Time Warner Cable to Cut Back on Promotions

i like how they pretend like the customer's want to or feel like they should be paying more money.

Theyre a business, they exist to make money for their shareholders, its not a mystery here. Never heard of a pro-bono cable company, although Google comes pretty close, but their pricing structure wont last long either.

Google makes money the same way free over-the-air TV makes money. Advertising. And it has been free for over 60 years already. It works.

Im talking about the Google Fiber project, not Google in general.

you my friend lack the skills to see the forest for the trees !

Google Fiber is making them money man..... Think of it this way , you know all those providers saying google should help pay for upgrades ? Come one I know you read those...

Well google is paying for upgrades, and are trying to get the middle man out of the game. Google owns the pipe and the advertising dollars will flow with it, plus no constant nags from providers with their hands out.

If you lack the foresight to see what they are trying to do then my friend you have not been paying attention.

Google will make even more off advertising by delivering the ads faster and also not having to play foolish games with providers, or hand out money to them.

Me thinks you need to take a business class !

Don't even bother. He has zero idea what hes talking about. He can't leave Google alone for 5 minutes. I wonder if he even realizes this article is about TW.

That explains why most of those OTA TV stations are now charging video providers to rebroadcast their "free" channel...

"Free" usually just means someone else pays.

Actually that is what free always means.

TINSTAAFL

Yes they are there to make money for their shareholders, BUT what they need to start realizing(and it seems it is just now trickling into their brains... at a turtle like pace) is that it cannot always be about making money NOW while bastardizing their FUTURE to do it. You CAN'T survive like that. That is what got us all into this mess of an economy in the first place.

Google charges $125 $120 per month, minimum, for pay-tv.

How is that "pretty close" to pro-bono?

shhh... google is a saint and is giving away things !

It's not like they are providing the services for profit and happy with making the small profits which made them so much money already.

Really? $125 "minimum" for standalone TV? Whats their triple play price?

According to their website it's $120/month. However, $70 of that is for gigabit internet (you can't get TV by itself). So really the TV portion only costs $50/month. Pretty much in-line (or cheaper even) than most MSOs.

With that said I'm also wondering how that comes close to being a "pro bono cable company".

Lets see, Google has to pay like $40+ a month in TV carriage fees like all other MSO's?

... and giving away 7 years of free internet, for like a $300 one -time fee is fairly "pro bono" dontcha think? Assuming the cost to build out to that subscriber, and their ONT/router whatever, how much profit is there? I'll bet the farm that its a losing proposition.

Deploying fiber out to service full paying $70 subscribers: Expensive as hell.

Having people pay installation fees (ie. no cost for google) for service you can provide with existing infrastructure while then having them wired up for sometime in the future to potentially have them upgrade to full paying $70 subscribers while at the same service getting free lip service in the form of "My one time fee internet service is better than the crap I had before": Damn good business sense.

You can't buy their pay-tv service for less than $120.

Period.

$70 for internet plus $50 for TV. Nobody is going to have fiber installed at their house for TV without internet lol

You still can't buy their pay-tv service for less than $120/month.

Why is forced-bundling not evil when Google does it?

What is good for profit is not always good for the company and could cause it to make poor decisions that only benefit shareholders profits at the expense of the companies own demise.

Yep. Look at Sears. Once the top retailer in the country. Made nothing but moves that enabled them short term gains but ultimately ending up getting bought out by a company who went bankrupt a year before (Kmart).

Circuit City was a similar situation but with no takeover unless you count the loser who bought the name for an internet site.

But that's how a majority of these companies operate and that's fine but when one does who basically has a monopoly on what should be a utility then its a real big problem.

Ignore Time Warner (or any companies) sales representatives attempt to upsell you a higher and more expensive package.

You can't blame the company for trying to upsell. If they are offering a lower, more basic, package take it rather than crying what thieves they are for trying to raise per-customer revenue by selling optional additional services.

(They may be thieves for other reasons, using other unsavory business or sales practices. But what is described in this article doesn't seem to fit such criteria.)

