My Comcast
bill arrived today with a sneaky new $2.68 charge, $2.50 for leasing one (and
only one) set top box and $0.18 for the remote.
This new billing line item, like the many others Comcast has introduced,
adds to its bottom line with no additional capital expenditure. It shows how resisting the obligation to return
to accepting set top box free, “cable ready” sets was a smart strategy. Now
Comcast can charge for a device rental that it used to provide free of charge
(for the first one), because consumers cannot access its service without one.
Remarkably,
the FCC never got around to replacing its CableCard “solution” with a viable,
consumer-friendly update. For their
part, cable operators never followed through on a “commitment” to offering “true
two-way” consumer access using increasingly versatile and intelligent
television sets to handle rather simple upstream commands to the cable
operators’ Headends.
Of course,
Comcast subscribers now can use their own set top boxes, such as a Roku, but the
company has a perfect, profit maximizing strategy for that as well: charge
$9.50 a month and rebate $2.50 for “subscriber supplied equipment.” Brilliant
and incredibly greedy at the same time.
I am well
overdue for a return to Over the Air Reception (“OTAR”) of broadcast television
even in my quite rural locale, centrally located in the middle of nowhere:
State College, PA. Comcast all but wants
me to do this, so it can concentrate on its transition to being a vertically
integrated broadband venture combining its owned content and conduit. Besides, broadband has far greater profit
margins, none of which have to be shared with content providers through
retransmission consent. Actually, revenues
flow the other way as when Netflix agreed to compensate Comcast for content
carriage.
Subscribers
of Comcast should revolt, but I suspect few will even notice the increase. What’s a few dollars more, especially after
Comcast’s now $8.00 “Broadcast TV Fee,” some of which flows to the company’s
NBC stations? Comcast also has a “technology
fee” that most high definition television subscribers have to pay. I guess the company can justify this
recurring line item as helping it recoup the costs for upgrading networks to
handle high definition signals.
You really
should examine the line items in cable television bills. Few companies can quantify and foist onto
customers their estimate of having to comply with government regulations and
pay local governments franchise fees.
But my bills has line items entitled Franchise Fee and FCC Regulatory
Fee. I call these costs overhead, but
Comcast frames them as “fees” that they can pass through to customers.
Finally, I
have reached the tipping point where gouging nudges—makes that pushes—me to old
school technology. I expect Neighborhood Homeowners Association opposition to
my outdoor antenna. Maybe I can assert a First Amendment right.
