Friday, February 17, 2006

Is your cable bill high? U.S. senators agree.

Do you think your cable bill is high, it might be reassuring to know that a bipartisan group of U.S. senators agree. New technologies that allow for high-speed data transfer over the Internet have revolutionized the way consumers and businesses communicate, shaking up the nation's communications sector from telecommunications to cable.

I think this is the start of movement to Cable al-la-carte, or paying for the channels that you want, instead of bundled packages. People who are against al-la-carte claim that it will increase prices overall, and kill off channels like the food network and HGTV, because the subsciber base would drop. While I do agree, it would be harder for those channels to get subscibers with out the standard model of just happening across them since they are part of the package. But come on, I have to support someone else's potential find? I for one would charge the channel and the viewer to break from this mold. Offer some of the channels top shows in downloadable format on a limited basis to let people see what the channel is like. I just did the math, and I'm paying around $50 a month for somewhere around 60-70 stations, seven of which are the only ones I watch. If cable al-la-carte is introduced, each channel would have to be over $7.14 each for me to loose any money, I also doubt that we would see channels (outside of premium channels such as HBO) go for that much, the standard 60-70+ channel package would go for $400-500+ a month. I truely belive making this move to cable al-la-carte is in our overall best interest. Even if the cable companies charge a rediculous amount of money per channel, that will only create a void for others to fill, others like IPtv, which I feel would trive in that environment. But that's my two cents.

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