The end of cable as we know it?

[dougdirt]

I guess you haven't read the links posted earlier that show how several companies are already installing massively upgraded Internet access services all over the country right now, without any mention of bandwidth caps?

Most Asian and European countries already have better Internet access than we do in the USA. Do you think they are limiting Internet usage in Japan and Korea? Why would we in the USA want to restrict our ability to participate in the technological race against the rest of the world? Obviously, we wouldn't. The Internet access providers in the USA are fully aware that Internet usage and bandwidth are going to increase exponentially over the next several decades -- not only for entertainment purposes but also for industry, commerce and education. That is why they are already installing new systems than can handle 1000 Gbps (compared to the average of 10Gbps now) data rates all over the country. That means starting now in some places and everywhere else very soon we will have 100x larger "pipes" to the Internet than we have now. There really isn't any reason to think there will be caps placed on us. If a company wants to place a cap they will get outmatched by their competitors. Nobody has a monopoly anymore, new Internet providers are cropping up everywhere.

When consumers have a need there will always be companies that come along to provide it. When there is a barrier, somebody will invent a way to smash the barrier. Don't bet against technology or you will lose.

There are already better ways to access TV programming than via cable TV. Streaming is not going away. It is growing rapidly every day. Cable TV is a dying beast.

Money. Money. Money. Money. Money.

That is why America is going to set us back in the technological race. They don't care about that crap. They care about money. Internet access is going up and it isn't going to get any better with Comcast buying TWC and with the link provided in my last post, the FCC doesn't seem to be doing much to help things out either.

Heck, fastforward 10 years. Internet access is gonig to be $100 a month. Netflix will be $15. Hulu will be another $15. Some other streaming service you need will be another $15. Music streaming? $15. Next thing you know, you are still paying $300 a month for all of your content and Cable man is still getting his because they are making the $100 from you, then another chunk from everyone else so you can actually get your content quickly enough to have it worthwhile because the FCC said they can charge all of those companies money to get you the content quickly enough that you don't have to sit around and wait for it all to buffer.

[Caveat Emperor]

It is you being naive sir. What happened to the music industry proves just the opposite of your argument. In the 80s and 90s the music industry was charging us $15-20 for CDs and we were forced to pay it even if we only wanted one song. Now you can buy songs a la carte for $1. The money flowing into the music industry is a tiny fraction of what it used to be. The Internet broke the monopoly and now consumers are saving billions.

Not only that, but you can stream almost any song or music video you want on YouTube. You can listen to music tailored to your individualized tastes for free or very low costs on Spotify and Pandora and many other Internet streaming services.

The big cable companies will try like Hell to save their revenues, but it is very clear they will be making less and less money as time goes on. They are fossilizing as we watch. They won't be "good" with their revenues falling, but neither was Blockbuster. Their revenues are falling despite their best efforts to stop it. The government is not going to allow the cable companies to throttle American industry and education by bottlenecking the Internet to line their own pockets. This is a worldwide economy and our country will quickly fall behind Europe and Asia and everyone knows it, so even the greediest politicians and lobbyists won't be able to stifle technology. If American companies won't provide the necessary solutions then foreign companies will step in to fill the void.

Our grandkids will think of "cable tv" like our kids think of rotary phones and 8-track tapes -- relics of a prior epoch. It is plain as day that time is coming very soon.

Europe, Asia and most other countries operate on vastly different economic and social models than the United States and most, if not all, have strong histories of state-run media and strong state control over media. They're all, for the most part, a whole lot smaller than the United States -- reducing the cost for upgrades to their existing data infrastructures.

You also missed my point on the music industry -- there was never a huge "free music" revolution that everyone predicted. Most of the major P2P file sites have been shut down, and your major sources of "free" now require batch-downloading low-bitrate / high-compression audio from YouTube, risking virus contamination on BitTorrent, or listening to advertisements (and having no control over what you listen to) on Pandora or Spotify. As for reduced revenue -- that's as much a product of the Balkanization of music interests among the public as anything else.

