AOL/TW Plans for $230 Monthly Cable Bill

Jonathan Campbell writes: "According to the article, subscribers will get over the sticker shock preferring convenience over price." Yay, it'll be so convenient having one company control my television, internet access and phone service. I can hardly wait.

Comments

$230

[stinkydog]

$230-$80(Cable Basic&2 premium)-$50(DSL)-$30(local phone)=$70

What additional services will they provide for $70?

A pay-per-view p0rn0 and a hooker?

AOL is smoking crack. Provide reliable desirable services first, then decide what you are able to charge for each one.

Re:$230

[Sgs-Cruz]

Jeez, that's the monopoly fee, didn't you know? They landed on DSL Service, Local Phone Service, and Cable Service, and have now appeared to have built hotels on all...

Re:$230

[Jimmy_B]

It's very interesting how you came to that $2K/month number. In fact, looking over the components of that, I object to *every* number you put into that.

I'd expect 24/7 pay-per-view access $10 and up per pay-per-view item... probably $200-$300 worth of use.

He didn't say "24/7 FREE pay-per-view access", and neither did he say he would be using it 40-60 hours/month, as your number implies.

24/7 porno
A few nights a week at $8 per movie - another $100 or more.

Where'd that $8/movie number come from? And how is this hypothetical buyer possibly going to have free time for this *and* 50 hours per month of pay-per-view?

any On-Demand movie I want for free
Another $100 or more...

For $100/month, you could go to a theater every time you felt like watching a movie, and watch it on much better equipment. Off by a factor of 3 or 4.

and every single channel they can cram in the cable band.
Licensing and fees to the subscription channel providers = perhaps $200 or more depending on your market.

Off by a factor of five or more. Current cable providers fill the cable as it is already; you don't see them getting away with $200/month, do you?

I also expect an unrestricted U/L and D/L line on my Internet connection
UUNET/Sprint T1 = $800/month...

Everyone knows that T1 prices are a joke. Also, the price you're quoting includes business-class service (which you added MORE cost on for later), non-trivial installation, and 100% bandwidth use (which no home user reaches), and is rediculous anyways. Compare against business-class uncapped DSL to be more reasonable.

the ability to put up a server See above (included)

"Ability to put up a server" and "ability to put up a 5-million-hit-a-day web server" are completely different things. Many DSL providers give you this privelege, so long as you don't abuse it, and you certainly don't need a T1 for it.

tech support for any computer problem I have
Reasonable rate of $65/hour, assuming you're calling only during office hours. Reasonable estimate of 5 hours/month = around $250...

The only reason for 5 hours/month is if either (a) 4 of them are on hold, (b) the support is extremely incompetent, or (c) the service gives you too many problems in need of supporting. Either way, that's completely unacceptable for $65/hour, so your "reasonable estimate" of 5 hours/month is completely unreasonable.

and a 99.9% guaranteed uptime on the line
SLA for UUNET/Sprint. See above. Definitely business grade T1 service.

Three-nines uptime is "business grade T1 service"? Add one more nine to that, maybe two for a higher price. 43 minutes downtime per month would be consumer-level standard if the DSL providers weren't so blatantly incompetent.

And I want caller ID, call waiting, every single other feature on my phone, the ability to block business (telemarketer) calls, and the best voicemail system known to man. At least another $100.

Actually, this is more like $0/month, plus a one-time bill for a fancy phone with an LCD. None of these actually cost the provider any substantial amount, and they're certainly not worth $100/month.

TOTAL BILL: $2,000+ / month

You added another $250 in rounding - and, of course, all the numbers you used to get there were bogus anyways.

And you want this for $200? What the hell are you paying with, Flooz? You'll probably have similar results...

$200 is low, but it's in the right ballpark. Your figure is rediculous; why it's at +5 is beyond me.

Betting?

[Nidhogg]

1. The cable company is betting consumers will see the value of one-stop shopping. But first Time Warner Cable will have get customers past the sticker shock of seeing $230 on their bill.

