While More People Switch To Streaming TV, Cable Stocks are Plummetting (investors.com)

An anonymous reader quotes Investor's Business Daily: Shares in Charter Communications plunged after the cable TV firm reported first quarter earnings and lost more video subscribers than expected, also sparking a sell-off in Comcast and Altice USA... Charter said it lost 122,000 video subscribers, nearly triple analyst predictions for a fall of 43,000. Comcast on Wednesday said it lost 96,000 video subscribers, exceeding estimates for a drop of 75,000.... With Friday's sell-off, Comcast stock is down 20% in 2018, with Charter falling more than 24%...

Cable TV firms aren't the only losers. AT&T this week said it lost 187,000 pay-TV customers, including satellite TV subscribers and its U-verse landline business. AT&T's DirecTV Now internet streaming service added 312,000 customers. But AT&T garners much lower profit margins from video streaming.
Cable companies are now raising prices on broadband services to compensate, according to the article.

MarketWatch notes that Charter also lost 100,000 customers in the same three-month period in 2017, calling the ongoing trend "a fundamental shift in consumer behavior."

Comments

Not fast enough.

[Anonymous Coward]

We need some controls on internet pricing though. Not sure we can expect that in the current US political arena.,

Re: Not fast enough.

[saloomy]

Your internet prices seemed to be subsidized by your TV pricing. If you no longer pay for TV pricing then your internet pricing will rise to compensate. After all, someone has to pay for the cable to get to your house, and that was likely massively financed, so there are continued payments due on the loans. You might have to learn to accept it.

Re:Not fast enough.

[Anonymous Coward]

You mean the "arena" where the House Republicans are helping a very possible traitor collude with Russian agents and lie about it because they don't want to get to the truth of it really? Yeah not much "regulation" going on there.

Re: Not fast enough.

[Anonymous Coward]

More like we have no choice.

Re: Not fast enough.

[dk20]

Are you referring to the cables which were in many cases were installed 30 or more years ago?

Re: Not fast enough.

[Anonymous Coward]

We can totally see you're a real bright one...

Re: Not fast enough.

[luther349]

thats not how that works. its just simple greed to keep there tv profits the same.

Re: Not fast enough.

[Anonymous Coward]

After all, someone has to pay for the cable to get to your house, and that was likely massively financed, so there are continued payments due on the loans

Link please. Otherwise please stop inventing falsehoods out of whole cloth and presenting them as fact. Adding a weasel word or two does not excuse it.

Re: Not fast enough.

[kurkosdr]

Lololol, people think "internet" is something expensive to provide, despite the fact companies just reuse existing cooper networks for the last mile and enjoy free peering agreements with the rest of the network (and can even blackmail to get paid to connect to other parts of the network, see Netflix)

Re: Not fast enough.

[Anonymous Coward]

No sorry, you're full of dogshit. Coax cable has been laid and paid for since the 90's at the very latest and re-leased since x-fold. That's not why customers are being milked in any case. Cost of wiring hasn't gone up 5x in 10 years, apologist.

These companies spend millions to billions collectively to lobby and litigate their way into shameless monopoly status and you come in here pretending they're broke? Moronic. Shame on you.

"Your internet prices seemed to be subsidized by your TV pricing." = a false assertion in any sense. Apologize for your bullshit rationalization or be branded.

Re:Not fast enough.

[nctritech]

I am being charged an extra fee for only having internet. Seriously, they have a $10 fee on my bill every month for NOT having a service.

Re: Not fast enough.

[Anonymous Coward]

Other way around - Internet subsidizes TV You do know a 12-strand bundle can carry nearly 5 terabits/sec?

At 100Mbit/sec, one cable bundle could handle 50,000 subscribers with zero overselling. 20:1 oversubscription has been practiced in the past, so maybe 1 million people would be on a single bundle of cable. Cable pricing works out to about $16,000 per mile plus installation and transceivers. The transceivers are the expensive part. A pair of 100 Gbit transceivers from Cisco costs about $200,000. This device can send a signal about 80 km.

Re: Not fast enough.

[AutodidactLabrat]

Yes, he is, given the 17 indictments and thus far 4 guilty pleas, including a General of the Army unregistered agent of a foreign power

Re: Not fast enough.

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm wondering when Nunez and the other GOP politicians that have been obstructing things are going to be tried for obstruction of justice. I'm also wondering if it's really worth the damage that they're doing just to avoid having President Pence for a few more months.

Re:Not fast enough.

[apoc.famine]

Well, that's what you get for denying them additional revenue! What, you think you have the right to just pay for what you use? Silly peasant.

Re:Not fast enough.

[Anonymous Coward]

It would help if third parties could provide last mile services and/or be virtual network operators. It would actually bring competition into the market.

We already have MVNOs that do the same with cell phone networks. Hell, Comcast/Xfinity has its own cell service setup on Verizon's network.

Re: Not fast enough.

[war4peace]

Bullshit, if in a 3rd world country I can get Gigabit fiber + TV + unlimited data 3G stick + mobile subscription with unlimited data plan, all for 25 bucks a month, then clearly something's very fishy in the USA.

Re: Not fast enough.

[Anonymous Coward]

If only that were true people I the country wouldn't get quotes of 100,000 Bux to lay cable to their homes.

Re: Not fast enough.

[movdqa]

In our case, Comcast replaced copper with Fiber over a decade ago. They dug up the streets and put in new neighborhood boxes (our cables are underground).

Re: Not fast enough.