Also, no one is disagreeing with you that "Cable TV" as we know it will probably be dead by the time our children come about -- what many people are trying to explain to you is that there are tons of factors in this process that almost uniformly point to prices remaining about where they are for content. The "Cable" industry is holding way too many cards with ISPs (that they mostly own), content creators, and lawmakers in Washington DC for this utopian "I pay $50 bucks a month and get everything I could ever want" future to come about anytime soon.

[krm1580]

I guess you haven't read the links posted earlier that show how several companies are already installing massively upgraded Internet access services all over the country right now, without any mention of bandwidth caps?

Most Asian and European countries already have better Internet access than we do in the USA. Do you think they are limiting Internet usage in Japan and Korea? Why would we in the USA want to restrict our ability to participate in the technological race against the rest of the world? Obviously, we wouldn't. The Internet access providers in the USA are fully aware that Internet usage and bandwidth are going to increase exponentially over the next several decades -- not only for entertainment purposes but also for industry, commerce and education. That is why they are already installing new systems than can handle 1000 Gbps (compared to the average of 10Gbps now) data rates all over the country. That means starting now in some places and everywhere else very soon we will have 100x larger "pipes" to the Internet than we have now. There really isn't any reason to think there will be caps placed on us. If a company wants to place a cap they will get outmatched by their competitors. Nobody has a monopoly anymore, new Internet providers are cropping up everywhere.

When consumers have a need there will always be companies that come along to provide it. When there is a barrier, somebody will invent a way to smash the barrier. Don't bet against technology or you will lose.

There are already better ways to access TV programming than via cable TV. Streaming is not going away. It is growing rapidly every day. Cable TV is a dying beast.

Look, I am not trying to be a jerk. Part of what you say you are correct about but you are not taking into account a very large piece of the equation. You are only focusing on the access piece.

Let me try it another way say you start your own ISP. AtomicDumplingNet. You have an apartment building with 100 people, so you fiber up the entire place, put 100G transport gear in the basement so that everybody in the building has 1G access. Where do you connect your transport gear too? How do you get the data from your building to the outside world?

[kpresidente]

So you are claiming that cable tv companies are going to jack your Internet access charges up to $150 per month? Come on now, you can't believe that. The trend is going in the other direction. Especially now that companies like Google and Facebook and others are becoming Internet access providers. Cable tv companies don't have monopolies anymore, not on tv and not on the Internet.

Absolutely. If broadband replaces cable TV, they already know you're willing to pay that, so why wouldn't they? Comcast and Time Warner operate at 10% margins, and they're going to operate at 10% margins no matter what. The pricing scheme isn't going to change that, the only thing that can change that is if somebody finds a cheaper way to put wires in the ground to your house.

The entire world has been going toward faster Internet speeds, larger bandwiths, fewer caps, more choice, lower costs and increased competition for years now. It is impossible to see that if you pay attention. I can't understand why some people are so intent on defending the status quo, which is so clearly evolving at a rapid pace. Some people just refuse to see the changes. The landscape has changed immensely in the last couple years.

Again, this is a result of advancements in the underlying technology. It has nothing to do with the pricing schemes.

[kpresidente]

Europe, Asia and most other countries operate on vastly different economic and social models than the United States and most, if not all, have strong histories of state-run media and strong state control over media. They're all, for the most part, a whole lot smaller than the United States -- reducing the cost for upgrades to their existing data infrastructures.

Exactly. Population density is key here. That's why Canada also has crappy internet.

[kpresidente]

Money. Money. Money. Money. Money.

That is why America is going to set us back in the technological race. They don't care about that crap. They care about money. Internet access is going up and it isn't going to get any better with Comcast buying TWC and with the link provided in my last post, the FCC doesn't seem to be doing much to help things out either.

Ugh. Comcast and Time Warner have almost no overlap so their merger won't have any effect on competition.

What it will do is reduce their capital costs so they make more money. But why should that bother you? Maybe you should buy stock rather than complaining.

[kpresidente]

The future of a la carte tv programming will have nothing to do with channels. Individual shows will be a la carte.

You can do that now. $3.00 an episode for TV dramas on Amazon. That means $60-$80 if you want to watch full seasons of GOT and Walking Dead.

