Broadband Subscribers Eclipsing Cable TV Subscribers

An anonymous reader writes: High-speed internet has become an everyday tool for most people, and cord-cutters have dramatically slowed the growth of cable TV, so this had to happen eventually: broadband internet subscribers now outnumber cable TV subscribers among the top cable providers in the U.S. According to a new report, these providers account for 49,915,000 broadband subscribers, edging out the number of cable subscribers by about 5,000. As Re/code's Peter Kafka notes, this means that for better or worse, the cable guys are now the internet guys. Kafka says their future is "selling you access to data pipes, and pay TV will be one of the things you use those pipes for."

Comments

Unfortunately

[TubeSteak]

Unless you live in a city, in a major market, the odds of there being any competition are almost nil.

Free to air

[tepples]

regular tv and radio just aren't needed anymore.

Regular radio and OTA TV can be received without a recurring fee beyond the electric bill, unlike Internet. Listening to FM or AM radio in the car doesn't incur a bill payable to a cellular provider.

Re: Delayed by months or years

[Redbehrend]

Not true lots of my shows are available the same night they aired on their website or hulu. As for sports it's a different story but they are adding streaming on their websites. I know I can watch basketball live and nascar... I think you can start to watch baseball now as for football and hockey I am not sure... Cable companies know what's coming they are gonna milk it and slow it all they can lol

Death to content providers

[JoeyRox]

Couldn't happen to a nice industry. From their overpriced content to their monopolistic channel bundling requirements imposed on cable providers, the sooner the media companies die the better for all of us. And then maybe our cable bills will stop going up at 4x the rate of inflation.

Re:Split

[93 Escort Wagon]

The cable ISPs that charge less for a TV plus Internet bundle than for Internet alone are part of the problem.

Yup. We were paying $135/month for a particular tier of Comcast's cable + internet service. We looked at going internet only, but for basically the same price ($70/month) we got internet, broadcast channels and HBO (and Discovery, but who cares). And it keeps my wife happy because she wants to watch all those cop and hospital dramas.

What's really maddening is how we got to $135 in the first place. It wasn't that long ago that our cable bill was closer to $80 for that same level of service. But Comcast kept pushing the cost upward... I think when they doubled the cable speed, called it "Blast!", and started charging $10 extra for it (without asking, of course) is what finally motivated us to act - they just throttle any services that extra speed would be useful for, anyway...

We are too far away from the central office to make DSL a viable choice, so Comcast is basically the only game in town. But I have toyed with the idea of testing T-Mobile's unlimited data plan in its place - if the Comcast price creep continues unabated, I might actually do it. If Netflix streaming works adequately, that'd be good enough.

Re:No shit. All cable content is crap these days.

[Applehu Akbar]

All news sources are biased, but the online world offers a much higher diversity of bias.

Re: No shit. All cable content is crap these days.

[corychristison]

None. And I like it that way.

Re:Retransmission consent

[mrchaotica]

First, thanks for citing my previous posts.

Second, the claim "Internet + TV is cheaper than Internet by itself" was referring to a plan that included only basic cable (the channels you'd get with an antenna). Any plan that included the likes of ESPN and TNT would be more expensive than Internet-only (or at least, I sure would hope so!).

Third, Comcast's offerings have improved this year: last year I was at $40/month for Internet + basic cable ($37 once I found out that they were supposed to be giving me a discount for using CableCard instead of a box); this year they actually had an advertised offer for $20/month Internet-only.

Re:Left and right wing

[mrchaotica]

I'm not convinced that it's necessarily harder to find a progressive viewpoint on radio than it is on TV. My guess is that people who pay for TV to listen to while they do chores either A) are interested in particular commentators who have TV shows but not radio shows, or (more likely) B) think cable TV is just "something you have" and haven't reexamined how much it costs or how much actual utility they're getting from it. It's one of those things that really only becomes clear in retrospect, after you've cut the cord.