[Anonymous Coward]

Are you referring to the cables which were in many cases were installed 30 or more years ago?

And paid for by Gov't subsidies and taxes, so they didn't cost the provider anything..

Re:Not fast enough.

[movdqa]

Comcast's MVNO service is great. My latest bill was $8.44 for four lines. So $2.11 per line.

Re: Not fast enough.

[Anonymous Coward]

I know thereâ(TM)s some weird lingering animosity (freedom fries?), but France isnâ(TM)t the third world.

Re:Not fast enough.

[Anonymous Coward]

By 'control' do you mean by subsidizing with tax dollars? Or do you mean by canceling the contracts that were given to ISPs by the very same politicians you'd hope to fix the problem with price 'controls'?

Why is this not practical in the current political arena? Because it's as asinine idea to start.

Re: Not fast enough.

[Anonymous Coward]

What the physical "fiber/wire" can carry is not the limitation in many cases. It is the amount your ISP is willing to invest in backbone connectivity and peering that is generally limiting factor.

Cable/Docsis over coax still has lots of legs in the connection to the hub bandwidth (unlike DSL). The reason they don't give you more bandwidth in the lower tiers is they don't want to procure more bandwidth to the internet backbone on your behalf than they have to.

Re: Not fast enough.

[Blymie]

It's the other way around, actually.

Now that no one wants cableTV any more, cable companies are left with massive infrastructure for a smaller customer base. For example, equipment to distribute TV signals over the wire, to replace TV commercials (cable companies do that in Canada, at least), and to pay for the product itself.

Compliance with FCC regs for TV rebroadcasting, blackouts for specific areas, endless TV-only 'things to manage, support, and do'. Heck, even 'public access channels'.

With a constant reduction in sales on that side, there's going to be overcapacity in manpower and tech/infrastructure for quite some time.

Thing is, bandwidth is cheap, cheap, CHEAP! So is providing it. Just acting as a pipe though, doesn't allow for them to gouge you on 100 other things. It doesn't provide the same profit. Realistically, they could provide gigabit speeds for $20 per month, and STILL make a profit -- but, that profit would be very slim compared to all those packages and the rape that comes with them.

In a competitive world, you'd (supposedly) have companies competing... but that doesn't happen most of the time with TV or Internet in most markets.

So, I suspect internet is now subsudizing TV. And these complaints are just more blather and bullshit. They've probably also signed poorly crafted deals, where they perhaps pay $x per month for each channel, with a minor change per subscriber. A plus in the old days, a minus now.

And of course most of these clowns are ALSO content providers. Which means they have to support all their specialty channels, but now with fewer and fewer people.

Here's the amusing thing though.

They think "HEEEY, they don't buy what we're selling.. well, we'll MAKE them buy it, but charging them more for something COMPLETELY UNRELATED!"

Internet != TV. Yet they think raising the price on Internet is the way to go.

No!

Raise the price on TV/CABLE if it is more expensive. Then people paying for a failing service, will leave.. oh wait.

So I guess they decided to tax others to support their failing TV business.

Re: Not fast enough.

[Excelcia]

Your internet prices seemed to be subsidized by your TV pricing. If you no longer pay for TV pricing then your internet pricing will rise to compensate. After all, someone has to pay for the cable to get to your house, and that was likely massively financed, so there are continued payments due on the loans. You might have to learn to accept it.

Cable TV prices skyrocketed long before cord cutting started hurting their bottom line. Netflix et al are not viable replacements for TV, people are simply making do with them in greater numbers as a result of cable company greed. Cable TV prices skyrocketed simply because they could - cable companies have, for the most part, a monopoly in any given area handed to them by city and state governments which sign agreements to allow only one company to lay cable during the construction of new neighborhoods. So this isn't a problem solely of supply and demand, and people having to "pay the piper" in some way. Cord cutting is self defense, not people wanting to somehow skirt the system. Cable companies are well compensated for the cable they lay, even at internet-only rates as they currently exist.

This problem, of cable companies jacking internet prices to offset loss of their overcharged TV subscriptions, is somewhat mitigated in Canada. Because of the sole-source agreements for laying cable, the CRTC ruled that cable companies here are required to allow independent resellers access to their network at bulk rates, and the cable companies have to justify the rate they charge to these resellers. Unbundled internet-only accounts are, therefore, available here at pretty reasonable rates. I pay $55CAD/month for a 100Mbit. And, where I live at least, it's a very solid 100Mbit - actually a touch faster sustained.

Given the essential nature of internet in modern society, this could be a model that might work in the US as well.

Re: Not fast enough.

[Bengie]

Not saying you're wrong, but I think you're coming about it the wrong way. First off, point-to-point fiber the pretty standard now, even if getting hooked up to passive optics. Run one fiber from each dwelling unit back to the CO or "fiber hut" for high density situations. We already have 40gb/40gb WDM-PON, which gives 32 end points 1.25Gb/1.25Gb each. In the near future, up it from 40Gb to 320Gb. In the semi-near future, up it to ~3Tb/s. Yeah, that's right, multi-terabit PON is working in labs. Imagine the "dread" of sharing "only" 3Tb/s with 31 other houses. Now that we've established that current tech can easily support dedicated symmetrical 1Gb to each dwelling unit, lets move on to the next choke point. The chassis, which I've seen called a "fiber aggregator", into which the fiber connects, have anywhere from 1.5Tb/s to 5Tb/s of backplane last I checked a few years back. On the upper end, that's 2,500 customers with non-blocking 1Gb/1Gb. Of course you need the uplinks to do that, but 100-400Gb uplinks are available. Just break up your customers into groups of 100-400 and you're good to go.

