Comcast vs. the Cord Cutters | Hacker News Reader

Comcast vs. the Cord Cutters

nytimes.com

83 pointsantr117 comments

"Cutting the cord, in Comcast’s universe, just doesn’t save you very much money."

And this is why (in general) Americans are in debt. They don't understand that ANY savings, is savings. And that "just" saving 20,30,50 dollars a month adds up over 5-10 years.

I went thru this with my daughters a decade or so ago. We kept track of all the "Gee Dad, it's only 10 bucks" conversations. At the end of the year we reviewed what they accumulated, which was almost nothing, their items were either used up, no longer needed/wanted, broken, or tossed away. On the other hand, the $1400+ dollars, all stacked up in a nice pile of $20's looked like (and was to them) real money, a nice weekend trip, a new bike, a new laptop, etc. I'm happy to say my daughters did much better after that living experiment.

Unfortunately for most Americans, they just can't say no to the moment, and banks (and other service providers) are all to willingly to exploit their lack of judgement.

You miss what that sentence was actually leading to:

Comcast has carefully set up pricing to get you whether you watch shows the old-fashioned way, on a boob-tube fed with a cable, or whether you prefer to veg out with Netflix on your iPad

They aren't talking about "Oh it's only $10 more, so why not". They are talking about how you can't escape most of the Comcast Tax, even if you ditch cable. That's the whole theme of the article.

Insulting if you asked me.

So was the actual utility from all those "$10 items" zero? I've spent more than $1400 on "needless" food in a year but I feel as if I've gotten a fair amount of value from it. I'm sure I would not trade all those meals for half of the price of a great laptop.

Anyways, I think Comcast is getting at that they throw in Internet or TV for "free" with triple-play combos, so you literally aren't saving anything. In some cases, you actually pay more (for a limited time?) to decline services.

Honestly you frequently pay 'more' when you decline services. In my area Comcast at one point was charging more for just internet than it was for Internet+Cable+phone. It seemed that they were just looking to make sure that you were 'locked in' to all of their services.

And this is why (in general) Americans are in debt. They don't understand that ANY savings, is savings. And that "just" saving 20,30,50 dollars a month adds up over 5-10 years.

Oh, clearly. It's that rather than the terms of student loans and such. Wouldn't want reality to get in the way of depression-era morality plays ... "up hill both ways, in the snow!!" if that makes you feel better.

Look at the numbers for credit card debt alone if you're unconvinced.

I agree that financial ignorance keeps Americans in debt, but I don't think that blindness to savings is a major component.

Just look at JCPs recent situation - they tried to eliminate sales, implementing consistent, standard pricing on all merchandise (instead of the previous mark-up-to-mark-down method), and consumers hated it. The metrics were a disaster.

If the JCP numbers are any indication, consumers know the price of everything and the value of nothing - they'd rather pay more than they should after a fake 40% discount because "full price is for suckers", regardless of the actual quality:price value ratio.

The problem with cable pricing isn't that consumers are ignorant to the deals - they're most certainly eyeing price and discounts. It's that cable companies have established a false baseline to decrease the effectiveness of cord-cutting.

As a pricing strategy, it's nothing new. You can get 2 liters of soda for 99c, and a 12 oz bottle for 1.50. It's a psychological price bump - not based on value, but manufactured to steer the "savvy" (read: performing as expected) buyer to the "smart" (read: preselected) choice.

It's just a little more disheartening when its application moves from soft drinks to the spread of human knowledge.

You can get 2 liters of soda for 99c, and a 12 oz bottle for 1.50

Usually it's $1.50 for a chilled 12 oz bottle, and $0.99 for a warm 2 liter. It's a convenience charge.

Convenience also in that few people want to consume 2 liters at one sitting, so not having a left over, partially filled 2 liter that you have to look after until you get to a place where it can be stored is often worth the addition 50¢.

Let's not forget the convenience of not having 2 liters tempting you.

Just so you know after introductory prices a few years ago it was cheaper to have the "basic" cable + internet than just internet from comcast. It may have changed since I don't live in their service area anymore.

This is the case still, at least it is for me. Comcast recently added two more straws to the camel's back though: a new "broadcast fee" for the "cost" of carrying broadcast channels, and encrypting even basic cable so you need another stupid box.

ATT Uverse is now available in my area, their internet is a little more than half what I'm paying for Comcast Basic + Internet, and since I can't watch the TV anyway because I refuse to use their box, I don't need any TV component of the service. I've heard mixed stories about Uverse but they seem to do better than Comcast in the Netflix rankings so I'll probably give them a try.

There's a reason for that. Certain content providers (HSN, for instance) pay Comcast on a per customer basis. Comcast makes more money when you have the lowest tier TV package and it doesn't cost them anything.

It's the same way for us (by about a dollar, I think). It used to be cheaper by almost $3/mo, but last year they raised the cost of "ridiculously basic" cable.

We don't even watch the cable TV that we "pay" (-$1) for, as our actual programming comes in via (free) over-the-air antenna mounted in the attic and recorded onto 2 TiVos.

