Atlantic Broadband cost
 

I am an Atlantic Broadband customer and I have some questions about my billing. Before I call them, I wanted to see what others are seeing. I looked through some of the older threads and cannot see what I am looking for. Atlantic Broadband is a bit sneaky in that they don't seem to publicize their packages so you can compare what is offered and the expected cost.

I am paying about $60 a month for their "turbo" internet service, 100 MBS. I'm basically OK with that. The internet service is what I am most interested in.

I am paying $90 a month for their "value" TV package, lots of cable channels but nothing special. That seems a high to me. TV isn't that important to me and I don't have any premium (movies and sports) channels. I do get HD on the channels I get.

I know that cable costs are high but Time Warner bundles a similar plan (175 channels with HD, 100 MBS internet) for $110 instead of my $150.

Am I getting jerked around?

At the risk of over-simplifying...
 

Yes - based on your math and reasoning - yes. I have Atlantic Broadband and Comcast and have noticed the same but I don't think there is anything we can do about it. Comcast vs. Atlantic broadband is like David and Goliath.

I have no other choice where I am...
 

Atlantic Broadband (Metrocast) or nada...

cost
 

I was wondering the same thing. I tried calling them but in order to talk to the special people that deal with current subscribers, I need to call during normal business hours. When I tried, I gave up after waiting for 30 minutes on hold.

At my other house, we have comcast. It went up crazily after my 2 year contract was up. It went to $260.

I decided to go internet only and use youtube TV. I did the trial subscription for a week and found it to be a nice package. $75 for internet and $50 for 70 TV channels. I called comcast and when I asked to switch to internet only, they rolled out the red carpet. Evidently, they are getting hammered by the TV stations for losing subscribers and being threatened with lower payments from the stations. So.....A new contract with internet, every HD channel that exists including the sports package, HBO and Showtime is now $125 for the next 2 years. Might be worth a discussion. I'll see if I can get through to Atlantic tomorrow.

I pay $170 for TV, with no movie channels (HBO, etc, just basic), with 100M internet on Spectrum/TW . Based on your your claims, I'm probably being ripped off, but I haven't tried calling and trying to rip them back. I'm just a simple consumer, expecting fair treatment, as I gave to others, when I was in the business.

The Journey
 

Our journey started with a package with Metrocast, cost a little over $100. Slowly but surely, the price went up. We had extended basic, standard internet, and phone in a package. Package got up to nearly $190 when TDS came into Alton with their fiber service. We signed on for TV / internet/ phone for $120 something, saving about $55 per month, rate guaranteed for 2 yrs.
After 2 years, our monthly bill started to climb and in just over a year, we were up to about $180. Decided to scale back to internet only. Internet cost would have gone to $79, and a huge charge one time to set up a new account number (they are a telephone company that does internet & TV, phone # is account#) . I asked how much to cancel everything, they said $24.95. I said make that effective Friday! ;)
Went back to (now) Atlantic Broadband for $50 and Youtubetv for $50. Also picked up two Rokus and life is good. We have signed into other streaming channels like PBS, Animal Channel, etc.
Lots of sports and old movies. Life is good at half the price. :cool:

Dave

The quote I gave for Spectrum was off their website and may be a "special" teaser rate for new subscribers. Your experience tells me I am being charged the "going rate" in the area for established customers.

I also have no choice because internet is important to me and I can't get high speed DSL (I had low speed DSL before and the switch to Metrocast high speed was amazing).

It's beginning to look like it isn't worth the hassle of calling them. I might get a special deal for a year or two but they will bump it up again.

When I originally got Metrocast I was planning to get basic cable for the local channels and stream everything else. I have a ROKU box. I found a lot of the streaming stuff was old junk. Plus, juggling all the access between different services made TV like using the computer but harder. Bad for me. Terrible for my less techy wife. PLUS, Metrocast had a 150 GB cap on data streaming. Bummer. I decided to take the easy way out and just get the next step up to the broader package of cable channels. Plus I still could explore the free streaming channels as I wanted or even activate pay streaming when I want to explore. That mix has worked well. Simple, one stop access for TV, with occasional steaming. BUT, as for all others, the price creeps up. Sigh.

I wasn't sure if $90 a month for just cable TV was the going rate. It seems so. I'm not looking to fight a running battle with Atlantic Broadband to knock $10 off my bill for a year or two. Seeing the teaser rates, I was hoping it might be a permanent $20 drop but it doesn't seem likely. :(

They are all the same. When you call and threaten to disconnect or change companies they offer you a token discount. The only way to keep cost low is to change every two years after your contract is up which is a PITA.
They go by analytics and they know that more people will just pay the higher price than switch.
After you disconnect they hound you to change back with offers that they wouldn't give you when you were a regular customer.
I don't get it, I was always taught that it was easier to keep existing customers than to sign up new ones but maybe the analytics say otherwise. It's always about which position makes them the most money.
Until they have a flood of disconnects things won't change.

For cable and internet, expect to pay $150-$200 (unless on a teaser intro rate). If you want a bunch of premium stuff, you will pay more. If you want to stream with YouTube TV or other, you can save $50 with a little remote clicker inconvenience. It’s a pretty standard equation - in NH, MA, FL or other.


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Something is tickling my mind. Wasn't some seacoast cable company coming to Laconia to compete with ABB ? What ever happened to that ?

