No broadband, no cable? No problem!
Fed up with your cable TV? Tired of paying for an expensive satellite package you barely use?
You’re not alone: Up to 15 percent of Americans have cut the cord, joining the 9 percent who have never had a cable or satellite TV subscription.
Altogether, that’s roughly a quarter of the country that can be called “cordcutters” or “cordnevers,” according to the Pew Research Center, which published a fresh study of consumer patterns Monday.
Buried in those results, however, is one statistic that sheds some important new light on the future of television: A huge share of cordcutters don’t even have home broadband.
From telecom companies to cable firms to satellite providers, the payTV industry as a whole is seeing an exodus of TV customers.
Where are all these people going? They’re turning to streaming services like Hulu, Netflix and Amazon.
Critics of cordcutting say that the tactic may not save you much money in the end. And they could have a point. To watch those streaming TV services, you still have to pay for a broadband subscription.
But hang on — what if you could eliminate that home Internet subscription entirely and still watch your shows online?
All of a sudden, you get rid of a bill of, say, $100 or more per month. Would you do it?
It appears that some already are. Only 6 in 10 cordcutters still subscribe to home broadband service — such as DSL, cable Internet or fiber — at all, the Pew survey shows.
The rest rely primarily on their cellular devices to stream shows and movies.