Production companies will proliferate, producing only one or two series and making them available direct to the consumer via the streaming services and YouTube. The barriers for companies to produce their own shows will be broken and small groups or even individual people will be able to create their own works and put them on the market. It will be similar to the democratization of the music industry, which used to be dominated by a handfull of major record labels who could negotiate space in record stores and time on radio stations. Now music can be produced and marketed by the artists themselves, cutting out the middlemen and marketing their music directly to consumers on YouTube and iTunes.

I think most people feel like the quality of music these days is the worst its ever been.

Of course the music industry is different. They suffer because of all the theft. But you can't steal broadband (well, you can but it's not as easy).

[dougdirt]

Ugh. Comcast and Time Warner have almost no overlap so their merger won't have any effect on competition.

What it will do is reduce their capital costs so they make more money. But why should that bother you? Maybe you should buy stock rather than complaining.

Why should it bother me? Because it means there will continue to be no competition at all and let the one company in whatever area you are in, do whatever they like. Oh, and Comcast SUCKS. They suck hard.

And really, buying stock today probably doesn't do much because everyone already knows it is happening. The time to buy is over. Oh, and with the money I have to invest, I probably could buy one stock. Even if it literally doubled in price, whoopity doo.

[kpresidente]

I also want to point something out here...while I may be arguing against the pro-ala-carte people, I do think it's an inevitable transition and probably a beneficial one. But the people that think it's going to result in some massive change in what they end up paying for content are in for a big surprise. The only difference is that people that like sports are going to be paying a lot more while people that like Lifetime are going to be paying a lot less. That's more efficient and fairer, but the overall average cost is going to be the same.

[membengal]

Hey all, thanks for the interesting discussion. Just ran across this on Salon. Great read that covers a lot of ground and offers relevant info to a lot of what you all have been chatting about. I won't try to summarize it, but for those who have contributed to this this thread, I think it has some info and analysis that will be of interest:

http://www.salon.com/2014/04/25/say_...ge_everything/

[SunDeck]

Erik Brynjolfsson is predicting a second machine age, which is sort of like what happened once manufacturing figured out what they could do with electricity. He predicts that industry is just beginning to figure out how to use all the data that's created every second and as they start figuring that out, it will lead to huge jumps in productivity and opportunity. What's interesting about this to me and relevant to this discussion is the fact that leveraging data is going to require an infrastructure that facilitates the movement of that data, much of which is being created by consumers. So, in an era when new products will need access to more and more consumer data (seemingly inane as it may be), they will also need to be sure that it will be free flowing and abundant. That is, if what these guys predict is to become a reality, then things like data caps and throttling may well stand in the way.

[krm1580]

Erik Brynjolfsson is predicting a second machine age, which is sort of like what happened once manufacturing figured out what they could do with electricity. He predicts that industry is just beginning to figure out how to use all the data that's created every second and as they start figuring that out, it will lead to huge jumps in productivity and opportunity. What's interesting about this to me and relevant to this discussion is the fact that leveraging data is going to require an infrastructure that facilitates the movement of that data, much of which is being created by consumers. So, in an era when new products will need access to more and more consumer data (seemingly inane as it may be), they will also need to be sure that it will be free flowing and abundant. That is, if what these guys predict is to become a reality, then things like data caps and throttling may well stand in the way.

Its kind of a double edged sword. If you have an all you can eat for model for a flat price, users have an incentive to take as much as they want but the network providers have very little incentive to upgrade the network to support it since they make the same amount regardless. On the flip side if you charge based on usage users will tend to be more prudent with their usage whereas network providers will build networks as big as they need to be since every packet equals revenue.

Its kind of why I think they will go to the model of the cell phone providers where you have a set amount for a flat fee and charge for anything above it. People that occasionally use email and surf the web will notice very little change in price, but the people that are driving most of the traffic by downloading or streaming huge amounts of data will pay.

[AtomicDumpling]

Some of you guys just can't admit you're wrong I guess. That's fine. You can continue paying the extortive rates for cable TV that you can only watch at home. The rest of us will continue to pay 1/3 as much for 100x more shows and movies while we watch them anywhere we go, most of the time with free access to the Internet all over town. Very few people under 30 years are paying for cable anymore, it is just the old folks who haven't caught on yet and can't visualize or understand how the tv landscape has changed.

