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Cable Providers Still Have No Answer For Netflix As Cord-cutting Accelerates (bgr.com)
An anonymous reader writes with this excerpt from BGR about the rapidly shifting roles of cable companies and streaming media providers: While cable providers over the past few decades have grown fat off of exorbitant cable packages that overcharge and under-deliver, the rise of streaming services like Netflix, Hulu, and Amazon Video are finally righting the ship and shifting the balance of power towards the consumer. Clearly, the cable industry is in the midst of a transition. Netflix in particular, with its ever-growing stable of original content, has proven to be a particularly painful thorn in the side of cable providers who are increasingly struggling to keep subscribers from cutting the cord. Now comes word via The Wall Street Journal that cord cutting isn't just on the rise, but is accelerating rapidly. Citing data recently compiled by eMarketer, the Journal relays that the number of households with cable 'will fall at an accelerating rate for at least the next four years, reaching a 1.4% decline in 2019, eMarketer estimates.'
It's not just TV and Internet. We haven't been able to move into our new house, that we've been making payments on for over seven years, because our neighbors are fighting against allowing us to have water. Without water, we can't live in our house. Seattle is politically a strange place.
They do not have an alternative, however they do have "answers"...enacting ridiculous data caps and not making advantageous to buy data-only packages. Here, I am paying 50 Euros for 100Mbps cable+TV, if I want it just Internet they sell me a 30Mbps package for 45 Euros. They also have a base package of 15 Euros only for business, which is shit, cannot remember from the top of my head, something like 2Mbps.
Cox rep here.
Our old solution: Flexwatch. It's a bundle that gets you starter cable, a free receiver, and HBO / Starz / Encore / Cinnemax for $26 a month for 1 year. That's basically $0.50 per premium channel for 1 year, and you get the on demand digital versions like HBO Go.
The new solution we're moving to: Data caps that are low enough to nail cord cutters that will cost you about $30-40 a month in overage fees. They've gone live in Cleveland Ohio with plans on rolling them out in a few more areas to test, then nationally if enough people put up with it. Better: When you complain about the overage fees, we pitch you Flexwatch under the excuse that you'll use less Netflix that way.
How is that not an Antitrust violation, given we're the only game in some of these towns? I actually think it is, but we'll see what the courts decide if we're ever sued.
I don't recall the exact numbers, but IIRC it's $10 per 50 gigs over the cap. Which is why we vastly increased our speeds recently -- because Netflix, Hulu, etc will use more bandwidth if it's available, which will cause you to hit the cap faster, which with this new plan with make us more money.
Oh, and if you ever have to call Tech Support, good luck -- we're now "Technical Sales" reps. Our entire job is to get you to buy Cable, Phone, or Home Security while fixing your technical problem -- the training of which amounted to "reboot your modem."
Unfortunately the amount of bandwidth available for wireless is limited. It may work fine to some extent, but when too many subscribers shares the same space you will get problems.
Of course - allocation of new frequency bands might work, but that will also come at a cost since the new bands will be above 10GHz which would require new equipment.
If builders built buildings the way programmers wrote programs, then the first woodpecker would destroy civilization.
True, but cable TV companies can't treat subscribers only like that because effectively nobody subscribes to cable TV to watch ads. The cable companies have to treat us like customers buying content, and slip the advertising in without putting in so much that people stop subscribing.
Problem for the cable companies here being that how much advertising is too much depends on what alternatives are out there. Nobody's going to sit through 5 minutes of ads per 15 minutes for a show when they can go to Netflix and watch without ads, or when they can record the show on DVR and skip the ads. The era of ad-supported content is rapidly fading because the conditions that let it flourish are changing.