Next potential choke point is the core router. This is what the "fiber aggregator" typically plugs into. I don't know what's "normal", but I'm in a very poor small town and I found out my ISP has a core router with the slowest port being 100Gb and it has 32 ports, and does line rate. That's at least 3.2Tb/s full-duplex. I've read that you can buy 1Pb/s routers where the linecards currently have dual 400Gb ports and will eventually have linecard options of a single 1Tb port. Imagine that right now, commercially available, you can purchase a router that supports up to 1,000 400Gb or 500 1Tb ports.

But wait, there's more. DWMD currently allows 30Tb/s+ down a single fiber, two fibers for full duplex at that rate. What's more is the 600km ranges. You can even trade bandwidth for distance. 11,000km range for a bit over 1Tb/s. In the labs, they've got 1Pb/s fiber with 100Km range and 10Pb/s fiber with 40km range.

We currently have the ability of unlimited bandwidth up to the 1Gb range using commodity parts. Fiber is virtually unlimited. Getting beyond 1Gb is mostly an exercise of getting smaller fab processes freed up for networking instead of higher margin CPUs and other parts. Beyond 10Gb and being affordable to a typical person will take some time, but the technology is ready, it's just a matter of dropping the costs.

While the cost of all of this fiber infrastructure sounds expensive, ISPs like Sonic.Net claim infrastructure and transit only accounts for 1%-2% of your bill for any competent established ISP. That includes maintenance and regular upgrades. 98% of your internet bill is not even for the internet. What does it cover? Support and Marketing for the most part. What support you ask? You say you never call in or have anyone stop out. Well, you're paying for the support costs of all of the other people who do call in. People complain about "data hogs" and how they should be charged more. Data hogs are so cheap, the management overhead of monitoring them and charging them costs more than buying more bandwidth. Even then, their cost has to be less than the total cost, and that's only 1-2% of your bill. Maybe ISPs should start nickle and diming for support. then again, your mere existence as a customer carries a certain amount of fixed overhead. I know I would rather have a $40 bill instead of a $2 bill, where that time I need support, I don't get a $1,000 fee.

Re: Not fast enough.

[Anonymous Coward]

Are you suggesting the whole thing was done for free? Itâ(TM)s just common sense. Or provide some alternative...

Re: Not fast enough.

[Anonymous Coward]

Where we live in rural Georgia, USA, we only have 1 choice of DSL internet thru Windstream. Fiber optic is run along some main roads, but will still be copper phone lines to most houses for the rest of our lives @ 25 mpbs. Too costly to run fiber optic to each house - will never happen per tech installer. Still fast enough for most streaming, since I dropped DishTV 5 years ago.

Re: Not fast enough.

[MoarSauce123]

The how come the many ISPs in Europe can offer better services for a fraction of the cost in the US? They often do not even have TV as a service in their portfolio. The cable to home is a one time cost and comparably low given that telco infrastructure is installed essentially the same way as for the past 150 years: string wires from pole to pole. Very error prone, but also dirt cheap. Cabling is the same cost for TV as well. If cabling is the cost driver, then wireless operators should be able to offer services that are much less expensive, but they don't. Communications are now as essential as power and water, they should fall under the exact same pricing regulations. Or, merge the last mile infrastructure into a public non-profit and allow for municipal fiber, which will give equal access to any service provider. That is the only way to foster competition. Currently, the barrier to entry is far too high because competitors either need to buy access to last mile infrastructure or build their own. That's why in most places you have the choice between one cable company and one traditional phone company. One other option is to provide satellite TV service where access for consumers is at no cost. Operating cost is covered by content providers. This is what Europe enjoys with Astra and Eutelsat. Many SAT TV house installations in Europe also use far better material compared to the garbage that Dish and others push on their customers (this is a dish worth installing: https://www.kathrein.de/en/sat... know that such a constellation is highly unlikely. The US businesses just don't get that profits can be made without robbing the consumers.

Re: Not fast enough.

[MoarSauce123]

Fancy neighborhood you live in.

Re: Not fast enough.

[rojash]

Same goes for drugs et al right - there are more naive rich in the US than any other country. Ask the Nigerians. Ask Reader's Digest. Ask 'As Seen on Tv'. Ask the Church - Naive religious widows of rich capitalist of yore have made the country what it is.

Re: Not fast enough.

[MoarSauce123]

The reason why there is little to no competition is that by current law in most municipalities licenses for cable TV and phone are only allowed to be awarded to one company. In some places fiber is even considered a separate service. This is why places like Albany, NY (a state capital!) has zero consumer fiber service. Political cronyism and effective lobbyism (and most likely recurring payments to politicians) make it so that Verizon FiOS is ending at city limits. If there are artificially created monopolies then it is no wonder that there is no competition.

Re: Not fast enough.

[MoarSauce123]

Folks...what the frack does this have to do with cable TV cost? Aside from interstate regulations telco infrastructure and access is regulated at the state and municipal level.

Re: Not fast enough.

[Anonymous Coward]

It was subsidized by local governments and paid in full decades ago.

Re: Not fast enough.

[movdqa]

It's nice though fairly inexpensive. Homes run around $180K. They put the wiring underground as we have winter storms that can take down lines regularly.

Re: Not fast enough.

[Ogive17]

If they hadn't been so greedy in the past, maybe fewer people would have cut the cord.

