All the more reasons to enforce Net Neutrality, to ensure that Comcast won't start ripping Internet users off with caps and zero rating, to compensate for declining TV user base.
Netflix is now worth more than Comcast
41–50 of 142 posts
Re: Netflix is now worth more than Comcast
#42Traditional TV cut its own throat by expanding commercial air time to the point where customers are actively looking for and consuming alternatives. Rather then address the issue of why traditional TV is being rejected, Comcast is trying to coerce its members into subsidizing TV by making their subscription bundles more competitive then simply getting an internet connection. That won't do much in the long run as peop…
What Comcast doesn't mention is that when you get a TV bundle to save on internet costs the fees they tack on for TV increase the monthly bill by around 40% of the advertised rate. Bundling TV is actually more expensive when you look at the total bill but people buy according to the advertised rate vs. the actual bill.
There's no way that's true unless you live in a really messed up market, taxation-wise.
Here in the SF bay area I have gigabit internet through comcast and allow them to shove their "basic" cable TV service in my general direction (it's not even hooked up) because it 'saves' me $5 or $10 or whatever per month on my internet charges. (All I know is the total bill is $144 which is less than the advertised rate of $169 for Gigabit, but I've been through this excercise many times in the past 5 years, where I try to get JUST internet, and they offer me tv+internet for $5 or $10/mo cheaper; last time I didn't even ask for the full numbers)
Fees:
Broadcast TV Fee $8
FCC Regulatory Fee: $0.08
Franchise Fee: $2.01
PEG Access Support: $0.55
Local Utility User Tax: $1.55
State Sales Tax: $0.23
So, $12.42 in taxes and fees, only $8 of which is clearly related to broadcast TV (and here I'm assuming I don't pay that fee just by being a subscriber to a cable company, even if I get internet-only).
I plan on calling sometime soon to clarify, but I've done it many times, and it never saves me a penny.
Re: Netflix is now worth more than Comcast
#43Comcast has 15 billion in net income last quarter whereas Netflix had 185 million. And PE ratio of comccast is 19 whereas Netflix is 188. In the future where the cord cutting trend continues and Netflix gains tons of subscribers the valuation might make sense. But for now, I feel this looks like very overvalued.
The whole idea of "cord cutting" hurting cable is insane. If you don't subscribe to cable and you subscribe to internet based streaming services, you're still getting content delivered to your home via either a cable "cord" or the phone company. Netflix at most gets $12/month per subscriber. Comcast will get $80 - $110/month for internet service. Comcaast also has either no competitors in their market or at most one.…
It's hurting Comcast's TV business, not Comcast's ISP business. But they try to rip Internet users off to compensate for their declining TV profits (because of very poor competition and monopolistic position of Comcast as ISP in many places). That's exactly what they are doing by jacking up Internet plans prices, pushing nonsense data caps and so on.
They admitted as much themselves: https://www.mediaplaynews.com/comcasts-solution-to-video-sub...
Re: Netflix is now worth more than Comcast
#44Earlier quoted context omitted.
I pay my provider (in Germany) 29 EUR/Month, and that's for a premium offering (it's actually a business contract, not a consumer one). Sooner or later, despite the ridiculous monopolies, the lobbying power, the borderline illegal obstacles to newcomers, regardless of how deeply entrenched they are, these ridiculous $100/month providers will eventually be disrupted. So I see Comcast's revenue source under a considera…
People are always comparing ISP offerings in Europe/Japan to the US and saying it doesn’t make sense, but the scale of deploying service are just not the same. US: 9.8 million km^2, 33 ppl/square km Germany: 350 000 km^2, 231 ppl/square km
These prices are not valid outside of the higher density neighborhoods (by German measurements). You won't get that Internet outside of a settlement.
Yes, theoretically the cost of connecting smaller villages/town that are rather isolated to the next fiber hub is much more noticeable, but as long as you don't service a location where you can't get at least 1k homes from a single fiber hub with 'normal' 10km transceivers over single mode cable, bill the cable to the customer as a setup fee (1$/m should be feasible, and you can split the cost if you can share part of the distance between multiple customers, by splicing the customer lines to a trunk cable), and buy reasonably priced peering. Maybe bill at a like 80% or 90% peak billing (traffic get's averaged over 5 min time slots, the 20%-10% highest ones get ignored, and the maximum speed left after that gets billed at x$/(Mbit/s), each month. This makes it clear that it's only expensive to provide the Internet speed if it's not sufficiently averaged out over time.
But regardless, serving anything with a population density high enough for car-price-competitive bus service of once per hour, walking distance max. 10min, between 7am and 9pm, should not be more expensive than Germany. At least if you can get fiber deployed without superfluous fees enacted by NIMBYs. E.g., along other occasions where the street get's dug up.
Re: Netflix is now worth more than Comcast
#45Earlier quoted context omitted.
