Ever had one of those times when the Internet died and you can’t get it back up for the next 4 days since it is a long weekend? Well, I just did. Time Warner disconnected our Internet connection on Friday which meant a long weekend with no Internet. It was difficult. I realized Steam sucks and one is better off not paying for games. But that’s another story. Coming back to our Internet connection. Due to some confusion we had to get a new connection and we opted for Time Warner and when the technician came with the new modem suggested that we enrol for the regular cable connection as well.
Being college students and two of my room-mates having Netflix, we declined. The technician then explained that we should go for it even if we don’t watch television or hook the wire to a television! Intrigued we asked why and were told that Time Warner would give us a $5 discount on our Internet connection if we signed up for the cable service. Flummoxed at the offer we agreed. Who cares if they’re giving us a $5 discount?!
This got me thinking, given Netflix’s domination of online streaming and them having more subscribers than Comcast, Hulu and Apple’s upcoming cloud services, cable companies are screwed. Whether they like it or not, people aren’t excited about cable when they can have Hulu and Netflix on all their devices, synced and have better control over their content. When I say control, I mean recommendations, updates and reminders.
Time Warner’s offer to club cable with Internet is interesting because they realize people will love the $5 discount and Time Warner gets to tell advertisers that they have x number of subscribers.