The main companies are still seeing high profits. Their CEOs are still making 10's of millions of dollars per year.

When the going gets tough, they just charge customers more to protect their profits knowing the customer is screwed since the market lacks true competition.

I cut the cord in April, 2009. I paid $46.95/month for internet. Now I pay $80.70/month. Service hasn't gotten any better during that time.

Re: Not fast enough.

[cciechad]

A pair of 100G-LR QSFP's can be had for about 2k-4k now. Its been a long time since they were near the prices you are quoting.

Re: Not fast enough.

[war4peace]

I'm not French.

Re: Not fast enough.

[Anonymous Coward]

So I guess they decided to tax others to support their failing TV business.

Sounds like what a monopoly would do. But it is all good because technically they are "competing".

Capcha: testicle.

Re:Not fast enough.

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, that'll work. Price controls always work.

Re: Not fast enough.

[Anonymous Coward]

But this is the mainstream echo chamber. There are no longer topics to discuss. Just flavors of president bashing.

Re: Not fast enough.

[odin24seven1774]

(I know I would rather have a $40 bill instead of a $2 bill, where that time I need support, I don't get a $1,000 fee.) So your telling me that if paid $40 a month and let's say for 2 years (cause most people do need any service every year on there service) and at the start of the 3rd year you need service that would be cheaper then paying $48.00 for the 2 years of service. My math tells me that paying $2 a month is cheaper then $40 a month. Just saying. I have had cable and internet for decades and I haven't had to have them service my service my system but less then half a dozen times in 20 years. So if i paid $2 a month for 20 years thats $480 but at $40 a month for 20 years that is $9,600. You might want to check you math cause you are paying to munch.

Re: Not fast enough.

[torkus]

Just to be clear - your internet speed is the same today in 2018 as it was 9 years ago? I find that unlikely.

Mind you, I do agree that providing 100mbps today is technologically as costly as 10mbps a decade ago (give or take but it makes the point).

Yes, the cable companies have long feared what the internet and streaming would do to their revenue and, instead of taking a useful outlook, they hid their heads in the sand like the RIAA and tried to force everyone to perpetuate their doomed business model. Now it's coming back to haunt them. Instead of comcast and their ilk selling you streaming IP-TV to whatever device you wanted (which they absolutely could have done a decade ago) they're desperately trying to jack up broadband prices to compensate for their declining revenue.

Poetic justice to watch these companies suffer and turn into exactly what they didn't want to be - nothing more than a data pipe provider.

Sounds like

[ArchieBunker]

A good time to buy in. There's too much money at play for these companies to simply fold up.

Re:Sounds like

[ark1]

They are not folding but adapting. By adapting I'm changing laws to repel net neutrality and turning Internet service into old school Cable subscription model.

Re:Sounds like

[Anonymous Coward]

You bet, get in now before the next round of price hikes for internet service are published, sell shortly after as investors flock back!

Re:Sounds like

[Darinbob]

No, but they will definitely shrink.

Re:Sounds like

[phantomfive]

There's too much money at play for these companies to simply fold up.

This is a really bad heuristic. P/E ratio is a better way to figure out whether it's a good time to buy or not.

Re:Sounds like

[MoarSauce123]

Maye in the TV subscription market. Most if not all already diversified with business and cloud services.

If they hadn't been so greedy in the first place..

[Anonymous Coward]

.. then users wouldn't be migrating from the expensive TV/cable services, to theoretically less expensive IPTV and Internet/Android box apps.

BullSh!t Flag waived

[sdinfoserv]

Due to the Trump tax breaks and repeal of net neutrality, the communications cabal is racking in record profits:
Comcast Q1 2018 profit beats expectation:
https://www.cnbc.com/2018/04/2...

Verizon : Q1 2018 MASSIVE profit boost of 32%
https://www.highgeekly.com/bus...

These companies are carving up the internet (Comcast is "bundling Netflix", oh, and if you don't pay the higher Comcast rate, your traffic 'flix gets punished aka: deprioritized) and monetizing user data just EXACTLY as the NN supporters claimed would happen. The result is massive profits... which drive stock prices, higher consumer costs, and poorer user experience...

Re:BullSh!t Flag waived

[sdinfoserv]

And yes, AT&T missed Q1 earning results, but that's likely due to FirstNet not being ready yet. https://www.firstnet.com/
firstnet is a $40B, 25 year deal that AT$T won the sole provider single contract to provide 1st repsonder communication services. One of the miles stones is that FN was to be operational by 1/1/2018, AT&T claims it is, but it's not. There's no fixed IP's yet *(necessary end point VPNs) and band 14 isn't live - without BOTH of these, FN is functionally useless.

Re:BullSh!t Flag waived

[quantaman]

Due to the Trump tax breaks and repeal of net neutrality, the communications cabal is racking in record profits:

Comcast Q1 2018 profit beats expectation:

  https://www.cnbc.com/2018/04/2...

Verizon : Q1 2018 MASSIVE profit boost of 32%

https://www.highgeekly.com/bus...

These companies are carving up the internet (Comcast is "bundling Netflix", oh, and if you don't pay the higher Comcast rate, your traffic 'flix gets punished aka: deprioritized) and monetizing user data just EXACTLY as the NN supporters claimed would happen. The result is massive profits... which drive stock prices, higher consumer costs, and poorer user experience...

They got the bump from the tax cut in December when it passed, any NN stock bump would already be priced in as well.

But now the market is responding to the fact that people are dropping their cable subscriptions faster than expected.

