ajit verghese

Why does cable television cost more than broadband? (reblogged via bijansabet.com)

Great post below by Bijan. This is something that has been on my mind recently as I realize that my main consumption of video content is now via my AppleTV & Boxxee and I cannot justify $160/ month for content that I don’t watch nor do I care for.

Yesterday I  tweeted :

about 90% sure I’m going 2 cancel my comcast cbl & just keep internet w/ appletv + boxxee. maybe fios instead of cbl modem. anyone else?

Comcast reached out to me about 10 min later asking me if they could help - I replied that I was not willing to pay the high cost of cable tv,

@ComcastBill thx 4 reaching out - not sure u can tho - don’t think i’m willing to pay $160/month for internet & cbl.

Comcast responded :

@averghese email us we_can_help@cable.comcast.com and we will see what promos are available for you

Now - I appreciate their willingness to work with me to investigate a lower price point - but that’s only part of the equation……

Quality/Price = Value

The Quality of Cable TV content is okay - the Price is a bit ridiculous and the value is terrible, especially when Boxxee on my AppleTV offers me better Quality at a much lower price point.

At this point I am just not getting enough value out of cable

So I’m pretty sure that Comcast is going the way of the Dodo. I’m not sure about the sports component  SopCast has helped me get my sports fix before - and there is always the neighborhood sports bar for the Pats / Celtics games. Let the experiment begin.

via bijan:

Our family pays about $50/month for FIOS broadband service. We get 20/5 Mbps. It’s a beautiful thing and is only going to get faster.

We pay about $140/month for television which includes 3 HD DVRs.

What’s wrong with that picture?

Yes, CableTV is almost 3x the price

But there are other big differences.

-Hardware. cabletv has a closed set top box. The internet allows me to plug in any hardware I want.

-Software. cabletv comes with a UI that is broken and old. The internet allows me to use any software and UI I want.

-Content. cabletv has a few channels that we love (live sports and a few network shows and aren’t available online (yet). The web has a ton of content sources that I use all the time. CableTV has 1080p video. The web doesn’t stream 1080p. I’m not sure I care about that anymore.

At the end of the day, if we could only afford one of these things, cabletv or broadband, we would choose broadband all day long. That would be true if they jacked up our broadband price or if they dropped the cabletv price. I have a hunch many consumers would pick the web over cabletv as well.

For now, many of us can afford to pay for both services a month and we do just that. But this quick comparison shows the value proposition isn’t right.

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