If You Lived In Riga, You Wouldn't Bother To Cut the Cord

lpress writes "If you lived in Riga, Latvia, you would not have to 'cut the cord' to see video entertainment at a reasonable cost. You would simply get a triple play subscription with 20 Mbps up and 5 Mbps down from service provider Balti-Com for $25.43 USD. Balti-Com had the lowest triple pay price in a New America Foundation report, The Cost of Connectivity, which compares prices charged by 885 ISPs in 22 cities worldwide. The report found that five of the cheapest 15 triple-play offerings were in Paris — the fruit of competition between ISPs. With the Telecommunication Act of 1966, the U.S. Congress hoped to foster similar competition, but failed. As study co-author Benjamin Lennett says, U.S. telephone and cable companies have arranged a 'negotiated truce' in which cable incumbents enjoy a de facto monopoly on high-speed broadband service, while Verizon and AT&T focus primarily on their wireless platforms."

Comments

Re:Weigh with average income

[cpu6502]

You don't but you should. TVs cost like 20 dollars in India and China, because that's all the people can afford. Meanwhile in the EU or US they cost around $200, because we're "rich" in the worldwide income scale so the corporations charge us more.

BTW we do have cheaper options in the States:
- ignore the government-granted monopoly that is Comcast and get Dish: $15 or $25/month for their lowest CATV packages. Or antenna which is freeview.
- or add Hulu. $7/month for unlimited viewing.
- Wired phone service can be had as cheap as $4 a month (and then pay 10 cents per call).
- Another form of entertainment are books or magazines or radioshows, which are often published online for free. When nothing's on the boobtube, I read or listen instead.

- get DSL for internet. $15 a month for slow service or $30 for faster service.
- VirginMobile. $5 a month for cellphone service, or ~$20 a month for unlimited. $35 for unlimited data.

The problem I have observed with most Americans is that they don't know HOW to save money. They complain-and-moan about high prices, but then don't bother to shop around. They buy overpriced goods, lock themselves into 2-yr-contracts that are lousy deals, waste money eating-out everyday when it's cheaper to bring your own lunch, buy $1 snacks in the machine when the same thing at the store costs half as much, and so on.

Basically they are their own worst enemies. We work hard to earn money..... we should also work hard to save it rather than waste it.

Re:Weigh with average income

[Chibi Merrow]

My DSL goes 6 Mbit/s and I think that's plenty fast. I can download movies or shows faster than I can watch them, so basically the speed is higher than I need.

Well, 6MBit/s would not be enough for our household, with three heavy internet users. It's not uncommon to have two simultaneous NetFlix streams, a large download going, and still have two of us playing online games.

TING would actually cost me more. Instead of the 5 dollars I currently pay through Virgin, I would pay $9. And the text/data plans are about the same price.

But the data cost on Ting? Outrageous! 3GB plus calls/texts == $80. Virgin charges just $35 and has no data limit.

Ting would be cheaper in my situation, with 5 phones, instead of paying $35/ea. Also, the big difference is if you use less than what you signed up for in a month, Ting refunds the difference. And that $35 "unlimited" Virgin Mobile plan is throttled after 2.5GB.