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Comment by chrisseaton | Hacker News Reader

Wow even the cheapest price is super expensive! Is that how much TV costs in the US?

It's even more expensive. There are all sorts of service fees and equipment rental fees on top of these prices. It's a scumbag way of increasing the costs while still advertising artificially "low" prices.

You don't get many 'cable cutters' in the UK because it's just £120 total a year, and like many people I pay it even though I almost never watch TV, but you can see why do you in the US.

FWIW, in metro areas there's free over-the-air TV, there's no license fees for that. In my metro area there's easily 80 or so OTA channels I can pick up for free. So one could argue TV in the US is actually £120 less than in the UK, from that perspective. Here you can own and watch TV without paying anything other than the upfront cost of the TV and a wire (the most basic form of antenna).

This would be more like paying for Sky TV subscription.

How much is your time worth? US TV has 16 minutes of advertisements per hour, while UK has 7, not counting the BBC channels, which do not have any.

I really don't watch much TV either way, as I agree advertising is atrocious these days.

Still, in US there's no TV license you have to pay like in the UK. So if you don't want to pay for TV service in the US, you don't have to. In UK, if you own a TV you pay for TV service, it's the law.

It's awesome in the US if you only have one internet provider. Not only is the internet badly overpriced[1], they bundle cable and internet together, so that you basically pay for cable whether or not you want it. We wanted to drop cable to save money, but they said "Oh that means we remove the bundle discount. Your bill only goes down $3 a month."

[1] This is not an opinion. AT&T just put in fiber and I got 6x faster download, 20x faster upload at a fraction of what I was paying before. My existing provider countered (after I cancelled) with a much faster internet plan plus cable at 40% of their previous price.

In these monopoly provider situations, can you not get a "dry line" data only package? A lot of people are unfamiliar with that option as the ISP doesn't like to advertise it as they want you to subscribe to their bundles.

However, I have found that by using my cable subscription to gain access to the various streaming apps, it is cheaper than buying all of the apps a la carte.

Yes, but it's often not much cheaper or sometimes even more expensive than the bundle.

> even more expensive than the bundle

That's the shocking thing. I've heard of cases where dropping cable would increase the bill. I suspect that's because it's easier to defend leveraging your monopoly power if you can show customers are "buying" other services like cable.

That's what I meant by dropping cable, but they'd only cut my bill by $3.

Welcome to the country that loves to shout about the virtues of the free market almost as much as it loves captured markets.

Just wait until you see US medical bills.

My mobile phone bill with unlimited data is £17.99 a month.

My mobile bill with unlimited (7.5g before being throttled) data is $25/mo.

I could have gone with $15/mo if I didn't use so much data.

You can spend more but you're basically just paying for the privilege of having a provider that more readily offers flagship phones subsidized via contract.

Oh right I thought for some reason people often paid like $70 for phone contracts in the US.

iirc we are paying 280ish a month for 3 phones. I think 2 are fully paid off.

with "unlimited data" that is capped at 15g. unfortunately it's the only provider that works where we live in Michigan

I live in Michigan too. Have you tried Visible, Verizon’s discount carrier? It works great for me in Greater Detroit region, the thumb, and up north. I pay $25/mo for unlimited everything.

I used to use a tier 2 carrier. Then we had the freeze / grid anomaly in Texas and it resulted in a lot of cell phone traffic. My wife who was on a direct plan with ATT was able to use her phone most of the time with little issue. Meanwhile I was on a tier 2 carrier and had nothing the entire time. Work's great until it doesn't.

I have a friend on the police/emergency responder ATT network (FirstNet) and he said he's NEVER had it slow down since those EIMIs get priority routing. I'm sure someone in telco network operations could explain this even better than I can.

> since those EIMIs get priority routing

Its even more extreme than that, they have their own frequencies.

It's just a really funky scheme in the US.

On the top tier plan it's $70.

* 2 lines is $60/line ($120)

* 3 lines is $50/line ($150)

And you have to regularly shop around. Do you want more data or voice? Do you want international roaming? International calling? Spotify? Netflix? Hulu?

I, for example have a T-Mobile Magenta Plus. It also includes, Netflix, Apple TV+, Paramount+ (the Star Trek Channel), and Spotify. Those services are $40 separately.

I'm paying exactly $70 at the moment.

My phone bill with more data than I use in a month is cheaper than yours. I'm in the US.

Not only that, but in many areas the same company who owns the TV network also has a monopoly on the local Internet prices. It's a right mess. Part of the reason I'm excited for starlink to be a thing is that it, along with mobile networks, basically forces that monopoly on internet service to finally be broken up in rural areas.

> along with mobile networks

Mobile carriers are no better. They're basically wireless cable companies.

I’ve had a great experience with Visible, Verizon’s discount carrier. I only pay $25/mo for unlimited data, phone, and text. You join a party and each member of a party gets their own bill.

I'm inclined to believe that many mobile networks compare favorably to Hugues Net. We made this mistake once. Never again.

https://support.hughesnet.com/en/faq/internet/unlimited-data...

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