Great idea and thanks for sharing. We've been trying different methods to teach savings but so far the pure excitement of "I want it!" has defeated all logic. We've been stuck making choices for him instead of him learning to make them on his own. Definitely going to use this the rest of the year. Will be easy to keep track of on the phone.

To me as long as you have only a few physical cables, or a few places to put the cables that are difficult to get to, buried in the ground, companies are going to take advantage of that, because you just don't have a lot of options. Its just not an option for most groups who would want to compete to get into that market.

For it to not suck I think the physical circumstances have to change. Maybe there will be some kind of tech breakthrough with wireless technology. Or maybe we will change the laws so that everyone has the right to lay down a cable along any public road or freeway as long as it doesn't pose a significant threat to traffic.

But seems like its hard to make a law that creates a fair and democratic situation when you have limited access to such a critical resource in fairly specific places in under the street.

I mean, if there is already a place for fiber under the street, and you really need another line or whatever they call them, you can't dig another trench or whatever in the street. You have to put it with the other ones, in which case you are at the mercy of whoever controls access to that place where the lines go. If there really isn't a need for a new fiber line, then whoever controls the existing ones has a lot of power.

Just seems like the fact that there is a specific place these lines go, and a big expense and regulation, is what is causing the issues with pricing. If this were someone's brain being wired up like this, by a heavily regulated and monopolized cable industry, that person would be retarded.

I say we invent a glue or something that will attach a fiber strand to the street, a pole, or the side of a building, and declare open season. Just put them all over the place. Like a spider web, but on the street.

LOL. Sounds crazy, but I think it might actually be workable if we keep it in a thin layer on the ground. And pretty much anything would be better than having our balls kept in a vice like this by a handful of giant companies and governments.

The barriers to other companies entering Comcast's market are more legal than logistical - consider how Google hasn't had a problem entering the broadband market when they have been allowed to.

OK, I hadn't even considered the legal barriers. What are they specifically?

I was thinking more in terms of getting governments to go along with it, and having enough capital to do the job, and enough capital to get access from the people who own the spaces where the cables go or are going to go.

Local government must approve each company that uses the telephone pole right-of-ways. But the cities and counties generally already have a contract with Comcast, ATT and whoever and this contract may prevent competition regardless of the government's desires. Moreover, these monopolies can mobilize their state and national level allies (some state was trying to outlaw municipal broadband utilities recently, for example).

The thing about State-sanctioned monopolies is that since their whole revenue stream depends on their relation to governments, they spend a substantial portion of their income getting influence within our presently rather corrupt government system.

It's hard to companies that operate more on the "open market" to move into a "turf" of this sort.

That depends on the state.

Often that licensing is done at a statewide level, rather than city by city.

The franchise agreement is to actually offer service - not to place crap on the poles.

There is a bit of misinformation in your post. The practice of granting exclusive cable franchises has been illegal since 1992. Many places still have one franchise simply because its not desirable to compete against the incumbent cable company.

My city actually signed Comcast into a legal monopoly to get them to bring service here in the 80s and 90s. That deal is still good, and states that they will be the sole provider of cable TV service at least until the end of this decade. From what I've seen, this was a common practice, and has apparently happened in a lot of smaller towns.

It happened a lot in smaller towns because without the carrot of the monopoly grant, it would've been undesirable for companies to wire up those little towns at all.

This is why I'd rather just have common-carrier. Forget the bullshit of trying to make nationwide infrastructure that makes it easy for Company X to lay yet another strand of fiber, identical to the hundred others already there. Just have a public holding company that lays & leases fiber.

That is socialism and benefits only the end users and the society as a whole. No way it is gonna fly.

Why not look at companies that had something like that ? Take the railway companies in Europe versus everyone else.

The railway (ie. "socialist") optical lines :

1) use ancient infrastructure on SDH (on direct current, meaning they have to buy ridiculously expensive equipment. Not that they've looked for better in the last 20 years)

1b) therefore the speeds attainable over government fiber are pathetic, compared to private lines.

2) are VERY hard to deal with.

3) are very expensive compared to private lines (except in cases where, read on)

4) delays are legendary (months to open up a frequency on an existing tract that usually works fine if I turn it up before contract agreement)

5) Termination fees are ridiculous, and of course, you can't just do it yourself. Suppose you have fiber delivered to the edge of your own property and want it linked up to the inside of your building. You'd think, well I'll just do that, costs me $150 in equipment, a drill, a shovel and an afternoon. No dice. You have to pay $18000 to the railway company to make this happen.

6) Their engineers are utterly clueless when it comes to fiber. "I want a 6 km fiber from X to Y, are you going to regen ? Using what equipment ?". You get empty stares. They regen if they pass a regen station, using their equipment (that they can't even NAME) and if not, they don't. You're screwed if they regen. There's no good reason to regen a 6km fiber since 1985 or so. AARGH. Then you get to explain to your boss how you just paid $35k for a fiber, and you need to redo it, lovely. Or you have to get a 20km cable where a 3 km one would normally suffice but you need to avoid regen stations. Great.