Isn't that the same bet that fired off the dot com craze?

And we all know how well that worked out.

Re:Hmm...

[AntiNorm]

So you get all your information from the same AOL/TW source, delivered by the same company... can you say "Vertical Integration" children? I knew you could...

The problem with this isn't just that the company can charge whatever it wants...the problem is that it can report what it wants to report and ignore what it wants to ignore. IOW, don't be surprised if the news coming out of the member companies -- CNN for instance -- starts to become blatantly biased.

Incidentally, when the hell is the FTC going to wake up and start giving a damn about anti-trust and consumer protection once again? First, you have AOLTW. Next, you have oil companies merging left and right to eventually form the next Standard Oil. (Were the companies that are merging -- Phillips/Conoco and Texaco/Chevron -- formed as a result of the Standard Oil breakup? If so, then there is NO WAY they should be allowed to merge. That would be just like allowing the broken-up pieces of Microsoft to merge back together should that breakup happen, which I unfortunately doubt it will.)

AOL is going to lose out on this one

[Sycraft-fu]

Not because people will be against having a sinlge company provide all their services (in fact I'm sure many want it), but because the price is outrageous. Let's take pricing on some local (Tucson) services:

Analogue phone line: $16/month
Basic Digital Cable: $45/month
Consumer grade DSL or CM: $50/month

All tolled that gives us about $111 per month, and yes I factored taxes in that. That makes the AOL package over twice as expensive. Now just for the sake of argument, let's assume they give you more than just basic service. In all reality we know that won't happen, but hey, we'll assume they give you something comparable to what I have:

Analogue phone line: $16/month
Extended Digital Cable: $60/month
Professional grade SDSL: $120/month

That's still only $196. To match the AOL price, I'd have to buy 3 premium networks per month (and with digital cable, that gives me about 10 channels per network). Plus, I really doubt they'll offer anything more than basic digital service and just normal CM service, making the first comparison more likely.

Personally, I think the idea of all-in-one providers is a good idea, provided there are several to choose from. However the reason it would be cool is that in theory it should save you money. Companies should be willing to charge you less overall in return for the fact that you buy more services form them. Cox already does this. You get a discount if you get both a cable modem and digital cable. It's been effective too, it encourages digital cable subscribers to get a CM instead of DSL, and encourages people with CMs and cable to upgrade to digital cable.

AOL is full of it if they think people are going to pay that much more for one provider service, espically since for most people it is probably going to be double the cost. If they want people to go for this they are going to need to make ti at the very least comparable and probably cheaper than getting all the services seperatly.

You actually pay THAT much?

[Wire Tap]

Cable Internet (AT&T) - $50
Local telephone (with all the services but voicemail - Verizon) - $60
Long distance (AT&T) - $50
Cable television (AT&T - local channels only) $14)
Alarm monitoring (ADT) $26

I pay $30 a month for my cable modem.
Local telephone service? I certianly don't pay $60 every month for it. Try $30, if that.
Long distance - are we talking about your calls, or the provider? I don't know of a provider on the planet that charges $50 just for their service - that's because they would be out of business so fast they would never be IN business.
Cable TV... wait... you said local? If You want local channels only (which defeats the primary purpose of cable television), I'd suggest you use an antenna. And that comes down to a cost of $0 per month.
As for the alarm monitoring, I have no idea, so I'l stick with your pricing on that. $26 per month.

If we add all that up, I only come up with a fine little sum of $86. Now, that's more like it. If you actually _NEED_ all that crap on your phone bill (460 way calling, or whatever it is now) then you can't possibly expect that everyone affected by this pricing scheme feels the same way. It's absurd to even assume a faction of that. Regardless, if people don't like the fees, they should learn to live with less - OR, get an organized complaint together and tell this monopolistic corporation to take a look at their business practices. I would NEVER commit to paying $230 per month for all that trash. I don't need half of it, and I sure would not want it from them.