Re:BullSh!t Flag waived

[movdqa]

Comcast and Charter are both down 30% in the past three months.

Re:BullSh!t Flag waived

[Anonymous Coward]

Netflix will soon be nothing but "waiting to start playing...." way to go Trump and concast!

Re:BullSh!t Flag waived

[Tapewolf]

Keep in mind that stock price is based on some weird gut feeling of how a company might perform in future, not on current profitability.

Re:BullSh!t Flag waived

[Anonymous Coward]

You anti-Trump bots are brainless.

The ISPs and politicians have been in bed together long before Trump was elected. Probably before you were able to wipe your own butt. But I digress.

Re:BullSh!t Flag waived

[MoarSauce123]

Every country deserves the government it has. Your fault for voting a cheeto and other big business shills into office.

Re:BullSh!t Flag waived

[MoarSauce123]

Because the companies do not offer a service fast enough that is appealing to consumers. I have no problem with Verizon's FiOS service, especially since they offer symmetric Internet access unlike Comcast. That is a big deal when your kids run their own Minecraft servers. I also have no objections to locking in a two year contract (or even longer) at a fixed price.....as long as it doesn't clock in at the same cost as my mortgage. First service I'd cut is VoIP. Google Voice or even the granddaddy of VoIP MagicJack are far cheaper. Cable cutting is an option, but most of the TV streaming providers do not carry local channels. So you need to screw around with rabbit ears or stick an omnidirectional antenna on your house...back to the '30s I guess.

Re:BullSh!t Flag waived

[Anonymous Coward]

What are local channels? The local affiliates of the big networks? Local "news" which is just as biased as the national "news", except on local issues?
Why would I care enough about any of that to put up a pair of rabbit ears?

Problem is, most places

[bobstreo]

have no choice, cable internet is the only access. Unless you still have a landline and want to suffer with DSL or dial-up, so the cord isn't cut, just the bleeding costs of multiple services from one of the local monopolies.

But a year of (an antenna) netflix, amazon prime, and hulu costs less than a couple months of cable tv.

And for the most part, it's all content. Commercials for the most part don't exist on the streaming solutions...

Re:Problem is, most places

[luther349]

i dont suffer with my 24mb dsl. my prices are lifetime locked. i dont have to deal with the cable provider etc.

Re:Problem is, most places

[movdqa]

DSL performance tech has improved quite a bit. Last year, they started offering 14 Mbps DSL in my area. I was unable to negotiate with Comcast before then. After they came in Comcast was willing to negotiate. I didn't really want DSL but they made for a valid negotiation option. If I could get DSL at 25 Mbps, then they are more of a viable option. I would only need to use them for three months and could then go back to Comcast with a promotional rate (which I'd try to get for 2 years). Telecomm companies really hate losing customers.

Re:Problem is, most places

[bobstreo]

DSL performance tech has improved quite a bit. Last year, they started offering 14 Mbps DSL in my area. I was unable to negotiate with Comcast before then. After they came in Comcast was willing to negotiate. I didn't really want DSL but they made for a valid negotiation option. If I could get DSL at 25 Mbps, then they are more of a viable option. I would only need to use them for three months and could then go back to Comcast with a promotional rate (which I'd try to get for 2 years). Telecomm companies really hate losing customers.

I'm probably at least 3 miles from the closest place I could provision any DSL/ADSL services, the only fiber around here is in the corn fields.

Also the phone company cut the two phone lines on my property after I ditched them 20 years ago.

Re:Problem is, most places

[movdqa]

Well I know how that feels. I've been waiting for DSL to provide decent speeds for 8 years. If the cable company has a monopoly, then there's not much you can do. I had though of using an unlimited cellular plan for three months and then going back for promotional rates but it would have been too much trouble for the amount of money saved. It's like what you have in a lot of my state. I just live in a large enough town to have options.

Re:Problem is, most places

[vtcodger]

"my prices are lifetime locked" ... whose lifetime?

Re:Problem is, most places

[MoarSauce123]

Yep, acquiring and setting up customers is expensive. I suggest you tell Comcast what your plan is and ask for the promotional rate to be locked in for a two year commitment. If Comcast has any business sense they will agree to that. Or if you are OK with what you pay right now for Comcast service make that your offer. I do that with Verizon. I lock in current price and service package for 2 years. So far they always accepted that plus a few bucks increase.

Re:Problem is, most places

[MoarSauce123]

Common issue in the US, which is why dialup is still widely popular. Rather sad for a country that wants to take leadership in essentially all areas. I suggest you write to your local politicians and chambers of commerce. With broadband the opportunities for people to stay put and work remotely are significant. When you move away so that you can have essential services it will remove voters, local consumers, and cost the town more money for other services such as water and sewer (if you happen to have those in the first place). Another sad story that many still have wells and the megapolluters called septic tanks.

Re:Problem is, most places

[movdqa]

I don't think that I'd move to a place that didn't have realistic broadband as my workplace has the expectation that you may get called at any time to work on something.

Re:Problem is, most places

[movdqa]

I have a two-year contract right now. But there's only a year left on it. A friend did the same thing (I told him about it) and he was up this year and they jacked his price up to the retail price. He called, gave them hell and they gave him his old price for another two years. He has Consolidated Communications Fiber as an option in his city.

I don't understand why the stock would drop

[rsilvergun]

they're still the Gatekeepers to virtually all content. They can raise the price as high as they want. WallStreet has to know that.