They also have advantages, of course

1) reach. You need a fiber delivered to any city that has a railway line ? They have one. You need a fiber in a LEX ? They've got fibers to every LEX.

2) they are utterly unbeatable if you need a new fiber. They can lay down fiber while moving on average 30km/h. Digging fiber has speeds that are expressed in meters/week.

Now I don't know why this happens, but I'm not very impressed with a government based fiber holding company. And yes, they do connect end-users. Hell, it's usually a better idea to use the existing telco to connect to their fibers (they get to use their own amplification equipment). Don't know why this makes a difference at all.

There are also government fiber providers that I am impressed with. The one of the government of the city of Amsterdam for example gets it right. They don't regen, but if you need it you can rent racks in buildings along the fiber path and place your own equipment, and they pass through the fiber or not depending on your requirements. Unfortunately it's the city of Amsterdam. The reach is somewhat limited.

It's a hard problem, because the market and regulatory frameworks are very different for me, in San Francisco, than for my dad, on the Big Island of Hawai'i, and both in turn are very different from people in Manhattan, or Montana, or in Nome. A national solution might not be workable; but then again, the Federal government is probably the only entity that can treat with companies like Comcast and actually force their hand.

I personally think that divestiture of the physical cabling from the content provision business is the ideal solution, but I have no (0) illusions about the likelihood of that ever happening. Whether you chalk that up to regulatory capture or the growing pains of a changing business model at the end of the day really makes no matter.

Is there any reason we can't use the sewer system instead?

In Europe, most countries have a reasonable solution: The incumbent telco in most countries have been required to separate out the business unit that owns and operates the cable sufficiently that it can be accounted for separately.

This business is then generally required to provide equal access to anyone on a "cost plus" basis exactly because the cost and complexity of laying new cable is considered a massive barrier to competition, and besides we don't want a ton of companies digging up the street all the time or erecting new poles.

E.g. in the UK, the "last mile" of all landlines installed by BT are now handled by BT OpenReach. Consumers can call their preferred ISP or phone provider and ask them to take over the provision of services on the line, and the ISP deals with BT once you've authenticated the request.

The service is then either provided via backhaul over BT's network - that is, the ISP provides a few central nodes where they interface with BT, and hands over a raw data stream from each subscriber at those points - or the ISPs pay (on a cost regulated basis) to put equipment in BT's echanges. The latter has the advantage that they can offer services BT can't/won't and that ISPs that depend on backhaul from BT can't - some ISPs beat BT in certain areas this way.

It's not perfect - it's limited by BT's upgrade/buildout schedule, but BT does face competitive pressure from Virgin (cable provider), and also does face the possibility that someone will able to get finance together to lay cable to compete if they don't watch out, though the latter is less likely.

But beyond the last mile, there's fierce competition.

Exactly what is missing in the US! Here, there are ample legislation for telephony-related services, but none that enable competition within the last mile of internet service providers.

It's a very similar story in Australia.

Most of our telecom infrastructure was built by our government, then privatized, transferring ownership to Telstra.

Telstra is required to sell equal access to its landline network (although it seems not mobile) to other ISPs and phone providers.

We had that at one point, but got rid of it, in exchange for promises from the telcos that they then proceeded to not keep.

I remember around the the start of the consumer DSL era this being a thing. At some point the Telcos just started undercutting all the competition and/or deprioritizing installs for non-telco purchasers.

I feel like this misses the point of people who no longer buy cable. I don't personally know a lot of people who do it to save money (I'm sure they exist). Everyone I know just prefers the convenience of watching when you want and not having to have a single dedicated device (a TV) where you can watch things.

This isn't really any different than people ditching land lines in the late nineties and early two-thousands. It wasn't a question of cost so much as it was annoying to have multiple lines, numbers, and bills, not to mention one of those phones was only usable in a very specific way and the other could be used anywhere, whenever you felt like it.

I also hate commercials. I won't even pay for Hulu+ because it has commercials. Commercials should exist to subsidize a free product, and they have no place in a paid product.

I feel the same way about magazines. It's dumb that they are packed with ads and yet you still have to pay for them.

I agree with your point that paid products should be commercial free, though what about the insidious placement of commercial products embedded within the content (song lyrics or any item with a logo on it in a movie or tv show)? It seems like those commercial placements are much harder to avoid in pop culture and will likely only increase in frequency in the future. It can skew the creative process of the artisans producing content and unless true commercial-free content is rewarded in some way, this is inevitable.

I feel the same way about magazines. It's dumb that they are packed with ads and yet you still have to pay for them.

This is basically the same fallacy as a Google user who thinks he is Google's customer. Magazine readers are the product for the magazine main business of selling advertising space. The reason they charge money is because paying readers are considered more valuable than non-paying readers. This sort of thing is why you'll often see magazine subscriptions selling for a few bucks on Slickdeals.

