TV Cord-Cutting Accelerating at Much Faster Pace than Predicted

[Nobu]

but then when you hit that UNLIMITED cap of 22gig the 4g unlimited is... well.. limited..

Heck I hit 22 Gig a day around here

I average about 57.9GB/mo, 9 month avg. 4g providers will either increase the cap (in anticipation of more users with higher demands), increase the price (same, in order to curb some of that), or improve their infrastructure to prepare...hopefully all three, although it'd be nice if the price hike were only temporary. 5g is coming...hopefully it improves the situation somewhat.

 

[viscountalpha]

i gave up tv for the most part. I couldn't be happier. Why live in someone elses fantasy when my own is so much better?

 

[Trimlock]

i gave up tv for the most part. I couldn't be happier. Why live in someone elses fantasy when my own is so much better?

Yes plus the crap on TV isn’t that good. I find that maybe 5-10 shows are worth watching. The rest I find myself trying to find a reason to just to keep watching, at that point I no longer watch and that happens a lot.

 

[Hitti2]

I cut the cord long time ago. I use a viewtv box and inside antenna. Anyhow all thet play is stupid Steve harvey, the view amd the chew w/ tons and tons of commercials.

 

[Exavior]

If they aren't bat-shit crazy, they probably won't increase it too much. People will eventually just buy a 4g hotspot and an unlimited plan, since they'll be paying $60/mo+ anyway.

If you don't have one of the few big companies servicing you I wouldn't expect them to be too bat shit crazy. Every telco / cable user group I have been to in the last 2 years have talked about how ISPs / MSOs need to realize that the days of old are gone. You are no longer a telephone company that happens to sell internet, or a TV cable company that happens to sell internet. You are internet company that happens to sell phone or happens to sell tv cable service to some customers. Everyone's job now is to be a big dump pipe and whatever you can sell as a side option to the big dump pipe is just a bonus. So the small and mid sized company realize and somewhat accept this change and know that they are all competing to be the best option for a dumb pipe to your house. Now the big guys, who knows what they have in their head.

 

[IndyColtsFan]

The cable/internet companies are fighting hard to make sure you're going to still pay them even if you cut the cord:

1. Many are buying content providers (see: Comcast, AT&T).
2. Usage caps which, of course, they'll exempt their own streaming services from counting towards to incentivize you to pay up.
3. By being content owners, they can raise the prices charged to folks like SlingTV.
4. They have little competition in their markets providing Internet, so they'll just raise those rates too.

 

[YeuEmMaiMai]

Dear cable company,

This is what happens when you rape your customers on excessive pricing...

 

[Viper16]

Even with Roku, you have to pay for Netflix, amazon, sling, and every other streaming service that you want. After awhile when you are paying $10 + $10 + $30 + $15 + $20 + $10 that starts to add up and paying $70 isn't that bad of a price then.

Yeah the price tag isn't bad, but you have zero control of what content you can watch and when, you are at the mercy of the scheduling. Besides when I was paying $+180/mo for my bundle savings, I still had Netflix/Amazon, and found I was watching one channel for maybe 2-3 hours a week. The channel content has gone to garbage. Just look at all the channels that were created for history and science content, mostly turned reality TV show and reruns. Very sad. Even the major broadcast channels, fox, nbc, abc, are all replaying the same content sometimes in reruns or sometimes in spinoffs or copying the same recipes. It got old, and now I can watch what I want, when I want, and browse through all the skip all the content I was wasting my time on...including the obscene amount of commercials. I feel commercials also did nothing but help cause this decline in subscribers.

 

[BSmith]

I keep hearing about this roku, but have no idea what's it. Is it a service? Or a device? Or an app you can install? And is it only available in the US?

The problem with streaming is that I'd have to pay for 3-4 different services. HBO GO, Prime, Netflix, whatever, instead of paying a single fee, and watching anything. With streaming I can't watch everything even if I pay due to geographic restrictions applied. I signed up for prime and 3/4 of the library was off limits to me.

https://www.roku.com/

As far as geographic restrictions go, I have no idea what those are about.