Verizon up to a few months ago would charge the same for the 2 play (TV, Internet) and 3 play. But now they charge $10 to add phone. So I think these guys just mirror each other, in fine oligopoly fashion .

Verizon also pushing quantum for $10. They tried to charge me, and I didn't bite.

The problem w/ TWC is that they only have 2 digital TV packages now in my area, broadcast (like $17--$10 on promo) and full cable for like $100. There are no tiers like Verizon, and since I don't do sports SelectHD and FIOS it is for me.

They will also raise the price of basic package, so you are going to lose no matter what. Personally, I wouldn't mind a little up-selling to 100/100, 500/500, 1000/1000 internet, but of course TW doesn't actually have anything real to upsell to.

without bundles........

standard cable tv service is like $70-80. add a dvr and a cablebox and taxes and fees and youre up to $120-$140 just for tv

most people would balk at paying those prices for just standard cable tv and would cancel it in a heartbeat.

Fios 79.99$ or I think it's 89.99
Triple Play with Prime HD + 50/25 Internet

TWC 89.99$ Triple Play With Basic 3/1 mbps internet who is a winner?

Actually verizons 79.99 package doesnt iclude shit for stations. but its not even worth comparing a price you can only get for 12 months. You need to go beyond that to do true comparisons.

I'm not a Time Warner customer but I do remember when my local cable provider rolled out Digital Phone. They were able to offer it much cheaper than a conventional landline and promoted the hell out of it.

I was astonished that the Cableco's didn't see the big picture. If they can digitize what was previously analog phone lines, don't you think someone else is going to do it with cable services?

Go back 7 years I had a pretty big all you can eat cable package. As they've raised fees I've continually cut out services which I now supplement with Internet based alternatives. Ever year the alternatives get better, and there's less and less a need to have Cable TV.

They are really in danger of only being single play. IE only being used for internet, because the internet can provide the TV content at a cheaper cost than cable.

Cable seems to be heading for a cliff. I think the only solution is to cut down the amount of channels, make leaner/meaner channels, and cut out the fat. Who needs 200 channels when you only watch 20 or 30 of them. I only watch that many because most of the good channels only air one quality show at a time (AMC, Showtime, HBO. etc..).

If you gave me access to HD sports via the internet (which I can get with NHL Gamecenter Live and a decent proxy) the need for even basic cable will dwindle.

The shift from the TV channels themselves seems to be from advertising revenue to carriage fees (charging the cableco to be able to resell the signal). Now it costs crazy amounts of money to watch TV that is 1/3 commercials. If you're going to leave commercials in, then make your channels more accessible. Stream them online for free. You'll get more viewership and thus more ad dollars. Trying collect diminishing ad revenue and carriage fees at the same time will backfire. People will only pay so much for TV laden with commercials. I find it astonishing that we ended up paying so much to watch commercials.

GREED

»www.urbandictionary.com/ ··· rm=gread

my bad

Just teasing. I like Urban Dictionary's definition though.

I have my words that I'm sure I mis-spell so if you catch me please feel free to nail me. LOL

Take care and have a nice weekend.

Dave

2 words !

Spell check

try greed.

I have never understood why people subscribe to cable VoIP. After the promotion, it is usually more expensive than a telco landline from my experience. Cable VoIP around here is $35 per month bundled as triple play, $45 for double, $55 for phone alone. Landline service from the telco is $16 per month plus some taxes/fees, regardless of how many services you subscribe to, and a lot more reliable. Seems like a no brainer.

you're going to make subscribers unhappy? Congrats on finding yet more ways to convince your customers to go elsewhere. (Stupid is as stupid does.)

You nailed it!!

As the saying goes, you can't fix stupid and ALL cable companies are headed that way. Just look at Charter's latest practices and you'll see the king of stupid!!

Last year, we threatened to cancel cable and got a 1 year discount in return. This year, we did the same and (after getting a "deal" that involved paying more per month for slower internet speeds) got a decent deal again.