I'll agree here. The $50/month I'm saving by not having cable included isn't really going toward savings, and we could certainly afford it. It's just that it had a detrimental effect: we'd watch things that we weren't all that interested in, we'd sit through hours of commercials. My wife and I were generally annoyed with the whole experience, but because it was available and easy we were sucked into it.

We cancelled the cable and we are less annoyed. We spend an extra 15 minutes downloading what we want, and we spend less time as vegetables just passively accepting what's coming down the pipe. Less time spent watching commercials that annoy us. It's very much worth it. (Although I miss watching live sports in HD... but not enough to pay for it)

You can solve the live sports issue for the most part by getting free basic channels. You can do it in a lot of ways, one of an easy ones is get a $10 antenna. All local channels will be available to you for free, in HD. Then you can watch most sports:

- NFL: all football games with your local team, and a lot of others. You won't be able to watch Monday Night and Thursday Night football, but if it's your local team playing, they'll have that game on a free channel.

- MLB: depends on your market, but generally there should be at least one game a week on free channels. Plus, AL/NLCS and WS are on FOX.

- NBA: less available, but there's usually two games every Sunday or every two Sundays on ABC.

- NHL: usually one game a week on NBC.

Also, there's plenty of other live sports on free channels - golf, tennis, soccer, etc. For example, Olympics are going on right now and NBC has two hours of coverage every night.

Antenna is a no go in a lot of places.

I live in a town of about 100,000 people and as far as stations that have sports, I get ABC, and sometimes NBC (The transmitter is close, but they broadcast at a power of 100W (yes W, not kW). With a roof-mounted antenna I could certainly get NBC reliably).

We used to have a Fox station here, but the ABC affiliate bought it and shut it down.

I follow NFL and MLB, my wife follows NHL.

So I get Sunday night football. The good news is that MLB is very reasonably available live and online. You can even listen to your choice of home or away announcers.

Each one of the leagues has their own league pass so you can watch online. That doesn't work well if you want to watch the local team due to blackout restrictions, but it does if you just a general fan or you've moved away from your home town.

Unfortunately the NFL does not, and that's what I (and most others) really want to see (in the US of course.)

Why not both?

My experience is only anecdotal, of course, but I don't have a television (and I haven't for some seven or eight years). I don't watch cable or local TV, and I don't have furniture or equipment arranged for "ten-foot" watching, so I have no reason to purchase something that's inferior to the not-quite-4K monitors I already have. (If I want to watch or play something on the other side of the room, I pull out a laptop.)

It would take a truly absurd deal (a) to tempt me through the hassle of going out and buying a TV and supporting equipment, and (b) to overcome my instinctual distaste at the thought of rearranging all my stuff to have furniture positioned for actually watching one.

On the other hand, if a cable company were to offer an Aereo-alike with assorted live television available over the web, I would probably pay for it even if it cost more than a cable bundle because it would be fundamentally more useful to me than screwing around with specialized hardware.

On one hand, there's a social aspect to viewing an event simultaneously, and moderately large HDTVs of that resolution will soon be affordable.

HDTV is basically just what monitors get called when cable and antenna demodulators are built in, especially larger than 32". They use the same HDMI plugs as many monitors, which is DVI in another shape (plus some extras).

To many of us who don't own a TV, that doesn't ring true. We find sitting in a dim room to be an inherently a-social activity, therefore count the creation of a temptation to engage in activities that minimize interaction with each other among the disadvantages of having such an appliance in one's home.

Which isn't to say that I have anything against video entertainment. But to me it's personal entertainment, the same as reading a book or playing playing Candy Crush on a phone. So I don't really draw a huge distinction between a room full of people staring at a 40" screen on the wall and a room full of people staring at 4" screens in their hands.

Is that "room full of people staring at 4" screens" focused on the same event, such as a football game? Because, otherwise, the purpose of having all those people in the same is defeated. The point is a shared experience, not just having bodies in the room.

How do you feel about going to the symphony or other theatrical events? It's pretty much the same - several people in a dark room not talking. But many people enjoy sharing the experience together because they can look at each other and laugh, smile, or cry at the same moments, and then discuss it afterwards. It's very social both during and after the performance, and is very similar to watching TV together.

Pretty similarly, actually. I enjoy those kinds of events, and am happy to share them with others, but I still consider them to be much more solitary activities than things like sharing conversations, meals, playing games together, etc. And so I place less value on them as ways of interacting with my loved ones.

The upshot being, Comcast has a serious uphill battle in wanting to convince me to spend a whole lot of money and rearrange my house all for the sake of (to my tastes) reducing the level of satisfaction I get from my family & social life. Not that there's anything wrong with having different feelings from mine about the subject. But the feelings of people who already have and like their TVs are maybe not so pertinent to the question of how to win the business of those of us who don't currently have or want one.

Personally, I find the ten-foot viewing experience vastly superior to a computer monitor, and totally worth arranging my furniture a particular way.

I can lounge as I watch, I don't have to hold my head a particular way, I can share the couch with someone else, and it also feels more natural to my eyes.