I pay my provider (in Germany) 29 EUR/Month, and that's for a premium offering (it's actually a business contract, not a consumer one). Sooner or later, despite the ridiculous monopolies, the lobbying power, the borderline illegal obstacles to newcomers, regardless of how deeply entrenched they are, these ridiculous $100/month providers will eventually be disrupted. So I see Comcast's revenue source under a considera…
People are always comparing ISP offerings in Europe/Japan to the US and saying it doesn’t make sense, but the scale of deploying service are just not the same. US: 9.8 million km^2, 33 ppl/square km Germany: 350 000 km^2, 231 ppl/square km
Average population density is borderline meaningless, it's the distribution that counts. A single cable between long stretches of nothing won't be the deciding cost factor, it's the net that has to be weaved afterwards. (Although - without having hard data - I'd guess that US-style sprawling suburbia is quite expensive to provide for..)
Re: Netflix is now worth more than Comcast
#46Traditional TV cut its own throat by expanding commercial air time to the point where customers are actively looking for and consuming alternatives. Rather then address the issue of why traditional TV is being rejected, Comcast is trying to coerce its members into subsidizing TV by making their subscription bundles more competitive then simply getting an internet connection. That won't do much in the long run as peop…
People have been complaining about ad time for years and nothing happens. People from other countries think our ad duration is insane. In the US it's about 9 minutes of commercials for every 30 minute slot, so roughly 1/3rd. Plus, commercials will disrupt a 30 minute show slot 3-4 times.
You can do some analysis on iTunes. When I look up "Leave it to Beaver," which came out in the 50s?, it was 4.2 minutes per 30 minute show, so it has more than doubled. You can tell by the run time of the show: 25:38 for Beaver vs 21:00 for Pawn Stars.
Some syndicated shows have been sped up slightly and edited so stations can add more commercials.
Re: Netflix is now worth more than Comcast
#47Traditional TV cut its own throat by expanding commercial air time to the point where customers are actively looking for and consuming alternatives. Rather then address the issue of why traditional TV is being rejected, Comcast is trying to coerce its members into subsidizing TV by making their subscription bundles more competitive then simply getting an internet connection. That won't do much in the long run as peop…
Not to burst your bubble, but I recently ditched Comcast/Xfinity for Internet TV. I tried several providers, and found that Xfinity provided the most permissive interface for skipping commercials on my DVR recorded content.
I settled on YouTube TV, however their policy regarding commercials is even worse than Comcast.
For example, if I record something to my YT DVR, AND the show is also available "on demand" YT will force me to watch the ON Demand version (with unskipable ads), or will block me from skipping commercials on the DVR version.
Whereas Comcast restricted skipping commercials on On Demand content, they did not force me to watch the On Demand version, and did not block my ability to skip commercials.
Hulu Live TV blocks commercial skipping completely on DVR content.
Re: Netflix is now worth more than Comcast
#48Traditional TV cut its own throat by expanding commercial air time to the point where customers are actively looking for and consuming alternatives. Rather then address the issue of why traditional TV is being rejected, Comcast is trying to coerce its members into subsidizing TV by making their subscription bundles more competitive then simply getting an internet connection. That won't do much in the long run as peop…
The biggest problem wasn't commercials (didn't help) but bundling. Why should I pay ... $10/mo for MTV/Nickolodeon? $20/mo for 20 different ESPN channels? A la carte cable offerings is what NFLX should be worried about. 10 live stations (maybe a small premium station surcharge) for a small fee will compete for the same limited number of leisure hours in a day we have on average. The idea we could use (or want) 500 ch…
Only Sling offers a "lightweight" bundle akin to your description. Most start with the same 50-60 base channels (I recently tried most of them). In a few years, "Internet TV" providers will essentially morph into traditional TV providers (jokes on us!)
Re: Netflix is now worth more than Comcast
#49Traditional TV cut its own throat by expanding commercial air time to the point where customers are actively looking for and consuming alternatives. Rather then address the issue of why traditional TV is being rejected, Comcast is trying to coerce its members into subsidizing TV by making their subscription bundles more competitive then simply getting an internet connection. That won't do much in the long run as peop…
There was an article a couple months ago about how fox/cbs/nbc/abc had committed to reducing the amount of commercials during regular programming. It was not an insignificant amount.
Re: Netflix is now worth more than Comcast
#50Comcast has 15 billion in net income last quarter whereas Netflix had 185 million. And PE ratio of comccast is 19 whereas Netflix is 188. In the future where the cord cutting trend continues and Netflix gains tons of subscribers the valuation might make sense. But for now, I feel this looks like very overvalued.
Comcast is more or less limited to customers where it currently has cables in the ground - which is a subset of the US population. To grow its customer base, it has to lay more cable, or enter into agreements with existing cable operators.
Netflix is present in around 200 countries around the world, some of them with significantly higher population than the US, and is available to anyone with an internet connection of some description. It's very possible that the valuation is in large part because of this potential.