Comcast vs. the cord cutters

The typical American household pays about $90 a month for cable television service, according to the NPD Group, a market research firm. But according to the research firm of You and Pretty Much Everyone You Know, when you click on your TV and browse the guide, what you often find hardly seems worth $90 a month.

This is the battle hymn of the cord cutter: You are paying too much for television, and you aren’t watching most of what you’re paying for. Over the last couple of years, millions of Americans have ditched their cable plans in favor of online streaming services like Netflix and iTunes. Really saving money?

But can cord cutters truly escape the cord? And are they, in fact, saving much money at all?

Comcast’s deal last week to acquire Time Warner Cable highlights the pickle that cord cutters may soon find themselves in. The acquisition rests on the assumption that as people cut back on their monthly TV plans, the cable lines coming into their homes won’t lose their value.

Instead, the more we imbibe of all the glories available on streaming services, the more we’ll need to shell out for highspeed broadband service.

In most households, the cable cord is the fastest conduit for broadband service. This suggests the strategy by which those once-inescapable cable providers might combat the rise of cord cutters: The cable giants will simply become even-more-inescapable Internet giants. Jacking up prices

Critics of the Comcast-Time Warner deal argue that it will eventually give Comcast the power to raise prices for its broadband and cable TV services and especially to hold its Internet-only subscription prices so close to its TV-and-Internet prices that few people will see much use in declaring their cable independence.

“Comcast and the new, giant Comcast are going to do as much as they can to stop you from unbundling,” said Craig Aaron, president of Free Press, a consumer advocacy group. “In order for you to get content you like, you’re going to be pushed to pay the cable bill, too.”

You can get a hint of such a future in Comcast’s price structure.

Today, its cheapest Internet service — a plan that a cord-cutting household might select — goes for $40 a month for the first year. It offers download speeds of up to 25 Mbps, which means it’s fast enough to stream two or three videos simultaneously.

Here’s the twist: Comcast’s cheapest TV-and-Internet plan goes for $50 a month for the first year, or just $10 a month more than the cord-cutter’s plan.

Subscribers to the bundle get the same streaming speed as the Internetonly plan, as well as basic TV service. Comcast also throws in its service for watching TV shows on your mobile devices.

Whether and how Comcast’s bid for Time Warner Cable will further shape pricing will be a matter of fierce debate before regulators sitting in judgment of the deal.