That's not to say that I would never watch a movie on a computer monitor (I have, plenty of times) but I prefer ten-foot.

Yeah. I'm the same way. I hate having a whole room arranged as if for worshiping a video altar.

My compromise is a projector on a white wall. Then my room isn't dominated by a giant TV. The A/V gear is all tucked away in a closet, and my speakers are small ones white ones that sit up close to the ceiling. I feed it from a media server.

I like this better. When I'm in a hotel room, I feel like the TV almost demands watching. It's almost menacing to me these days compared with an unobtrusive setup.

I understand your sentiment; what I have done is set up a separate media room. Of course this requires an extra room, but the TV cannot demand I watch it. I am only in that room, when I am meaning to watch some TV.

My Panasonic plasma is in many ways a superior technology than my Thunderbolt displays, particularly when watching TV or movie content. Different use cases, different technologies.

One of the things that I'm surprised about is how WiMax didn't take off. I used it for quite a while and was really happy with it, but when I moved to a more rural area it didn't work. Still know people who use it happily.

I am one of those who watches no cable TV but still pays for and deals with Comcast. It's a necessary evil in my opinion, and something I just live with.

But WiMax providers could get their act together and smash them, I'm just not sure why they haven't.

WiMAX is dead because LTE won the standards war. LTE data is currently crazy-expensive in the US, but that's not really a technical problem.

you may be nitpicking, there's no reason a wimax like service (wireless internet) couldn't be provided with LTE

wimax/lte is not the problen

Yes, that was my point; I'm not concerned by the death of WiMAX as a protocol, because LTE is functionally equivalent. The problem is that LTE is not currently a viable competitor to wired Internet services, because the providers have set the prices too high and the caps too low.

its a matter of expectations

most people have experience with wired connections which provide consistent speeds with very good up time.

nowadays, mobile web use is common as well. people live with inconsistent speeds and hit/miss availability (on ALL carriers).

its a hard proposition to ask someone to compromise their consistency for small savings, or any political or philosophical reasons, and switch to wireless internet.

I think the best solution is tethering, because when you're using your phone's internet your expectations are properly set.

this will probably never happen however, as the wireless telcos are more than eager to charge you more for using your paid for connection on a different device.

The main WiMAX provider in the US was Clearwire. I'm curious who you're thinking of as the other WiMAX providers.

In terms of Clearwire, part of what hurt them was their relationship with Sprint. Sprint wanted a 4G network without the expense of building a 4G network - Clearwire building a 4G network for them was an ideal situation. Of course, Sprint didn't want to become just another MVNO - which is what would have happened in a VoIP world. So, Sprint wanted Clearwire to succeed and create an awesome 4G network, but they didn't want Clearwire to succeed and have a successful, sustainable business that would make Sprint irrelevant.

I haven't had Clearwire service and I'm curious to hear your take on it. When Clearwire started serving my area, they offered around 5-6Mbps while my cable company offered 10Mbps. That's slower, but not hugely slower. In 2013, they were offering the same speed while my cable company offered 30Mbps. That's a big difference.

I'm a bit hopeful for Sprint's trial venture with Dish. In one market, Dish is working with Sprint to do home-broadband via fixed wireless (LTE). Dish is installing external antennas and a satellite dish on the house and the residents get TV and internet that way. The external antenna will work better than the antenna of a WiMAX hot-spot sitting in someone's living room (which is how Clearwire was operating).

I've focused a lot on Clearwire because Clearwire has most of the spectrum that would have gone to WiMAX. And herein lies another problem: Clearwire was the WiMAX provider. Just as one can get angry at Comcast, one can get annoyed that Clearwire wasn't better at running a business and rolling out coverage. In terms of EBS and BRS spectrum (~2.5GHz), Clearwire averages about 80% of that spectrum in the top 100 markets. While Clearwire by itself could have made a bigger impact, it didn't. It would be like having another cable company that no one used - it wouldn't have an impact.

Ultimately, I think one of the issues that doesn't get talked about enough is the revenue. For example, your cable company runs wires all over town - that's the expensive part. If they provide you with just internet or internet plus television, their costs aren't dramatically altered, but their revenues double. Clearwire didn't have such a revenue-doubler and that extra revenue could have fuelled investment. In some ways, Clearwire had a revenue-shrinker in that Sprint was having customers pay it $40/mo for a data plan and was giving Clearwire about $3-6/mo. While that's revenue, such a low amount might have been below the average cost to serve customers and the deal cut Clearwire out of getting retail mobile customers paying it real money. But this is why I'm hopeful about the Dish/Sprint trial. First, fixed wireless with an installed, external antenna is going to be significantly better. Second, there's the possibility of a quadrouple-play: TV with video-on-demand, home phone service, mobile phone service, and internet. That would provide a good revenue stream that would provide the incentive for investment. Even if you didn't want TV or home phone service, a double play of mobile phone and home internet service would be more revenue than just one service.

