Over the four quarters cable basic subscription has dropped, while the telcos, AT&T and Verizon, and Direct TV has shown growth. In fact, telco and dish basic growth is greater than cable's loss, indicating that there are still homes that are new to cable television.
Of the cable operators, only Insight has for the most part gained subscribers for three of the four quarters. Comcast has consistently had the most loss for the same period. While cable may be selling more services to their current customers, data and telephone - the triple play, it is finding itself selling to a smaller and smaller universe.
In summary, the incumbent has a serious challenger in the telcos and better do more to reverse this trend or will find itself selling less of its other products and losing serious revenue. Today, AT&T and Verizon's share of the cable universe remains small, but the indication is that they are growing fast. Per the JD Power report, telcos and satellite are beating cable for customer satisfaction. The trend should be disturbing to cable and they need to act FAST or risk losing their lead in the next few years. Customers are dissatisfied with the service, choice, quality, and price. Cable is zero for four and has built for itself a bad reputation in the marketplace. It is time to re-evaluate and change internally, then market that new approach to win back customers. Otherwise, the leak in the dam will only continue to grow!
This is why Cable fought so hard to stop telcos from being able to offer television services. It's brought real competition to the market.
ReplyDeleteWe switched from cable to FiOS because FiOS offered more speed, more service, and more channels for less money. And to top it off, Comcast's STB DVR software was abominable. Seriously disgustingly bad.
They'd been running Microsoft STB software in our area as a nod to our local giant, and it wasn't very good. When they said they were switching from Microsoft to their own STB software, we were overjoyed. And then when they switched, we were horrified. They had replaced something that was bad with something that was worse. And their response to complaints was "sorry that you don't like it."
Is it any wonder we switched?