40 Percent of America Will Cut the Cord By 2030, New Report Predicts (vice.com)

bumblebaetuna shares a report from Motherboard: By 2030, as many as 40 percent of Americans will have cut the cord, according to predictions in a new report by market analyst TDG Research. The percent of U.S. households still shelling out for cable has dropped every year since 2012. If the trend continues on the current path, TDG predicts the percent of U.S. households subscribing to pay TV will drop to 60 percent in the next 13 years. Cost is a major driver of this shift: the cost of bundling a few favorite streaming services together still pales in comparison to the average cable bill. TDG found that two thirds of cord cutters and "cord nevers" (people who have never paid for cable) said service expense was the key reason they do not use legacy pay TV services. There's also a generational shift: 61 percent of adults aged 18-29 say online streaming services are the primary way they watch TV.

Comments

Re:Cut the cord? What cord?

[networkBoy]

I have never paid for cable. I've enjoyed it sometimes when others have footed the bill for various reasons and it's free to me. Price for what I want is the overwhelming reason. I want a small number of channels that are only available in the highest tier packages, and have no desire to pay that much for really only a couple shows.

The joke is on us, really.

[Picodon]

The irony is that, while “cutting the cord” of cable television, we subscribe to service that uses the very same cable, except in a way for which it was not designed (unicast vs. broadcast) and is ill-suited. We thus end up obtaining even worse quality of service for about the same price, from the exact same people, who are preparing to screw us even further by changing the rules of service back to... those of cable television. Checkmate. Happy future, everyone.

Re:The joke is on us, really.

[NeumannCons]

Actually, cable is rapidly becoming more and more designed for high-speed data (more accurately bi-directional high speed data).

Cable companies (MSOs - or Multi Systems Operators) have been upgrading their infrastructure (HFC or Hybrid Fiber Coaxial) for years now by replacing main trunks with fiber, re-allocating frequency ranges from TV to data, and developing new standards for equipment in the home (DOCSIS). While the original equipment was not really designed to support bi-directional data, the last decades improvements are all about making sure they cater to their current customers which more and more just want high-speed data. While I'm not a fan of cable companies, I think they see the direction things are headed in and are making sure they position themselves to survive the loss of TV subscribers.

Docsis 1.0 (1997) supported 10Mb/s. DOCSIS3 3.1 (2017) supports 10Gb/s transfer speeds. FTTH (Fiber to the home) is likely the next "big thing" (or possibly wi-max or its successor). Cable companies already have huge amounts of fiber on poles to to aggregate customers data. At this point, they're looking at ways of expanding that reach for the last mile.

You know it costs you $9/mo

[rsilvergun]

to provide you with internet. Comcast admitted that in their SEC filing. They can lie to you, they can lie to congress, they can lie to their priest for Christ's sake. But they can not and will not lie to their investors.

As for that wire, you and me already paid for it in the form of massive subsidies and tax breaks. They didn't spend a dime of their own money. You don't get rich spending your own money. That's for chumps & working stiffs like me and you.

Re:Cut the cord? What cord?

[Ol Olsoc]

I doubt that my kids will ever have a cable-tv cord to cut. They are part of the cable-never generation.

Any gain will be temporary, as Ajit Pai and his owners and handlers turn the internet into Cable TV mod two, with multi tier service, yearly double digit price inflation, and if you want the fast speeds, we have the ultra Patriotic rate of 500 dollars a month, with hundresd of high quality entertainment channels as part of the package. Featuring the Honey Boo-Boo network.

There will be a basic rate of 75 dollars a month that will be at 56K modem speed, and a 100 Megabyte cap.