I'm curious what your thoughts are. I think wireless has the potential to be impactful, but I think it's going to take a while. Verizon, AT&T, and T-Mobile aren't finished dealing with their mobile customers and don't have the spectrum to do home broadband before their mobile solutions are complete (once that is complete, there is the possibility to install smaller cells to re-use spectrum on a more granular level). Sprint now has Clearwire's spectrum, but isn't the fastest moving company. Is there another player I should be aware of?

> Instead, the more we imbibe of all the glories available on streaming services, the more we’ll need to shell out for high-speed broadband service.

You'd think that, normally, an ISP would try to upgrade the bandwidth for their users to stay ahead of the higher bandwidth requirements. In Europe, I've just upgraded to 100 Mbps about 3 years ago, and now I could upgrade to 1 Gbps for a little more. The only reason I'm not doing it yet is because my laptop (HDD) and router (802.11n) haven't quite caught up with this speed yet, and a lot of it would be wasted if I got it now.

Why would an ISP do that, when any self-respecting business operator can simply instruct his or her call center reps to say the following:

"Thank you for calling us, Higher Purpose. Your Internet is slow, Mr. Purpose? We can certainly fix that. I see that you are currently paying us $39.95/month for 10mbps service. How about we make that $89.95/month for 20mbps service? Besides, who will you switch to if you don't like the price?"

"Who would I switch too? Maybe any of your 12 competitors in this district." This isn't a US based anecdote, they do it because if they dont, their competitors will.

I cut the cord 9 years ago; i didn't get rid of my ISP, i simply stopped paying for their TV programming.

I prefer to spend my money on a faster internet connection and stream the shows or sports I want to watch thanks to options like Netflix and NHL Gamecenter. I no longer need Cable TV to buy the NHL package for example; nor do I need Cable TV to watch Breaking Bad or Game of Thrones.

The author of this article is confused; it's not literally about cutting your cord with your ISP, it's about saying no to expensive programming we simply don't want anymore.

Smug, presumptuous article. I cut my cord over a decade ago and have no desire to watch TV or Netflix (especially not to watch MPAA films) on the Internet. I have no interest in paying a "Comcast tax," and if that means no movies or Internet television, fine. TV is verboten here. A time sink with an infinite opportunity cost.

You do realize that what you just said comes across as very smug?

Why? I geniunely cannot stand television. I cannot force myself to watch. That goes for most films. It's smug to assert a preference and act on it?

Of course not. I have a similar philosophy. I think cable television is sham: tightly-packaged crap surrounding the few things I want to watch. Who cares if it's only $10 dollars more a month. It's the principal of the damn thing. With the Internet, I get far more freedom about the media I choose to consume versus the crap put down my throat with prepackaged cable television plans.

Right. There is the principle--and then there is the question of controlling your environment, of cognitive self-defense. TV and the associated paraphenalia introduces clutter and extraneous cognitive load. And it does this out of proportion to exposure--for me, at least.

I can explain the why. You're turning your nose up at something that the vast majority regard as a value culturally, but you regard as worthless (worse actually), and you elaborated it in several different ways in the same short post (and you elaborated your disdain again in the subsequent reply). I'd argue that would come across as being culturally smug across most of the TV loving country.

You weren't just asserting a preference, you were putting down that which you don't like repeatedly. Whether one chooses to spend their time crocheting or watching TV is a strictly subjective value judgement. Is it better to laugh at a Seinfeld re-run, or Louis CK live? Better to watch Game of Thrones or read the books? Purely subjective, there is no superior choice.

Are you trying to be smug? I have no idea if that's your character type, my point was that what you said comes across as smug. It sounds culturally elitist, as though TV is for the little stupid people (I know you didn't say those words).

> Better to watch Game of Thrones or read the books? Purely subjective, there is no superior choice.

I think it can be argued that one is a more intellectually stimulating option, while also being entertaining. The fact that people prefer the more easily digested option might be partially due to the effect of advertising and what makes the wheels of capitalism spin.

Putdown of others is a hallucination. For me there is the opportunity cost of dealing with unnecessary clutter or deciding what to watch and making time for it. I simply do not have the time. For me, TV has an irritating hypnotic effect I would prefer to avoid, and one way of doing this is to remove the possibility of exposure. I have said nothing about the quality of programming--that would be like reviewing a book I haven't read. But I suspect there must be something about the medium that leads to defensiveness just in case a nonviewer might be critcal of viewers generally.

define smug

http://www.theonion.com/articles/area-man-constantly-mention...

Only my comment here was apt.

The reason the article doesn't mention people like you is because it wasn't about people like you. You must realize you've opted out of some of the most popular entertainment around and are atypical in that preference.

This article was about people finding alternatives, not about those who reject the medium altogether.

I'm a cord cutter. A cord cutter looking for the cheapest alternative, which is to consume no television at any price. It would be good to know how atypical that is.

I'm in the same boat I gave up on TV and movies altogether, and more recently forced myself to give up political/world news as well. It's quite nice.

I tried to cancel the cable part of my package after the promo expired. After a few minutes, the then offered me $10 off my monthly bill and to extend the promo another year.