So to answer the question posed in the title of this thread, "The end of cable as we know it?", yes obviously cable as we know it has already changed permanently and is in the early stages of a death spiral.

We already get free Internet everywhere but in our homes. Basically we are connected to the Net all the time, and that is not going to be taken away from us by politicians. Some may try, but they will fail. Access to the Internet is ubiquitous everywhere with no limits and is cheaper than ever. Lack of access to the Internet is not going to be a bottleneck or a restriction on streaming content or access to the cloud. Anyone who thinks that is looking backwards in time. ISPs are ramping up their networks to 100x current levels fully expecting every business in the nation to be beaming wifi access over large areas. Customers and consumers fully expect to have Net access everywhere they go and businesses know it, so they will give it to them to keep them coming in.

Folks, Netflix costs $8 a month and has 100x more content than cable TV that costs $100 or more. Sure the price of Netflix will rise over the years, that is how life works, but it will never cost anywhere near as much as cable tv, which goes up in cost every year. You can subscribe to every streaming app on the market and still save tons of money compared to cable tv. Subscribing to cable tv is getting to the point where it is almost foolish really.

If you still think streaming won't be cheaper than cable TV I will have a laugh in 5 years, 10 years, 15 years. Lots of laughs over the decades I suppose, or at least as long as cable tv still exists, which might not be that long. This is such an easy call to make.

[AtomicDumpling]

Its kind of a double edged sword. If you have an all you can eat for model for a flat price, users have an incentive to take as much as they want but the network providers have very little incentive to upgrade the network to support it since they make the same amount regardless. On the flip side if you charge based on usage users will tend to be more prudent with their usage whereas network providers will build networks as big as they need to be since every packet equals revenue.

Its kind of why I think they will go to the model of the cell phone providers where you have a set amount for a flat fee and charge for anything above it. People that occasionally use email and surf the web will notice very little change in price, but the people that are driving most of the traffic by downloading or streaming huge amounts of data will pay.

Several Internet service providers, including all the big ones and several new ones have already started rolling out massive network upgrades to 1000Gbps (from the current average of 10Gbps) all over the country. The Internet will clearly not be bottlenecked any time soon.

[krm1580]

Some of you guys just can't admit you're wrong I guess. That's fine. You can continue paying the extortive rates for cable TV that you can only watch at home. The rest of us will continue to pay 1/3 as much for 100x more shows and movies while we watch them anywhere we go, most of the time with free access to the Internet all over town. Very few people under 30 years are paying for cable anymore, it is just the old folks who haven't caught on yet and can't visualize or understand how the tv landscape has changed.

So to answer the question posed in the title of this thread, "The end of cable as we know it?", yes obviously cable as we know it has already changed permanently and is in the early stages of a death spiral.

We already get free Internet everywhere but in our homes. Basically we are connected to the Net all the time, and that is not going to be taken away from us by politicians. Some may try, but they will fail. Access to the Internet is ubiquitous everywhere with no limits and is cheaper than ever. Lack of access to the Internet is not going to be a bottleneck or a restriction on streaming content or access to the cloud. Anyone who thinks that is looking backwards in time. ISPs are ramping up their networks to 100x current levels fully expecting every business in the nation to be beaming wifi access over large areas. Customers and consumers fully expect to have Net access everywhere they go and businesses know it, so they will give it to them to keep them coming in.

Folks, Netflix costs $8 a month and has 100x more content than cable TV that costs $100 or more. Sure the price of Netflix will rise over the years, that is how life works, but it will never cost anywhere near as much as cable tv, which goes up in cost every year. You can subscribe to every streaming app on the market and still save tons of money compared to cable tv. Subscribing to cable tv is getting to the point where it is almost foolish really.

If you still think streaming won't be cheaper than cable TV I will have a laugh in 5 years, 10 years, 15 years. Lots of laughs over the decades I suppose, or at least as long as cable tv still exists, which might not be that long. This is such an easy call to make.

Nobody gets free internet. Somebody might be allowing you to use theirs, but it is always paid for by someone.