"As some of the posts on here show" - sorry Old Boy I think what you mean to say is that the BARB figures show, and report, that millions of people sit down and watch TV as scheduled in addition to catch up, streaming and time shifting.
You have made one quite interesting point here, I supposed like the broken clock everyone has their moments.
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Originally Posted by OLD BOY
As MoffettNathanson analyst Craig Moffett wrote in a note to clients this week, cable providers are coming around to the idea that it’s OK to lose TV subscribers as long as they keep paying for internet access.
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Let's think, why would operators of hybrid-fibre coax networks want people to use more data. Price rises!
Once the speeds that households need push through 24Mb ADSL2+ and 80Mb FTTC limits cable operators are ideally positioned to price their broadband products against FTTP offerings which will cost (on average) thousands per home just to put the infrastructure in place. Indeed, Openreach have a
wholesale price of £80 per month for 1Gbps. Virgin's 350Mb standalone has a standard price of £55, so expect 500Mb and 1Gbps to be similar and higher respectively once launched.
Cable operators around the world are positioned to deploy technologies to millions of homes that can reach these speeds at a fraction of the cost on their existing networks and hike their prices to match the rest of the market.
FTTP is unlikely to be regulated in the same way as copper lines and the amount of genuine competition available to each consumer will likely be virtually non-existent for years to come (this brings me back to
oligopoly but I know people get bored of economics).
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This could be right, of course, but having just acquired the 'ultimate oomph' package, which gave me my existing channels + Sky Movies + Sky Sports + 500 Mb speed broadband (instead of 'only' 200 Mb) and a new 'unlimited' SIM for only £1 more than I was paying before, I do wonder if the cablecos are ready to ditch the pay tv subs so readily just yet.
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Now let's break down your package - I'm guessing you got the offer price of £99? The Rt. Hon. Phillip Hammond MP is straight onto a wedge there.
So you've got a SIM, and not owning their own network there's a chunk of money to our good friends at BT already. The unlimited SIM retails at £27, but who knows what goes to BT. Will we call it a tenner? Higher? Lower?
Sky Sports and Sky Movies will obviously be contentiously priced. It's not in the public domain, but when relations were slightly worse between Sky and the cable operators they actually insisted they had to sell these channels at a loss on cable! Now if you don't have the top bundle (or a predecessor) Virgin charge an astonishing £58.75 for Sports and Movies HD. Wow. That's a lot. The undiscounted price on Sky is £49, but it goes on offer at £34. There's really no way of knowing what chunk of your subscription goes on this - but it'll be sizeable. More than a score? Higher? Lower?
Sky's basic channels, of the famous dispute fame, and all the other third parties on the platform are onto a chunk. £3 a month? £5? Pennies per channel, of course, but with hundreds of channels pennies add up!
We're back to our good friends BT once again as BT Sport has a reasonably lucrative, but undisclosed, deal for all it's channels to be included in TV XL or whatever they call it these days. Way back in the dim and distant past Setanta reportedly got a similar deal at £2.50 a month, and they weren't fronting up the thick end of £2bn every three years for football. BT, on it's own platform, charges over £15 a month. I think it's fair to say Virgin's wholesale deal is probably at least double Setanta's given the financial commitment BT is making in sports rights.
So, would Virgin prefer to sell you broadband at £55 a month you need but can't get anywhere else, or a discounted ultimate oomph package at £99 and hand out all this money to third parties and to a great extent rely upon them to sell their overall package?