The cable box will remain off and unplugged as we never used it but they're obviously just trying to keep their numbers up for some reason I can't comprehend.

Internet-only service costs within $10 of your TV+internet package? That's odd.

You could have cancelled tv service and asked for a promo discount on your internet service. Calling with specific knowledge of a competitor's plan and threatening to switch to it gets you the best deals.

We have no competitor and the internet level of service is $20 more expensive than our current package.

I want to add something a lot of people don't know. When you have cable+internet, you end up paying about 20% taxes+fees on the final price. Some of that is government taxes, some are misc fees, but it's a lot more than your state sales tax.

With just internet, there are usually NO taxes+fees, not even state sales tax. So even if cable+internet cost the same as just internet, you will still end up shelling out $10 more. The $50 cable+internet option will cost $60, whereas the $40 internet option costs just that.

The internet package alone is $20 more a month regardless of taxes and fees.

I've had problems with un-bundling all ready. I've had Comcast for almost two years now - the top internet service for 19.99/mo. Of course they tried to raise the price on me once but I was able to call and get it back down. The next time they raised the price, there was no 19.99 internet only option. The customer service agent checked and checked and checked, but "couldn't find it available in the system". There was, of course, a 19.99 deal for the same speed internet AND basic cable + HBO/HBOGo. So I'm riding this promotion out for as long as I can. Although they were required to send the set-top box, I asked them not to send out a tech to hook it up. I honestly couldn't care less about basic cable. The HBO Go on the other hand, I enjoy thoroughly. I was finally able to get around to watching Sopranos =].

Eventually they'll learn that story-telling isn't meant to be interrupted by advertisements. The content is gravely diminished when this happens. I find myself not caring about plot after so many commercial breaks. Made worse by the terrible, "coming up next on blah blah blah" hook.

I can see some sports fanatics enjoying the 'luxuries' of basic cable, as I don't believe there are any fool proof options online yet - I also don't care.

The hypothesis here seems to be that Comcast will be charging internet users more than warranted to subsidize TV. Did the author consider that at one point Comcast might realize theres no point in artificially extending the life of technology that has been lapped in the past century?

Of course we all have our fingers crossed that this eureka moment comes before the bumbling kids that make up their leadership team have lobbied or filtered and "traffic shaped" the internet to death.

The specifics don't matter. Comcast has a goose that lays golden eggs and they will extract as much money from it as possible. There is nothing to "realize".

Fiber is unlike newspapers, CDs and VHS, among other things practically replace with online versions

To me, even if it's the same price or costs more, cutting the cord is worth it because a) you aren't giving all of the money to the cable company - some goes directly to the content providers and b) you get the same content without ads!

So yeah, I'll save the $10/mo on basic cable and pay Netflix $8/mo just because it's that much less for the cable company, plus no ads!

Exactly my thought. I cut the cord 2 years ago and it's amazing how much more enjoyable the content I do watch is without ads.

I don't even own a TV, I don't want any TV in any form and Comcast only offered me a deal with TV and Internet and sent me a huge settop box that I now have to store in my closet. And Comcast is the only broadband provider available to me currently (well, ATT may have become available after I started but they are their very own horror show).

And Comcast is the only broadband provider available to me currently

In Tucson that was my experience, and it was frustrating. So frustrating that I sent letters to the president of Qwest Arizona. To Qwest's credit, his assistant did respond to my queries, and we kept trading e-mails about whether Qwest would roll out real services to my area. In the time I lived there, however, Qwest never did, and Comcast had a de-facto monopoly.

Now I'm living in New York and have a couple potential providers, including Time Warner and RCN. I use the latter.

Good luck with that, Comcast. Where I live there are two cable-basted internet providers, a wireless provider, and at least two based on the old phone system. Nobody I know pays more than $35/month to his ISP.

And that doesn't include the cell providers, which are just about out of ways other than price to differentiate themselves.

Yeah, I couldn't shake the feeling that the framing narrative of coord-cutters was worse than useless (except as linkbait). We already know that monopolies can increase their prices until customers are getting nearly 0 utility out of doing business with them. That's why Comcast and TWC merged (how the hell did that get through the FTC?). That's why prices are going up while quality of internet service is going down. The only reason to blame rising internet costs on coord-cutters is to divert attention away from a reality that could land Comcast in legal trouble.

In my experience, I didn't cut my cable tv, but instead cut my home phone and ported the number to google voice to use with an ObiTalk device to have home phone for free. The retention department gave me their best "double play" package they had and I saved a whole $20 a month. Well guess what, the next month they raised rates on the DVR rental fees and upped a few other things effectively canceling out any savings I had. A few months later when the promo period ended, I had them switch me to a triple play (tv, phone, and internet) just adding a dummy phone number that is not even hooked up and it's cheaper than just having internet and tv. It's just completely ridiculous.

And on top of this, of course my ObiTalk will cease to function in a few weeks when Google pulls the plug on the interface it used to make the free calling possible.

