AOL/TW Plans for $230 Monthly Cable Bill

Jonathan Campbell writes: "According to the article, subscribers will get over the sticker shock preferring convenience over price." Yay, it'll be so convenient having one company control my television, internet access and phone service. I can hardly wait.

$230 fo rthe whole package

[plone]

Here in Canada, Rogers charges $40 for internet access, $90 for cable (not basic) and about $40 for cell phone. That only comes up to about $170 per month, which in American Dollars is only about $112.

Re:Where does all that cost for cable come from?

[mbonnett]

Cable companies pay the networks for the programming they carry, and it isn't cheap. For exmaple this past year ESPN raised their fee by 200%.

Later

Re:Hmm...

[EngineOfCuriosity]

CNN is IMO already biased. Last night they had a section on Digital Music and Copyright and only presented the view of one "Entertainment" Lawyer who said that all copying of CD's was against the law, as if it were fact,and He failed to mention Fair Use. When the bottom line of the newschannel is run by a record lable such as AOLTime Warner what can you expect?

One service provider is OK....

[Doug Neal]

...So long as they provide a good service across the board. For a while I had digital TV, cable modem, and phone all from NTL at a really good price. The line rental on the phone was very reasonable and included unmetered dialup internet as part of the package.

Also the guys on the cable modem helpdesk were very clued up and a couple even knew a little linux :)

The phone and TV/internet line both came in together and were terminated on the same box on the wall.

My only complaint would be that it sometimes takes a while to get through to the right department when you need to call them...

Re:Hmm...

[Xylantiel]

2 things, I think that was his point. If you've watched TV lately you know they're already biased.

Also it's worse than you think, the Audio Home Recording Act explicitly makes it legal to copy CDs for "non-commercial" purposes. that's even broader than just fair use.

Re:AOL is going to lose out on this one

[Sycraft-fu]

640k. Ok, so technically it's not SDSL, it's RADSL, however the rate is semetric (640k bi directional). The particular deal I have is from Qwest. It's like $50/month for the 640k line, $45/month for the net access and $15/month for the block of IPs.

Oh, and don't ask me what makes it professional, I'm not sure. Near as I can tell, it's that they let you run servers and don't bitch about it.