Re:I don't understand why the stock would drop

[quantaman]

they're still the Gatekeepers to virtually all content. They can raise the price as high as they want. WallStreet has to know that.

Offering media means you're offering special content no one else can deliver, you can charge a higher premium.

Once you're just a utility all you can sell is bits, consumers find it a lot easier to compare packages so margins are lower.

Re:I don't understand why the stock would drop

[AHuxley]

The deal in the past was to buy a plan to watch movies and series on a TV.
With streaming that cost is now much lower for as many hours of new movies and series.
The number of hours people have to watch cant be changed every day.
The costs of cable cant be changed quickly as they have so much to pay for. Movies, series, sport and exclusive content.
Streaming looks like a much better deal to average users who just want a few hours of new TV shows and who want to save on costs.

Re:I don't understand why the stock would drop

[movdqa]

If they raise rates high enough, then competition shows up, at least in metro areas. Folks in rural areas generally get a raw deal with only one realistic provider. And I don't consider 1.5 Mbps DSL realistic service.

Re:I don't understand why the stock would drop

[MoarSauce123]

No, it won't! Local laws typically prohibit more than one license holder per service. If company X has cable and company Y has phone then no matter how expensive they get there will be no more competition. The only thing that will happen is them losing subscribers. You need to bitch to your local politicians to fix that moronic setup.

Re:I don't understand why the stock would drop

[movdqa]

Boston has Comcast, Verizon and RCN and my neighborhood has Comcast, Consolidated and DirectTV as providers. So you can have choice in cities. Comcast is very good at playing the political game. They provide lower rates for low-income folks, and do good works in big cities and I assume that the Mayor gets some credit and photo ops with those. Our situation is much improved with three realistic options. I really want Comcast service but competition helps in negotiations.

I, for one, do not welcome our cable overlords....

[Squirmy McPhee]

When I left the US a decade ago, I was paying about $100 a month to Comcast for internet service and basic cable (no premium channels, no HD, not that it mattered since I didn't have an HDTV). Today in France, I pay €39.99 a month for basic cable, internet service, VOIP including free international phone calls, and all the mobile phone calls and text messages I can make (within France, international texts typically run me about €0.20 a month). My parents in the US, for that same bundle of services, are paying more than $200 a month.

I can't really see myself doing anything but streaming TV if I ever move back to the US. I enjoy TV, but I don't need it. Why should I spend a bunch of money supporting a business model that doesn't really serve me?

Re:If they hadn't been so greedy in the first plac

[luther349]

cable tv has been on the downfall long before iptv. its not just on the provider either you get these media company's demanding more money for smaller numbers.

Amazon and Netflix

[Anonymous Coward]

Are probably already in the planning stages to offer internet service to compete with cable co gougers. Of course, google isp could be coming to a town near you so they have a more direct link to your information.

$100/month

[AndyKron]

But I still need Charter for Internet, and they're charging me $100 fucking dollars a month.

Re:I, for one, do not welcome our cable overlords.

[Anonymous Coward]

You can even pay less. I'm with Bouygues paying 3euros per month for illimited calls/20gb/etc.., and 8euros for the fixed line (same stuff as yours). Or you can find in venteprivee.com offers with free with the fixed line at 2 euros, and the cellphone 1 euro (they have those offers every 3 months)

Let me get out my tiny tiny violin.

[Anonymous Coward]

Squeeeeeek squeeeeeeeek squeeeeeeeeeek.

Att will survive

[voss]

They make lots on wireless and they own the fiber, they also moved a lot of their uverse customers over to directv which lowers ATT's costs.
ATT's uverse has the advantage of not being the fastest but being cheaper and good enough for most people. ATT also doesnt have the customer hate that comcast does.

Re:Att will survive

[techno-vampire]

Back in the old days, AT&T prided itself on 99.9% uptime, no matter what happened. If something made you lose your power and phone service at 2 AM on a Saturday night, the odds were that your phone service would be back up before you had power. This may not seem like much, but at least you could call friends and family and let them know you were OK, or ask them for anything you might need. I don't have service with the new ATT, but I'd be a bit surprised if they didn't have that kind of corporate culture any more. Every cable service that I've ever had to deal with has had 24/7 phone support, but if you need a tech to come out it's during normal business hours, and in one case, only on weekdays. That's one reason I've always stuck with ADSL; the other is that I don't do online gaming, I don't use their streaming services and I don't download multi-GB movies, so ADSL speeds are fine.

Re: Att will survive

[Anonymous Coward]

That's because AT&T was required to do this. They even have bunkers to withstand nuclear attacks. This infrastructure is still there and being utilized. This isn't because AT&T wants to provide you with 99% uptime, this is because the tax payer payed for it.

Re:Att will survive

[Anonymous Coward]

This AT&T has no real link to the company you're talking about. It's an old cellular company that bought the AT&T name after the breakup of Ma Bell. AT&T was what was left of the non-profitable long distance business and Bell Labs. They close the Labs down eventually got bought out by Cingular Wireless.

Disassemble them

[Anonymous Coward]

Disassemble the communication giants.

As long as each of the few behemoths controls cable and internet, they have absolute control over their individual "kingdoms". The peasants start cutting cable and turn to streaming? Raise the price on internet; that'll show the ungrateful scum.

Threaten to take your business elsewhere? Ha! Good luck with that. The giants have agreements in place not to overstep their boundaries. They've carefully carved things up so that each is effectively a local monopoly. There is nowhere else to take your business.