I signed up for a new number with Obivoice (unrelated to ObiHai), reconfigured my Obi to use Obivoice, then setup Google Voice to forward to the new number. Obivoice had a special if you signed up for two years of service for $60.

Obi also just announced Anveo as their preferred provider to replace Google Voice.

I really don't understand what Google's plan for GV is. I wish they'd just charge for it already.

I'm one of the cord cutters. I have Comcast internet and nothing else. I have an apple tv, Netflix, and an antenna with a tivo that gets me network television for free. I'll admit that the antenna is a hassle mostly because the NBC signal is terrible in the Bay Area, but when I don't need to watch NBC this setup is awesome. I'm hoping Aereo comes soon so I can ditch the antenna + tivo for a more stable broadcast to even further streamline my setup. I've had no urge to use torrents as this setup gives me much more content than I can consume.

My main reason for cutting the cord is to save money, and it has saved me quite a deal of money over 3 years.

I am a recent cord cutter. I was paying $46/month for satellite that included only local channels and 2 or 3 Disney channels. I also had HD service.

I now have a Roku 3 and am fortunate to live in a location where Aereo provides service. Unfortunately, the stream quality of Aereo is no where as good as Netflix. I can only hope this changes in the future. Also, my kids are now at the age where they are outgrowing Disney.

I now pay about $16/month for TV. I feel like this is a major paradigm shift: Instead of paying for TV in dollars per day, I am now paying for TV in days per dollar.

The prices that were quoted in the article are promotional prices for the first year of service to a new subscriber. It increases greatly (sometimes even doubles based on the package) after that first year.

data cap of 250 gigabytes a month

That is truly miniscule for a 25Mbps connection.

I'm on a 5Mbps connection and our household averages 300GB downloaded per month. Mostly to feed my GF's TV addiction, but still.

What do you pay for the 5 mbps?

I'm at $75 / month for 15 mbps, with a cable company called Shentel (50mbps is $140 with them).

I see other people complain about paying $70x for 25 or 50 mbps. I'd love to have that value proposition.

About 30 GBP per month (50 USD?), but it also buys me a static IP.

I got a deal from Comcast for 50mpbs down (their blast package) and the lowest cable with HBO. If I were to get just the internet, it would be the same price. In fact the deal I got lasts a year while just the internet lasts only 6 months and then goes to full price. It made more sense to just get the TV as well since getting local channels is kind of useful for news and weather.

In the scenario outlined, there are three people watching streams for $40 Internet only Comcast service. While $50 will add TV, what the article mentions but forgets to delve into is that if those three TVs are hooked up to a cable box at $10 a piece, the bill now becomes $80 (all pretax). That's double and it certainly warrants cutting out TV service.

I see an opportunity for a consolidated billing service. Right now, Netflix, Amazon Prime, Hulu, and all the others send separate bills. What if there were a central service so people only get one bill, and have an opportunity to create their own bundle of streaming services?

How on earth will you monetize that? Because I'm sure as shit not going to pay extra just to consolidate my bills.

The local banks have spent enough money over the years advertising their "automatic bill pay" schemes that somebody must see value in them. Good luck beating them at that game, though. They've been at it for at least a decade.

"Automatic bill pay" with my bank does have some value! But they give it to me for free, as a perk to attract my business. Much like free checking, which banks also advertise.

Ad space on the bill for movies and tv shows that are coming soon? Not great, but probably more effective than a billboard on Santa Monica...

You go to them and say "You can outsource your billing department to us for less than you're paying now."

You already pay 1-3% extra to the credit card processor; a bill consolidation service could take a cut of that (perhaps by acting as a credit card themselves) without affecting the price you see.

Credit card company would have no interest in that kind of deal though, I would think.

I recently heard about a startup that automatically routes purchases to the user's credit card that would give the best rewards for that category of purchase. They somehow act as an intermediary in the card processing chain, so the transactions still show up on the final destination as originating from the merchant, not the routing service.

I don't recall the name, but it seems plausible that a bill consolidation service could do something similar at a similar layer of the payment processing infrastructure, collect their percentage, and be profitable doing it.

Hmm. Now I want to know what that startup is, so I can use it.

Those services don't have a meaningful "bill" to consolidate. All of those services just show up as a line on a credit card statement, and don't send a paper bill. There's no bill to pay attention to unless the charge on the credit card statement looks wrong.

So when I have a problem with Amazon, I now contact a third party to sort out my billing? Or when I dispute something with Hulu, my Netflix account breaks?

Anyways, I don't think I've ever received a "bill" from any of them. My CC gets charged and that's that. As far as that goes, a central service already exists: Amazon Payments, PayPal, etc.

My ISP charges me a $10/month fee for having non-bundled service (only paying for internet). Still better than the +$30 I'd be paying for the bundle...So I'm only getting fucked a little.

They'll try and manage to fuck customers no matter what as long as they maintain the power.

Why would you expect it to save you much money not getting the cable TV service? Most of the basic cable programming is paid for via advertising. The cost of the pipe is the same whether you get television or just internet.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com