What Satellite & Cable Companies are doing as a Result of Cord Cutting

[MossRoad]

Keep in mind though, that their costs are the same whether they have 10 subscribers or 10,000. I'm not saying that there isn't greed involved, but the money to operate all that infrastructure has to come from somewhere.

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.

 

[Diggin It]

I just turned mine off. I don't even know for sure if the TV still works or not it's been so long since I tried it (something like 5 years now). I've got a shelf full of DVDs still sealed, never opened. A couple of TBs of shows I recorded from different sources sit unwatched. I don't even stream anything. I just completely lost interest in all TV.

 

[TheMan419]

I would be more happy to pay for FIOS if it were available. All we have here is DSL and we're near the end of the run. Frontier was out yesterday to try to put in a bonded DSL line to double our speed but we're so far from the CO that they couldn't get the two lines to bond. We get around 3 mbs down and .5 mps up. Streaming video get a bit pixelated at times...

Do you have decent cell service out there? We had the same kinds of DSL issues. We get decent AT&T Signal. Went with Ubifi and got a cell based internet plan with unlimited GB. We get faster service than the DSL. Not much but it is much more reliable. in the spring when it is warmer out I will experiment with an outdoor directional antenna to boost the reception and hopefully the speed.

 

[RalphVa]

Recently went with Roku after DirecTV was going to take their monthly price back up after dropping it for a year when the Roku devices come out.

Love it. Got some TV and GOBS of free movies plus ESPN and ESPN2 for $25/month (for Sling TV). Cost $40 for the Roku gizmo. Got one for 2 of the 3 TVs so far. This fall, I'll sign up for the other Sling package or the sports one for to get the other football chanels.

Football games come out fine, a little less detail than on main TV but fine.

Had a bit of trouble with the internet that Roku grabs (gets everything off your local Wifi). Neighbor cut our telephone lines for one thing in using a back hoe to plant some trees. CenturyLink came out and repaired it and then came out and installed a faster/better modem. Otherwise, some of the movies were having to spool a lot or dropped out and had to be reloaded. Everything's fine with the new modem and DSL that gives up to 1.5 mbps download.

Ralph

 

[kcflhrc]

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.

 

[kf4uda]

I was a dish network customer for around 25 years and endured their constant price increases. I finally got enough internet bandwidth to stream. I canceled dish and told them that the longer I was a customer, the more they punished me and enough was enough. They offered all kinds of discounts but I refused. We have Amazon Prime and have a Firestick and Netflix.......not going back.

 

[Diggin It]

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.

I guess we got lucky. County population is about 10K, mostly rural, sometimes only a few houses on a road. My section of road is about 2 miles and there are only 8 or 10 occupied houses. Some roads are more dense, many are less. Couple of years back our TelCo ran fiber down the state highways and installed DSLAMS about every two to three miles. From those, copper feeds the homes. People within a 1,000 feet of one of them can get 100M service. I'm a little over 6,000 feet and get 25M. People farther than 7,000 feet or so can only get 3M if anything at all.

From what I've been reading here and on other boards, some far more populous areas can't get close to 25M.

 

[Diggin It]

As far as Dish goes, I was channel surfing one day five or six years ago and realized I had scrolled through the full menu for the third or fourth time and found nothing at all of interest. Then it dawned on me that for most of the previous week or more, I hadn't really watched anything. If it was on, it was little more than background noise. Much of the time I was tuned to one of the CD music channels. There was nothing worth the $60 or $70/mo I was paying at the time. I called in to cancel and they offered a discount of $20/mo or something, so I took that for a while. But it wasn't long before I was back on the phone with them again to shut it off for good. The rep kept rambling trying to retain me and I almost had to get mean to to get my point across. I was done and that was that.

 

[DieselnHooters]

For the average Joe who has added an internet bill and a cell/smartphone bill in the last decade or so on top of everything else something has got to give.

 

[IXLR8]

I would love to cut the cord, so I have been reading this thread with interest. Spectrum just raised their fees to $178/month for internet and TV, with no movie channels. Internet only, 20 mps, is $75/month. I have been told that Spectrum got a law passed in this state limiting the cell data speeds, making Spectrum the only real internet game in town. We are too far away from any broadcast transmitters to get any OTA TV signals. We only watch about 5 of the 250 channels we have available. If we could stream those 5 channels... the cord would be cut.