Try to whine to your political "representatives"? <snort> Silly peasant; they don't represent you. They represent the corporate entities that pay their salaries^Wbribes^Wcontributions and favors.

its their fault

[renegade600]

they have nobody to blame but themselves. Nickle and dime their customers to bankruptcy with all their different fees, forced packages, and more. they should have seen this coming. They fooled themselves into thinking their customers will put up with price increases every few months. I cut the cord over 10 years ago and never looked back.

Unlike Russian collusion...

[Anonymous Coward]

The cable companies are colluding to raise prices?...wheres the concern for competition from their competing cable companies? Doesnt seem like they are worried when they raise prices on internet access...

Here is a novel idea

[Anonymous Coward]

What if cable companies offered a streaming service like Netflix?

$110/month for a 15/3 Mbps Comcast connection

[Anonymous Coward]

$110/month for a 15/3 Mbps Comcast connection here.

I can get 1 Gbps service for $499/month and $800 installation fees. Jealous?

AT&T or Comcast are my choices. The both suck. Google Fibre came to a nearby city and all the comcast/AT&T prices dropped there. But not here.

Re:$110/month for a 15/3 Mbps Comcast connection

[Anonymous Coward]

Just another piece of data: CenturyLink here, two DSL lines, 80/40 Mbps, plus phone service free in the US - $105/mo.

Re:$110/month for a 15/3 Mbps Comcast connection

[movdqa]

$50 for 60/5 and Xfinity Wifi (18 million hotspots). Retail rate is $80. $100+ is theft. I can't believe those rates. My son had a place in Boston several years ago and I tried to negotiate with Comcast for him. Boston has Comcast, Verizon DSL and RCN (cable). I looked up RCN and it appears that they have even more customer complaints than Comcast. So I called them up and tried to negotiate and said that he'd move to RCN and their response was: go ahead. The cable companies know their local markets really, really well and only negotiate when they think you're really going to drop them. If I had two expensive choices, I'd do the old long-distance phone thing from the 1990s and just switch service back and forth to get the promotional offers - or just threaten to do that. We have 2 Gbps service available for $300/month. 1 Gbps is $104/month. The installation fee for 2 Gbps is $500. The installation fee for all of their other tiers is "up to $500". There is also an activation fee of $500 for 2 Gbps. BTW, I'm fine with 20 or 25 Mbps.

They have it covered.

[140Mandak262Jamuna]

So what if you are streaming? Most of the streaming is done over the "tubes" owned by these cable companies. Its a matter of time before they rake in more in internet service than in cable tv.

Unless there is a real competitor to the cable broadband pipeline to the homes, the cable companies will settle into a new revenue pattern.

Re:They have it covered.

[AHuxley]

From the premium movie and series costs per month?
Down to the payments of an ISP?

Good by at $20 for Comcast

[Proudrooster]

COMCAST is trending back to $20/share where it will be a good buy. With the repeal of Net Neutrality, they will be back with a vengeance. Nothing stopped them before from overcharging and nothing will stop them from making us pay to be in the Internet fast lane, even though we the taxpayers paid to build their networks and rural America is still dark.

So you might as well buy their stock at $20 and make some money on the comeback since that is all you will ever get out of them, other than a high monthly Internet service bill.

Is that even legal?

[DontBeAMoran]

Cable companies are now raising prices on broadband services to compensate, according to the article.

I know they can sell their services at whatever price they want, but what are they trying to compensate exactly? Less people watching cable means less expenses on the TV side, doesn't it? It only looks like a cash grab to me.

Re:Is that even legal?

[AHuxley]

Its their network product to "sell" per month.
Want a different ISP with lower costs? Shop around.

Re:Is that even legal?

[Anonymous Coward]

of course it's a cash grab.

the wholesale cost of their internet uplinks is well under $0.10 per megabit/sec (it costs less than $3 for them to provide the bandwidth with a typical 30/5 connection), and decreases over time; and that's for dedicated 1:1 upstream capacity.. i.e. absolutely guaranteed availability of subscribed speeds without quotas or throttles, not the 20-50:1 throttled and/or capped consumer end they typically operate with. the local infrastructure costs to deliver that to a customer is less than that for maintenance and upkeep. so that $60 internet bill (for that typical 30/5, as an example) is almost $55 in *PURE PROFIT*.

contrast to television, which requires more head-end equipment, more expensive cpe (compared to data modems), and they get constantly extorted by broadcast and cable networks for more money.. even still, the $80 you pay for 'expanded basic' is still *mostly profits*, as programming costs are less than half of a cable or satellite tv bill. and below-the-line bogus fees (that aren't an actual, required by law tax, e.g. 'state sales tax', collected and remitted to a government entity), are 100% profit.

unless and until state regulators and/or the fcc step-in to break apart internet delivery and television services; we, as customers of either one, are fucked in the ass, without even a courtesy spit for lube.

Raising prices?

[OneHundredAndTen]

These guys are going to get an introduction to the "positive feedback loop" concept. The hard way.

You reap what you sow

[SuperKendall]

If cable companies had ever offered the ability to get extra channels like Discovery, or Lifetime as individual items instead of giant bundles, they could have been the ones transitioning us all into streaming and being the natural gateway for quality streaming delivery.

Instead they created the perfect conditions for streaming providers to experiment with how to deliver good quality video over the internet and totally bypass the ISP as an issue, or like Netflix work out how to get hosted elements inside a provider...

As cable companies become nothing more than very bad ISP's, I will just pity them for what could have been.

Change!

[antdude]

Companies need to change and be cheaper.

Noooo! Must have TV!