However, every year that passes finds us using cable TV less and less. We're on the cusp of being able to go cable-free. I honestly think that the hardest part right now would be actually making the decision to do it and stopping the "we need to have cable TV momentum."

If they don't give us a deal next year and insist that we pay the full, overpriced amount, then we'll ditch cable and won't look back.

It's like Time Warner noticed a cut on their finger and said "we'll stop the bleeding by chopping it off." Yes, it'll work. The (cut off) finger will stop bleeding, but you'll just be bleeding more from your hand.

Got tied of the continued rate increases, so dumped TWC's ~$50 month phone service for Ooma's $3.92 service. Call quality the same if not better.

"Beacon" prices. LOL. At least here, Comcast doesn't flag anything except HBO for copying, and they have good double play deals. They just need to fix their picture quality problem.

It's not just about making money..... we all know that businesses are in business to make money. It's the very annoying desire to make MORE money than they did the previous quarter. That's why the twice yearly payment increases and the constant upselling. It's all about the growth. If the line on the chart isn't continuously going up, investors get pissed.

Screw the investors.... there was a time not so long ago, if you provided a good product or service and made a fair profit, everybody was happy. That's totally out the window now, as Corporations have decided they don't need to provide a good product, they can provide crappy stuff as long as they keep telling us it's good, we'll believe it. And a fair profit has turned into 'you better have a record quarter every quarter, or else your a failure'........

I still have a feature phone, and I won't give it up until they kill them all off...... and I'll just do without a cell phone then..... just as I do without paying for cable now...... no big tragedy..... kind of freeing actually, and gives me more time to do real stuff instead of being bombarded with tweet alerts, facebook notifications and stoopid pet trick videos.

+1

Don't forget those from promotions. Very annoying and tedious process to get one!

Time Warner is near the bottom of cablecos for offering a good value to the consumer. I'm happy I don't live in a TWC zone. Killing triple play is fine, but all that really means is price hikes for all anyway. Price + QOS are king, and if you can't deliver that better than your competition you will lose customers. Crap commercials inclusive.. you can't have hype.

ALL cablecos have more than earned back their investment money in docsis 3.0 The time's come to start reducing the prices for docsis 3 speeds of 50 megabits and higher to build greater adoption of these speeds & equipment. This acceleration will allow cablecos to re-allocate spectrum for docsis 3. I'm suggesting $29.95 unbundled starting 2014. This will pave the way for 300 megabit connections for $70.

Hah. Not going to happen. Cable companies (or telcos for that matter) aren't going to slit their throats by squeezing their margins. Prices won't come down, but the tiered package offerings will improve over time to increase their perceived value.

Ditched Comcast for everything except Internet (other choice is DSL). Took a home phone/DirecTV bundle through Comcast instead. Much happier.

I use the home phone to connect the alarm system to the central station and for calling customer service lines with long wait times where dropped calls are unacceptable. Home phones are handy for finding misplaced cell phones as well.

We're Time Warner Cable, What can we do worse?

I think they just answered their own question...



/M

Just signed into MyServices because I've been working towards getting all my crap off the DVR and canceling my the cable service and this thread was motivation to see what the plans were like for just internet. To my "surprise," TWC only lets you upgrade your services online. You have to call to downgrade. SMH.

they do not know the meaning of customer service. it takes at least 5 calls to get an answer. I wanted to upgrade my service but no one could work that out. I went with dish. its about caring for your customer and profits follow. its simple.

Dish doesn't care either. 3 months free with dish? Your designated months free are spread out over your contract to guarantee completion of your 2 year contract. Your customer support is outsourced from the start, at least with TWC you have a 50/50 shot of getting someone stateside that's an actual TWC employee.

As to the topic in general, when cable companies stop selling tv and switch to providing data/voice only, you'll all see every single online tv service have a rate hike because the entertainment networks will put the financial squeeze on them to recover the lost revenue no longer coming in from the cable companies. Anyone who thinks otherwise is in for a rude awakening.