Major Cable, Satellite Companies Hike Prices
Those who have been paying exorbitant prices for their pay TV packages on cable and satellite are about to get some bad news: Nearly all of the major pay TV companies across the nation are about to raise their prices for customers currently subscribing to their services.
According to a report on NBC News, major pay TV providers like Comcast, Time Warner, DirecTV, AT&T U-verse, Dish Network and others have announced plans to increase the prices of their TV bundles.
Subscribers to Time Warner Cable could see payment hikes of around $10 or more, depending on what packages they have. This increase will come sometime in early 2016.
According to an announcement earlier this month, Comcast is also following that move with an announced average increase of 3.9 percent, which will affect customers across the board based on their specific subscriptions. The company is also increasing the local broadcast TV fee from $3 to $5. This is the cost that the company charges customers for local TV stations that broadcast free via an antenna, essentially charging to retransmit that free signal into bundled packages.
Dish Network, DirecTV and AT&T U-verse all have similar increases in store for their customers. Those three have announced increases ranging from $2 to $8, again depending on customers' specific packages.
This is a bold move by pay TV providers because it comes at a time when many people are opting for "cord cutting" plans, dropping their cable TV packages and watching their content on the Internet via other services, such as Netflix, Amazon Prime, Hulu and Sling TV. Even Apple has a pay TV subscription plan coming to their set top boxes soon.
According to Variety, 19 percent of young people have already opted out of cable and satellite TV and started exclusively streaming their content online. With the latest pricing move from the major cable and satellite companies, that percentage could increase exponentially in the near future.
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