[Anonymous Coward]

This has got to stop. Coal, nuclear, oil, and now TV! Make America Great Again! Ban this internet stuff and bring back Happy Days!

Appropriate response?

[Anonymous Coward]

Cable companies are now raising prices on broadband services to compensate...

So I guess the floggings will continue until morale improves.

DirectTV, your time is coming...

[Ferretman]

It was good to start with, and they've just about doubled since I started with them. And talking to folks online the only way I can get a good rate is to switch over to Dish...and then, after they hike things up to Annoying do it back to DirectTV.

Really very annoying. JUST LET ME PICK MY OWN CHANNELS and we can go from there.

Ferret

Re:DirectTV, your time is coming...

[tepples]

As you switch your multichannel pay TV from cable to satellite, are you also planning to switch your Internet from cable to satellite? Enjoy paying overage penalties to your satellite ISP when your desktop or laptop computer running the most popular PC operating system decides to download gigabytes of feature updates because its publisher neglected to provide a GUI to change the media cost setting for Ethernet.

They could allow a la carte tomorrow

[speedlaw]

The current cable box has to get permission from a head end every time it powers back on. It also gets your list of channels. The cable co's could al la carte the current system today.

Re:They could allow a la carte tomorrow

[Anonymous Coward]

Content providers prohibit this via their agreements. Just try to get Sling TV from Dish without ESPN - it's not happening. Disney won't let you sell any of their channels without including ESPN for $10 wholesale cost. If you can't offer ESPN or other Disney channels, you can't sell a service that anyone will buy. Same thing applies to all of the major content providers.

Re:They could allow a la carte tomorrow

[sjames]

It seems the streaming services that are eating cable's lunch managed to give the Mouse the finger just fine.

Re:They could allow a la carte tomorrow

[Anonymous Coward]

You might want to rethink that. Netflix is worried that when Disney pulls both Marvel movies and Star Wars properties from Netflix next year that they will have a problem. Hulu might be in the same boat if they lose their Disney TV properties. ALL because Disney is starting it's own streaming service which will host all Disney properties. So you'll have to go to the mouse to stream anything Disney.
If they change the equivalent of Netflix and Hulu ~ $10 a month then that's $30 to get the three services. I suspect a lot of parents who use Netflix or Hulu to stream only because their kids watch Disney stuff will make the decision to cancel the Hulu or Netfilx accounts in favor of Disney only.
Many of the other services require you to have cable. You can stream ABC/NBC/CBS/CW for free only if you have a cable provider (they ask for your Cable TV account information and only work if you have a CableTV package.)

What's a TV?

[Kiliani]

We haven't owned a TV nor "watched TV" in a decade (was a 15" blue night special, at that). Same with streaming.

We simply fail to see what is good, interesting, necessary or attractive about TV (or cable, or most other online shows and things you can watch).

All of us read, think, and talk instead. A bit like Fahrenheit 451 ...

Re:I, for one, do not welcome our cable overlords.

[Anonymous Coward]

FWIW, you can pay less than that for that basic Comcast package in the US -- you just have to be willing to call them up and threaten to cancel every now and then so they 'graciously' offer you a 'discount' on your package, that coincidentally happens to be about what they could charge and still make a healthy profit (instead of an extortionate one). IIRC, it usually works out to $40-70/mo for basic cable + internet. Keep in mind: their break-even costs for providing service to your already-installed cable lines are about $10-12/mo.

Screw the cable companies!

[Varenthos]

Cut the cord 3 years ago, and have never been happier. Had Sling TV for a while, that was alright. YouTube TV came available in my area, tried that out and liked it a little better than Sling and switched to that.

I get my internet from the local phone company, who has no skin in the content provider arena, and I couldn't be happier. Well.... if their gigabit connection was in my area, I'd probably be a little happier, but I've got a 50/20 connection from them, and a static IP address, for a somewhat reasonable price ($70/month)

"Plummetting"?

[Anonymous Coward]

Fucking idiot.

Seven step program for large cable providers

[WaffleMonster]

1. Raise TV rates to an absurd level
2. Wait for the vacuum to be filled by alternatives
3. Lose your TV customers
4. Raise Internet rates to an absurd level
5. Wait for the vacuum to be filled by alternatives
6. Lose your Internet customers
7. Go bankrupt

It's the content-providers' fault

[knorthern knight]

> If cable companies had ever offered the ability to get extra channels like Discovery, or
> Lifetime as individual items instead of giant bundles, they could have been the ones transitioning
> us all into streaming and being the natural gateway for quality streaming delivery.

It's the content-owners' fault. E.g. Disney owns ABC, multiple ESPN channels, and multiple Disney channels. They offer *ALL-OR-NOTHING*. I.e. if a cableco wants ABC and Disney channels, they *MUST* put ESPN on basic on 80% of their subscribers. A cable company would love to go "ESPN-free". But Disney knows that a cable service without ABC and Disney channels won't fly. Disney is the worst, but there are other groups that use the same forced-bundling tactics. See PDF file https://pmcvariety.files.wordp... for a display of who charges how much for what in 2016 and 2017.

Abusing rule of law

[Anonymous Coward]

When I hear about the prices these monopolists charge, I can't help but think that the only thing keeping the owners of these companies alive is rule of law.

Re: I, for one, do not welcome our cable overlords

[Anonymous Coward]

Exactly this is just another America hating slashcuck. The fucker probably doesnâ(TM)t even live in France. He deserves to rot in the fifth layer of hell. God damn you