 

[shspvr]

Frist of all min of you are not a true Cord Cutter which mean you only watch TV off an Antenna that is the true meaning of a cord cutter, it where you get away from Cable TV and Satellite TV and include online TV Streaming service.
It really torque my jaw is that people don't know the different and online community keep have twisted around from it true meaning is when it first started.
Media Streaming doesn't count as a cord cutter when you subscribed to Amazon, Hulu, iTunes, Netflix and YouTube or what ever case may be you are nothing but a Media Streamer.
Now we have TV Streaming which also doesn't count as a cord cutter when you subscribed to Sling TV, PS Vue, DirecTV Now, YouTube TV, Hulu TV, FuboTV, Philo that is just same Cable TV and Satellite TV with it multichannel subscription television services.
Oh by the way as more people are switching to online service all it doing is drive up price of those online streaming portal any way and before long you end paying just as much if you have been pay attention.
What I like see is a true TV service where I can pick and choose the individual channel we want to watch with out all other useless junk, Like pick 10 channel for XYZ price with none of this carp we have take all that networks broadcasting plus there sister channel package to.

I think part of main reason why some people are switch to online streaming is just look how crape the Cable TV is with it on digital signals which has more reception problems at lease where I live vs over the internet

 

[BSmith]

Even with Roku, you have to pay for Netflix, amazon, sling, and every other streaming service that you want. After awhile when you are paying $10 + $10 + $30 + $15 + $20 + $10 that starts to add up and paying $70 isn't that bad of a price then.

Yes, but the mangement of any given service is still through one portal, regardless of the billing. Right now, we are paying less than $40 U.S./month for the services we want and that will vary, depending on what service we are not using. Roku just makes it easy to manage it all.

 

[Rockenrooster]

Our Apartment people signed a contract with Charter so now all of us are forced to pay for TV AND Internet, and costing us more money. Which is unfortunate for us since this apartment was the cheapest around.
So freaking mad mostly about forcing everyone into it and less about costing more.

 

[doublejack]

You can buy a car in India for 1/10 the price... but you are going to have to pay levies if you try ti import it into NA.

The content owners can sell their content anyway they see fit. Your streaming service doesn't say you get access to everything we offer everywhere in the world for X price... they say you get everything we offer in your market for X price.

Using VPNs to bypass your contracted services geo lock is piracy.

I'm not saying you should care... I am a full on pirate, and don't loose any sleep. There is no moral high ground though about paying for a service and then using a geo unlock. Due to the structure of international distribution deals... without geo locks the streaming services wouldn't get their hands on a ton of stuff, as for a long while yet its going to be more profitable for rights holders to sell localization rights to Forgin distributers.

Bottom line if your using a VPN... save your self all the monies and just find a good torrent site. Cause you have no moral high ground. Your a pirate.

These are digital goods with an extremely low transaction cost, it is just a matter of bandwidth. There is also nothing in the way of inventory. You can't really compare streaming to physical goods like a car or even a DVD. Legislators and courts are struggling with how to create and apply sane laws for all parties involved. Companies don't have the ability to claim rights or create laws themselves (except in the US where they buy laws via lobbying and campaign donations, but that's a rabbit hole I won't go down for now).

So, when you say that using a VPN to bypass some company's region restrictions to stream something is an act of piracy, I completely disagree. There is no law that says a company has the right to know where I'm located as a visitor to their site. My privacy matters. There's also the fact that WWW means "world wide web". If a company is putting something out there on the web they should expect literally anyone in the world can access it.

At this time, streaming and geo locks are very much a gray area. In my view, this is a classic case of business clinging to old school concepts and not getting with the times. DVDs had region locks, so streaming from the web does, too. Except in the case of DVDs it is a plausible business model, while it is not for streaming. VPNs make the model impractical. Businesses will have to go back to the drawing board.


As a final thought, if we are going to compare physical to digital goods then that is more proof that using a VPN is not piracy. I imported a bunch of DVDs from Belgium, some of which don't have an English sound track. That was not piracy, either. I just had to own a DVD player of the appropriate region. How did this work? The DVDs were made, shipped to Belgium, and then shipped to my residence. All done legally. How does streaming work through a VPN? The stream starts at the origin site, goes through the VPN provider's server (could be in Belgium! lol) and ends up at my residence. Absolutely no difference... except the process happens so much faster.

 

[Uvaman2]

I will not pay for ads.