Price for Cable & Satellite services

[bobbob]

by the way, i wasn't complaining, i think the rates for what i get are reasonable

[foxwood]

That seems strange to me, because in the US, a call from a home phone to a cell phone (or vice versa) is treated the same as any other call. Every home phone service I've ever seen in the US has unlimited local calls (including local cell phones). We had unlimited local calls even when I was a child (before cell phones existed).

In Europe, and most of the rest of the world, mobile phones have their own, easily recognizable "area" codes, and are effectively premium calls. The receiver doesn't pay to receive a call, the caller pays the premium. Mobile users only pay for the calls they make.

This model drove the development of texting to some extent, and also supported a pay as you go model that is much less common in the US.

[barnabas1969]

That's just one of the plans Cox has. They call it Cox Economy. It includes a limited selection of channels, but fortunately the included channels closely match my viewing habits anyway. I had to sacrifice a few channels, but nothing that I routinely watched. And yes, it includes HD.

Wow. I looked up the channel listing for that plan. It's called Cox TV Economy. There are only a couple of channels that I watch which are not included in that plan. I think I could live without them. Too bad my cable provider doesn't have a plan like that.

[LuckyDay]

Basically my bill is $101 a month. It breaks down like this:

- 15/1 Internet, next tier up is 30/1, but I don't need it. There are no caps or throttling ever.
- 300 some channels, but I only keep about 130 in my guide in WMC. Of the ones I keep roughly 100 are HD, not sure how many more HD I don't have added.
- 2x cable cards
- modem fee
- 2 other jacks in the house that just get cable from coax (with their tuner they provide free for 2 years, then I think it's $2 a month).
- All the music channels (I don't add them in the guide either, but they're there).
- Encore/Starz premiums, I don't subscribe to any others.

For $20 more bucks I could get the 50/5 internet speed. Another $25 gets me all of the premiums. So I can come in under $150 if I wanted to go all out.


Everything is built into a "Bundle" price, so I don't know how it all breaks down individually, but I think the price is good. I also haven't called in a while to get a new lower rate. Here, when you call and threaten to cancel they will automatically knock your total down by $10-20 no matter what. They actually have it in their CSR scripts when they hear the word cancel to just offer you a better rate to keep you a customer.

I think the main reason it's so affordable is because A. WideOpenWest cable isn't a huge company and B. there is so much competition where I live. You can get ATT, WOW, Insight, and Time Warner basically everywhere around here. Even in an apartment one company isn't forced on you.

I also don't have to worry about any tuning adapters or crap like that for cable card, which is nice.

I think the new promo price is something like $79.99 for what I get, and I imagine if you complained every year you could keep it pretty close to that.

[Doctor Feelgood]

My bill is around $140 - but includes phone, Internet, and TV through Optimum. May cut it back soon by dropping some channels and the phone.

* I have 50/8 Internet service, and I never have speed issues - benches between 55 and 85 down, and 8.x up consistently.
* I have the full package of channels (Gold Package) including all the HBOs, Showtimes, Cinemaxes, music channels - several hundred channels
* 2 Cable cards are included at $2/each per month.
* phone includes all the basic services like voice mail and long distance anywhere in the US.

[jziggity]

I'll chime in with my stats:

$79.99/month package price from TWC, (good for 1 year) includes:

Digital Variety tier for the channels (including HD),
Unlimited local/nationwide digital phone service
Standard internet service (15/1, but typically runs closer to 20/1)

I also pay $2.50 for one cablecard, and I want to say $3.95 for the cable modem lease (new charge within the last couple of months)
So after taxes/fees, I'm looking at a total monthly bill just under $90.

I think that's a great deal considering what's included, but given my recent headaches with TWC, I also think it is a fair price.
The closest competition in our area (SE WI) would be U-Verse, and their pricing can't come close to this for all services, and I won't do satellite.
Oh how I wish there was more competition (FIOS...), but I don't see that happening any time soon.

[staknhalo]

To rub it in, I currently pay $38.23 for TV service with Cox....that included my CableCARD, about 25 of the "good" channels from the expanded tier, and a few movie channels (mostly Encore). This is not a promo rate.

Wow. How did you get that deal? Does that include HD?

That's just one of the plans Cox has. They call it Cox Economy. It includes a limited selection of channels, but fortunately the included channels closely match my viewing habits anyway. I had to sacrifice a few channels, but nothing that I routinely watched. And yes, it includes HD.

Yeah, I just looked that plan up. I hate you now.

The only channel I watch that isn't in there is Sci-Fi. That's a damn good deal. Again, I think you win the thread.

[crawfish]

My bill is around $140 - but includes phone, Internet, and TV through Optimum. May cut it back soon by dropping some channels and the phone.

* I have 50/8 Internet service, and I never have speed issues - benches between 55 and 85 down, and 8.x up consistently.
* I have the full package of channels (Gold Package) including all the HBOs, Showtimes, Cinemaxes, music channels - several hundred channels
* 2 Cable cards are included at $2/each per month.
* phone includes all the basic services like voice mail and long distance anywhere in the US.

How long have you had service with them for all those things?

[Doctor Feelgood]

My bill is around $140 - but includes phone, Internet, and TV through Optimum. May cut it back soon by dropping some channels and the phone.

* I have 50/8 Internet service, and I never have speed issues - benches between 55 and 85 down, and 8.x up consistently.
* I have the full package of channels (Gold Package) including all the HBOs, Showtimes, Cinemaxes, music channels - several hundred channels
* 2 Cable cards are included at $2/each per month.
* phone includes all the basic services like voice mail and long distance anywhere in the US.

How long have you had service with them for all those things?

