It’s often said that triple-play brings benefits to consumers by lowering the aggregate cost of the services. But is that really true? This ad here on the right is from an ongoing Time Warner Cable promotion – let’s see what’s behind it by taking it apart and compare similar offerings if purchased separately.
Here’s what the basic “starting from” $99.95/month package from TWC includes:
- TV: cable with 130 channels. Pretty much your basic cable package in the US.
- Internet: a “high-speed” connection, they say. But when you read the fine print, their definition of high-speed is a downright pathetic 768kbps/128kbps.
- Phone: a basic VoIP phone with unlimited calls to US, Canada & Puerto Rico.
If that doesn’t sound very enticing, what alternatives would one have? Here’s one option that you can get if you buy similar stuff separately from other providers – assuming, of course, that you have the luxury of choice:
- TV: comparing TV packages is a bit tricky as the channels differ and most of it’s crap anyway, but let’s take Dish Network‘s 120-channel package as a comparison here. That goes for $33.95 / month.
- Internet: there are plenty of providers out there for Internet access – let’s take AT&T as our comparison here, who offer 1.5Mbps/384kbps DSL at $19.95/month.
- Phone: there is no shortage of VoIP providers either. Vonage offers a $24.95/month package that includes unlimited calls also to some European countries, in addition to US, Canada and Puerto Rico. If you went with Sunrocket, you’d get unlimited US calls for $17/month on a 12-month contract.
The above single-picks sum up to $71 / month. That’s almost $30 less than the great “triple-play” offer, plus you get a much faster Internet connection plus you have a lot more flexibility. Now $99.95 suddenly doesn’t seem so cheap anymore, does it? Well, I’m not sure if it ever did – what’s worse, the $99/month is a promotional rate with a 12-month contract and it’ll end up costing even more later on.
I’m starting to think that the whole point of triple-play bundles is just to confuse the subscriber sufficiently so you can charge more, not less, for the same services.
Would you be willing to pay $30/month extra for a single bill for worse services? I didn’t think so. Nice to see businesses again helping people make better choices. Not.
