Atlantic Broadband cost

[MAXUM]

All these cable companies are feeling the heat from the growing number of customers that are cutting cable and onto streaming services that offer far more value for significant savings. I had recently read that comcast was loosing cable customers at the rate of 10,000 per month.... that's some serious bleeding. They have apparently are launching a "free" streaming service in an attempt to compete of course it's not really free as there are certain requirements to get it for free and the content is limited.

Lots of cable customers are fed up with the high cost of TV and when you look at what it costs to get a few of these streaming services, Netflix, Hulu, Prime and combine that with Roku that gives you access to it all through a simple cheap piece of hardware with no reoccurring cost to use... why wouldn't you?

[mcdude]

If they are losing 10,000 customers a month why do they keep raising prices? It makes no sense to me.

No one has mentioned Slingbox (as opposed to SlingTV)....one of the many things I learned about on this forum (Thanks Blue Thunder) Hook the Slingbox up at home (connects to cable box and modem) then, when up at camp, go to the Slingbox site and hook up to your at home cable! Why pay for cable twice? There is no monthly fee and the Slingbox is reasonably priced. Run an HDMI cable from your laptop to your TV and voila!

http://www.slingbox.com/

[MAXUM]

Originally Posted by mcdude

If they are losing 10,000 customers a month why do they keep raising prices? It makes no sense to me.

No one has mentioned Slingbox (as opposed to SlingTV)....one of the many things I learned about on this forum (Thanks Blue Thunder) Hook the Slingbox up at home (connects to cable box and modem) then, when up at camp, go to the Slingbox site and hook up to your at home cable! Why pay for cable twice? There is no monthly fee and the Slingbox is reasonably priced. Run an HDMI cable from your laptop to your TV and voila!

http://www.slingbox.com/

That is sort of a first generation to streaming content over the internet, now you can just access content directly instead of relaying off your service at home and do so from multiple access points at the same time watching different stuff. Offers a lot of flexibility along with buy once watch anywhere.

That customer bleeding apparently has accelerated and at least comcast is starting to finally notice they better do something or else. Thing is these cable companies are owned by larger media organizations and as such are slow to adapt. Roku as a content aggregator is growing exponentially pretty much being the #1 streaming platform where you can access just about every possible streaming channel or service out there. All the while you have streaming content providers gobbling up market share with cheaper services that are superior in content choices. Combine a free platform and cheaper better services and consumers are flocking to it.

Competition in this streaming service space at least for now will keep prices down, also the fact these services are no contract month to month subscriptions so if they start jerking people around they will leave with no penalty for the next cheapest option.

[Weekend Pundit]

One has to remember that when it comes to the cost of the TV portion of your cable bills the cable companies have little control. It is the content providers who set those rates. The cable MSOs pass the costs on to the customers. The profit margin for linear TV has been shrinking for years. They are making more profit from Internet and phone service these days.

Competition will help some of those costs come down, so both Laconia and Gilford should see some costs come down as Comcast starts offering service in those two communities. Unless I am mistaken that will start in January, or at least it will in Gilford. I am not sure of the timetable in Laconia.

[MAXUM]

Originally Posted by Weekend Pundit

One has to remember that when it comes to the cost of the TV portion of your cable bills the cable companies have little control. It is the content providers who set those rates. The cable MSOs pass the costs on to the customers. The profit margin for linear TV has been shrinking for years. They are making more profit from Internet and phone service these days.

That's an interesting statement but I'm not so sure of that. Two years ago I had DirecTV with a sat dish. After looking at their streaming service I opted to go that route, which cut my TV bill in 1/3, plus no more paying for boxes, dishes and all that other add on stuff. In it's place I went to DirecTV NOW streaming. Same company same content. The channel lineup was nearly identical. There is I would imagine a significant difference in cost to provide a streaming service over the internet versus conventional satellite service which probably explains the fairly significant price difference.

[Weekend Pundit]

That's an interesting statement but I'm not so sure of that. Two years ago I had DirecTV with a sat dish. After looking at their streaming service I opted to go that route, which cut my TV bill in 1/3, plus no more paying for boxes, dishes and all that other add on stuff. In it's place I went to DirecTV NOW streaming. Same company same content. The channel lineup was nearly identical. There is I would imagine a significant difference in cost to provide a streaming service over the internet versus conventional satellite service which probably explains the fairly significant price difference.

Content providers cut different deals with the various MSOs and the streaming services. That a number of providers own percentages of some of the streaming services means they can preserve their income streams even as viewership of linear TV continues to drop. Streaming services like DirecTV Now, SlingTV, Hulu, etc. tend to have lower opex than traditional MSOs. It's a different distribution model using different (and cheaper) technology.