From: "Robert E. Seastrom" <rs@seastrom.com> Date: Sat, 18 Dec 2010 06:51:17 -0500
Jon Lewis <jlewis@lewis.org> writes:
This Can't End Well.
Why not? As people shift from watching broadcast channels to streaming content and look to shut off their cable TV service, but keep internet, the cable co's are just going to have to raise internet prices to compensate. I can see a future where you buy internet from the cable co and they give you the basic cable TV channel lineup at "no charge" but in reality, you're paying for the cable internet what you used to pay for both cable internet and TV.
Here in NoVA (Comcast former Adelpha territory), the future is now.
I used to have internet-only service (there is little on TV that I care about). A bit over a year and a half ago, we added basic cable to the service. Total additional cost per month to go from Internet-only to Internet-plus-TV-bundle (same speed) was about $4.
Hmmm. Better than the situation in my Comcast area. Internet w/o any cable costs MORE than basic cable (i.e. over the air + PEG). I'm sure that this pricing is to discourage customers from switching to a satellite provider for TV since I'm going to get most of it, anyway, and its not THAT much more to go to the standard package with the popular cable channels. Of course, you may want digital, HD, ... and discover the cable bill hits $200/mo. (Mine doesn't, but I have friends paying that.) -- R. Kevin Oberman, Network Engineer Energy Sciences Network (ESnet) Ernest O. Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) E-mail: oberman@es.net Phone: +1 510 486-8634 Key fingerprint:059B 2DDF 031C 9BA3 14A4 EADA 927D EBB3 987B 3751