I have been a customer for years - and just moved this past spring. The price went down $20 just for moving - and according to the bill the difference was all on the TV side of things, as the Internet and phone parts are unchanged. Bill also went lower (@$10 I think) when I sent back the DVR box, and I'm excited to be taking back the one remaining HD box this week... Every TV will be MCE now!

[crawfish]

I have been a customer for years - and just moved this past spring. The price went down $20 just for moving - and according to the bill the difference was all on the TV side of things, as the Internet and phone parts are unchanged. Bill also went lower (@$10 I think) when I sent back the DVR box, and I'm excited to be taking back the one remaining HD box this week... Every TV will be MCE now!

That's a very good price... I think it would be well over $250/mo through Cox where I live. I'm paying $180/mo for Cable/Internet/Phone for the next year, and the only "extra" we have is one DVR, which is about $19/mo for box rental and service fee. This is after talking them down from $203, which was their latest increase from the last deal I negotiated, which had me paying $160/mo. I looked at DirecTV, and with their current offer, I would save less than $400 over two years with them, after which, they'd be more expensive than Cox. OTOH, I would get the whole-home DVR with 5 tuners and two extenders, which would be a big upgrade from the crappy Cox DVR, and it would get me out of the WMC business altogether, but I'd no longer get a sports channel we watch or the Encore movie channels. It's just not worth the trouble to switch. Unfortunately, AT&T stopped their Uverse buildout literally down the street, so there's no competition beyond DirecTV.

[NWW]

I'm curious, but is are these kind of prices normal in the USA? And does that represent a huge chunk of an average american family?

Edit: damn my English.

[foxwood]

That's the beauty of the free market, where companies get to charge whatever the market will bear, and "natural monopolies" limit actual competition. Just like phone lines, electricity and plumbing, it's pretty unusual to have more than one cable line feeding any house, but unlike phone and electricity service, you can't choose your cable provider. So while just about everything in the technology sphere gets cheaper over time, cable and broadband prices keep going up and up and up.

[barnabas1969]

I only have three choices: Brighthouse Networks, ATT U-verse, and satellite.

I won't go with U-verse because of the bandwidth limitation... they can only support two HD streams per household... so I can only watch/record two HD shows and two SD shows simultaneously in the whole household. That's not enough.

Satellite... well, first of all, it would be difficult to integrate into Media Center, and it would be too expensive to have enough of their boxes to serve every TV in my house.

With Brighthouse Networks (BHN), the choices of "package" are very limited. I can get the "basic" package (which doesn't include many of the channels we watch), "standard" (which is what I have), and then there are a few other packages that can be added to "standard" to get all the premium channels, porn channels, sports channels, foreign language channels, etc.

I wish we had a package like Cox TV Economy. That would be just about perfect.

I'm curious, but is are these kind of prices normal in the USA? And does that represent a huge chunk of an average american family?

Edit: damn my English.

Yes, these are pretty normal prices from what I've seen. The median American household income is approximately $53,000 per year. After taxes, that leaves about $3,500 per month for household expenses. So, a $150 cable bill is 4.3% of the average family's monthly budget. I hope that answered your question.

EDIT: I corrected the median household income above to more recent numbers from the US Census Bureau.

[barnabas1969]

That's the beauty of the free market, where companies get to charge whatever the market will bear, and "natural monopolies" limit actual competition. Just like phone lines, electricity and plumbing, it's pretty unusual to have more than one cable line feeding any house, but unlike phone and electricity service, you can't choose your cable provider. So while just about everything in the technology sphere gets cheaper over time, cable and broadband prices keep going up and up and up.

You can choose your electricity provider? I can't.

And... while you can choose your telephone provider (and electricity provider) you can't choose the company who owns the lines in your neighborhood. Much of the price of your telephone/electric service is dictated by the owner of those wires and the systems that they are connected to.

[NWW]

Thanks, that answers my question. It makes more sense now.

[LuckyDay]

Just like phone lines, electricity and plumbing, it's pretty unusual to have more than one cable line feeding any house, but unlike phone and electricity service, you can't choose your cable provider.

I don't think that's the norm for most households. The majority of our population lives in cities, and most cities have at least two providers. I think it's more common for an apartment or rented property to have only one contracted cable provider.

At least that's how it is where I live (Columbus).

I have 4 cable companies to choose from and three satellite providers. Most of the city can not choose their electricity service either.

[foxwood]

You can choose your electricity provider? I can't.

You will eventually - anything that increases the opportunity for someone to make a profit will be legislated for, sooner or later! In my case, it involved requiring the incumbent public utility to cancel rebates/discounts for storage heaters "to create a level playing field", so "competition" led to a direct increase in my electricity bill.

[bobbob]

this is interesting. in the UK we've had the freedom to choose energy suppliers for coming up to 20 years. although everyone has to pay the tv licence you can choose from having terrestrial, cable or satellite and most recently a few new suppliers doing IPTV. no regional restrictions as long as you can physically receive the stream. i can think of very few things where we don't have a choice of a provider, seems things are more "free" here

[leroys1000]

As far as most apartments go here,the lease doesn't allow
them to make modifications to the building,so they can't attach
a satellite dish unless they have room to stick it on a pole in the ground.
There are a couple of those here.
Too easy for someone to mess with them or the weather to knock them over.

[richard1980]

Just like phone lines, electricity and plumbing, it's pretty unusual to have more than one cable line feeding any house, but unlike phone and electricity service, you can't choose your cable provider.

I don't think that's the norm for most households.

It is. You should consider yourself lucky, because you are definitely not in the same situation everyone else is in. This is why everyone is always complaining about the cable TV monopoly...in most places, there is only one cable provider.