work and giving it away to their friends.
                      It's an article of faith with some people that private is always better then public and they'll prove it through appointing bad management.