Not hardly. They don't have to provide end-user equipment, service, or support for every cancelled account. The people that stick with the increasing costs of the plans covers the cost of losing customers that don't. It's just that simple. The fewer customers they have, the fewer service people they have to employ. Since the infrastructure is already there, 10 customers paying $100 is better than 10,000 customers paying $1.
Not sure I agree. In most areas, like it or not the cable company is the best/fastest ISP. Just because someone may discontinue tv or landline service doesn't mean they're not using the cable company's internet. Still just as many miles of cable/fiber to maintain whether 9 or 90% of the customers get their tv from them, same amount of equipment in their data center to maintain as well. There may be less equipment rental fees (ie-cable boxes) coming in, but they don't need to stock as many so it's a wash. Staff reductions and other cost savings will be minimal.
The only thing that might (key word, might) be cheaper is affiliate fees the cable company pays content providers. I believe some bill by the number of subscribers, sports channels like ESPN are, or at least were notorious for this.
I think a lot of us are more rural than other's when some can get 300 mbs, those are fiber speeds and no one put's fiber to home in rural areas. Not around these parts anyway. And I install fiber for a living.
What I thought was odd, was in 2012 when (then) Time-Warner came thru my neighborhood they ran fiber along the roads, but distributed it over copper. I don't know the size of each individual node or why they did it that way. The fiber-to-cable converter is only a couple poles down the road from me.
Phone company ran fiber here right around the same time, and did the same thing. Yeah, it's not as far to the CO for DSL, but it's still DSL over copper to customers. I don't know of anyone who signed up for DSL...introductory rate was ~$10/mo cheaper, but only 10% of the speed. Also, at one time the telco wouldn't install residential DSL unless you had their phone service too, which was (is?) much more expensive than thru the cable company.
Question for you all much more knowledgeable than I. Without a phone or cable line of any kind, can I even get internet through satellite services? Don't I need a line to upload, even a mouse click?
Once upon a time you did, but those days have been gone for 20 years or so. Early satellite internet was one way, down. Upload was via the phone line at dial-up speeds.
I had Wildblue when I first moved here 15 years ago, and it was 2-way then. Fastest I ever got was ~250k (K, not meg), and every time it rained or snowed we lost signal. It was either that or dial up. $50+/mo. with data caps (which we never even came close to). Just about the time they upgraded their equipment and changed their name to Excede we got cable. Good thing...it would have required new equipment and a new 2 year contract. :thumbdown:
I grumble at the price of cable, but internet, tv and phone from Spectrum is still cheaper than what I paid for satellite internet and phone from the phone company.
The only time I NEED those fast speeds is when transferring gigabytes worth of data. 
