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Comment by nlawalker | Hacker News Reader

A question for those who have done more thinking on this than I have:

I see cable TV going the way of the dedicated phone line - a bundled benefit you get for a very small fee on top of the primary benefit, which will be the internet connection. The overall cost of a subscription will remain roughly the same, but the cost will be allocated to the internet connection: much like mobile carriers are now basically free voice+text across the board and the cost of the plan is based solely on the data tier you want, what I see happening in the future is that both cable TV and home phone are going to be small add-ons to your $90-$120/month internet bill. In many markets there is virtually no competition present to prevent this, and in those where there is, collusion seems to be a foregone conclusion.

This seems inevitable to me given the rise in cord-cutters and, as a recent headline pointed out, the "cord-nevers". Is this what's going to happen?

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I have Time Warner internet-only service in NYC and they are constantly trying to sell me cable as a $10/month addon to my $35 50mbit internet package. I imagine it's a pretty limited set of channels, but they're very much already using that sales tactic.

Right, and now you'll need a special box just to receive antenna TV over normal analog channel range which they'll rent to you for a fee (and they are notorious for providing slow boxes that take 3-5 seconds to flip to the next channel or pause for long seconds to display a menu, or need to be rebooted constantly). I had the $10 a month TV, but once I found out they were requiring the box, I just cancelled it, I was basically paying them to avoid using an antenna, but now I'll just get an antenna.

Same thing with Charter for me. They constantly try to sell me a $7/month addon that will give access to over-the-air channels through cable. I got that with a >$10 HD antenna, so I'm not sure what the value would be. (and I've barely used that...)

I've been trying to (unsuccessfully) research why OTA broadcasts of channels exist in the first place. Why do/would these networks provide their service for free? I thought transmissions were to be encrypted.

Am I missing something?

Ads.

from what i understand OTA channels are free because the public airwaves are a public utility and they are funded by the ads they sell. cable just took this model and decided to reverse the costs from the ad generators to the consumers.

My gut thought is to look at it like radio. Radio won't go away because it only has 1 channel (AM) because it is a broadcast service. No infrastructure between the signal and you. Emergency services for example. More than that though TV and radio OTA broadcasts are something that should continue, there is 0 config, you just tune into the frequency and you get the message.

In the UK we have several free OTA channels. The commercial ones are funded mainly by advertising and by being available to all they can offer potentially more eyeballs to advertisers.

They are not free, they still make money from commercials. Same as radio. In some countries, there are public broadcast channels that don't display commercials, those you pay through tax.

With cable and satellite they often put their own commercials on top of the channel's so public broadcasting channels make less money that way.

They're still ad supported, and their infrastructure costs are much smaller than cable. (Eg, no plant of copper and fibre run across cities. Just some leased tower space, etc)

So they can charge you another $8/month for a cable box! (Not kidding, that's what Cox did to me)

Comcast even offered me 100+ channels, HBO and Showtime for free for a year just to get me hooked on the boob tube.

Luckily CenturyLink installed FTTH in my complex. That was the best phone call I've ever had with Comcast :).

I see cable TV going the way of the dedicated phone line - a bundled benefit you get for a very small fee on top of the primary benefit

In my region, it's already cheaper to get a package with cable TV than just internet. I have friends that don't even take the cable set of of the shipping box. I assume Comcast's per subscriber cost to cable channels is lower than the ads revenue from artificially inflating subscriber numbers.

It's been this way just about forever in many places. I remember getting cable internet like this in college in the early 2000s, and it was pretty common knowledge that you always checked to see if the package with basic cable was cheaper rather than insisting on an internet-only subscription.

I'm stationed on Oahu and was extremely surprised to find Oceanic Time Warner's Internet-only packages were one of the few affordable things on the island. Not looking forward to moving back to the mainland and dealing with another cable company.

Already very much the case. All discounts and special offers always apply only to "triple-play" packages. Want Internet only? You end up paying a premium.

I think you're right with one potential exception: sports. And it's hard for me to have a lot of visibility on that because I don't personally follow sports, but sport dedicated networks are probably one of the main reasons people go with more expensive cable packages - at least that's my feeling when I compare line ups, the main difference is always sport networks. As long as some networks manage to keep monopoly on sport broadcasting cable can remain a first citizen.

FWIW I was able to get a 50% discount for a year on AT&T U-Verse internet-only. I think they might be playing hardball now though since their retention department claims that that discount is no longer available.

a bundled benefit you get for a very small fee on top of the primary benefit, which will be the internet connection.

Its already like that with my internet provider. I couldn't even unbundle the phone (even though I don't use it). I didn't bother with the TV add-on as Netflix exceeds my TV-watching needs, but its not much above the cost of internet.

It is already like this now. The only way to get the fastest internet speeds with Comcast is to also have TV. The base cable TV is very cheap and you're really buying internet access.

When I signed up for FiOS a year ago, it was cheaper to get TV + Internet than only Internet.

I think it makes sense. Consumer attention is now more valuable than the content. There's so much content available that it's impossible for any one person to pay attention to all of it.

As a result, publishers should have to pay for the opportunity to use someone's scarce attention rather than consumers paying to get access to content.

$90-120 for internet per month? that better be like 150Mbps+ up/down

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