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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.
I have DSL already... our cable bill for extended Basic just went up to $50/month. We have decided at the next raise cable goes. My DSL may not be as fast but in the 2+ years I have had it I have paid the same amount. I can't say that for cable.
"If you are on fire you can just stop, drop, and roll. If you fall into Lava you are just dead." - my 5yr old daughter
I would easily pay one fee to one company for all those services, but be damn sure that it is NOT going to be AOL or MS, sorry but it would have to be to a company that has at least proven it self to be semi-retuable. I use comcast now for cable. I don't use cable TV, but I am kicking around the idea. Supposedly the new comcast plan is going to include some form of IP-telephony (at the cost of my newsgroups I hear, so add another bill for 3rd party news server) $230 is PROBABLY a fair price for all the things they claim to offer, but, ever try to get tech support from AOL? Before I moved in with my fiance and enlightened her to the fact that AOL is not the only place to get internet service (people REALLY still dont know this) I tried several times to get a few things working a little better for her. All I wanted was someone who could speak even a LITTLE tech so I could figure out something that was actually quite simple, but I coudlnt solve without a little technical insight onto how the service works. Now, imagine if you had to call AOL tech support because your service is down. Wait you cant. They host your telephone too. Email them. oops. cant do that. Oh well, I guess I'll go watch some TV while they work out the bugs themselves. OH NO! I cant do that either! I think you all get my point.
Don't Tread on Me
I look, for instance, at the menu of services we consume here:
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
That's $200/month worth of services that are coming in on two wires to my house. And we don't get any of the more advanced cable services - just analog antenna service. If I want analog basic cable, it's another $20. If I want premium channels, the total bill hits that $230 mark and only goes up from there.
What I don't really do at this point, though, is take advantage of any service bundling yet - though AT&T has been pushing real hard in this area to get local and long distance bundled with my cable line. I haven't bitten yet but if I do it'll save me about $15/month. It's just not worth the trouble yet. So I use two wires instead of one.
I have no issue with the total price, so long as they save me money over the cost of buying all the services I need separately from separate vendors. I'll stick to multiple bills if there's no price reason to switch.
I guess the real interesting thing is how much communications takes out of the monthly budget. I look at that $200 figure I cited above, and that doesn't include our cell phone ($35), OmniSky ($29, but it's getting dumped this spring), and my Blackberry ($40, paid by my work). All together, that's a lot of money for communications service of one sort or another. And remember, my cable TV bill is tiny. A lot of people pay for premium services - equivalent to adding my OmniSky to the cable bill.
I wouldn't be surprised to see that the average household communications total bill comes close to that $200 mark already. If AOL starts offering things like security monitoring over their wire as well, the $230 is probably a reasonable goal.
-- Josh Turiel
"2. Do not eat iPod Shuffle."
What, besides lack of marketing killed it? Bundling all that together made customers realize they were paying two hundred bucks for telecommunications! Guess what'll happen when AOL/TW tries the same thing?
If NTL has the same pricing structure as BlueYonder/Telewest, which I think it does, you're looking at:
35 pounds per month for Internet+telephone+basic TV (the standard five channels or whatever)
An extra 25 per month gets you free local and national calls; in fact, an extra 40 quid per month gets you free calls and everything possible on the TV channels front. So for 75 pounds a month you have just about every service they offer, minus I suppose the pay-per-view porn services.
That's just a bit over 100 dollars or so.
Conclusion: AOL/TW can dream on.
If they replace the existing dumb cable box with a TiVo-like (and TiVo is a leading contender since they seem to want to license to everyone) box, they can stash the PPV on the TiVo after you order it and you can watch it over the next few days like a normal rental (or months depending on how they set it up, and how much else you want to stash on the box).
The advantage over NetFlix is it could take a lot less time for the movie to get to your set top (depending on how frequently they transmit the movie you picked), the disadvantage would most likely be a much smaller selection. Plus it's likely not to have all the extras like a good DVD does.
I don't think I pay over $150 on all my phone/TV/connectivity stuff. I don't care if it goes to one place, or to five like it does now, so long as the service I get is of the quality I want, and I continue to have a choice of providers so I can vote with me feet if one pisses me off (for me this is hardest with my IP access - I can't find anyone affordable except the local cableco, and my TiVo - not only would I have to buy another PVR, but the others don't seem to fit my needs as well).
If you were to invest $230/month at a 10% annual rate, compounded annually, from the time you were 20 to the time you were 65, you'd have two million dollars in the bank.
So, which would you rather have: AOL's ultimate media package, or multiple millions in the bank when you retired?
b&
All but God can prove this sentence true.
I'd expect 24/7 pay-per-view access
$10 and up per pay-per-view item... probably $200-$300 worth of use.
24/7 porno
A few nights a week at $8 per movie - another $100 or more.
any On-Demand movie I want for free
Another $100 or more...
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.
I also expect an unrestricted U/L and D/L line on my Internet connection
UUNET/Sprint T1 = $800/month...
the ability to put up a server
See above (included)
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...
and a 99.9% guaranteed uptime on the line
SLA for UUNET/Sprint. See above. Definitely business grade T1 service.
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.
TOTAL BILL: $2,000+ / month
And you want this for $200? What the hell are you paying with, Flooz? You'll probably have similar results...
*scoove*
But I wanna pony!