If someone finds a way to unify and simplify streaming, for example search across all MY stream sources for a movie or TV show, and provide a menu that allows you to scroll through all your sources for what's on now, and manage all the logins from a unified interface, THEN the cable providers will be in real trouble. THAT is their real advantage now, a singular interface to all their services.

Streaming right now is like having to contract with a different power company for every light switch and plug in your house. Even if you saved 50% off your power bill, most people wouldn't want to deal with the hassle.

The cable companies KNOW this and bill as they do because they know, for most people, there really isn't a choice.

I think I had heard that Xfinity was branching out into the area.

AAAhhhh, here we go:

https://www.laconiadailysun.com/news...07758cc57.html

Atlantic Broadband
 

I got a notice with my monthly bill the rate increase effective October 1.
DTA up $2, HST up $1, local TV surcharge up .50, network recovery fee $1.

I called to see if Limited service rate will go up and it TBD. I thought rates are approved by the PUC?

Anyway during the call, I told the CR that I am on fixed income and will make a decision to drop my TV subscription. I rarely use it and the Roku stick has everything I need. They did not offer any deals or discounts. Just sorry to hear me go. Oh well.

Call and ask for the retention department... worked for me.

Youtube TV and strreaming
 

I have internet only and relay on youtube tv. I switched last year. The advantage: I can take youtube TV with me so I have one account for my east and west coast viewing which btw connects to the local market area where I am. Additionally, with Youtube you can have up to 5 household members on it so it allows my kids to use it as well. I have a Roku with remote. One of the free programs on roku is onenews which allows you to watch news for local stations or around the world. With the remote I find channel surfing very easy. I use netflix for movies which is also conveniently on the remote. I know there are a lot of other free streaming options for movies with roku, I just have not used them.

My advice is to try the 7 day trail on youtube TV or look up the channel line up on their sight.

My cost is 50.00 for spectrum internet in NH, 65.00 internet in CA. and 49.99 for youtube tv . My netflix is free as I am on my sons account.

Ok then...
 

That was 9 months ago, where are they already ? It sounds like Comcast is actually competitively priced compared to the options available. And stringing cable hopefully means they offer up to gigabit speed for Internet, which is really a must have for a lot of people.

Hurry it up already....

We also converted to internet only with Atlantic Broadband and subscribed to YouTube TV. Works for us and saved $100/month. The YouTube TV service works both at home and on Welch Island; same account.

Just received the new ABB rates:

All these cable companies are feeling the heat from the growing number of customers that are cutting cable and onto streaming services that offer far more value for significant savings. I had recently read that comcast was loosing cable customers at the rate of 10,000 per month.... that's some serious bleeding. :eek: They have apparently are launching a "free" streaming service in an attempt to compete of course it's not really free as there are certain requirements to get it for free and the content is limited.

Lots of cable customers are fed up with the high cost of TV and when you look at what it costs to get a few of these streaming services, Netflix, Hulu, Prime and combine that with Roku that gives you access to it all through a simple cheap piece of hardware with no reoccurring cost to use... why wouldn't you?

If they are losing 10,000 customers a month why do they keep raising prices? It makes no sense to me.

No one has mentioned Slingbox (as opposed to SlingTV)....one of the many things I learned about on this forum (Thanks Blue Thunder) Hook the Slingbox up at home (connects to cable box and modem) then, when up at camp, go to the Slingbox site and hook up to your at home cable! Why pay for cable twice? There is no monthly fee and the Slingbox is reasonably priced. Run an HDMI cable from your laptop to your TV and voila!

http://www.slingbox.com/

That is sort of a first generation to streaming content over the internet, now you can just access content directly instead of relaying off your service at home and do so from multiple access points at the same time watching different stuff. Offers a lot of flexibility along with buy once watch anywhere.

That customer bleeding apparently has accelerated and at least comcast is starting to finally notice they better do something or else. Thing is these cable companies are owned by larger media organizations and as such are slow to adapt. Roku as a content aggregator is growing exponentially pretty much being the #1 streaming platform where you can access just about every possible streaming channel or service out there. All the while you have streaming content providers gobbling up market share with cheaper services that are superior in content choices. Combine a free platform and cheaper better services and consumers are flocking to it.

Competition in this streaming service space at least for now will keep prices down, also the fact these services are no contract month to month subscriptions so if they start jerking people around they will leave with no penalty for the next cheapest option.

Cable Costs
 

One has to remember that when it comes to the cost of the TV portion of your cable bills the cable companies have little control. It is the content providers who set those rates. The cable MSOs pass the costs on to the customers. The profit margin for linear TV has been shrinking for years. They are making more profit from Internet and phone service these days.

Competition will help some of those costs come down, so both Laconia and Gilford should see some costs come down as Comcast starts offering service in those two communities. Unless I am mistaken that will start in January, or at least it will in Gilford. I am not sure of the timetable in Laconia.

Great!! We had Comcast when we lived in Massachusetts 11 years ago, and we hated them, but it has to be better than ABB. We have been notified of the price increase for 2020—up to over $200. And all we watch are about five channels and we have high-speed internet. So we will hope Comcast offers some better deals. 🤞🏻


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$200 in MA gets you gigabit Ethernet and whatever the platinum plan is called that gets you all stations, cross your fingers it’s the same up here.

Once you get a drop from both companies in your house, you might be able to bounce back and forth every couple of years to whom ever has the better deal.

Lets hope

That's an interesting statement but I'm not so sure of that. Two years ago I had DirecTV with a sat dish. After looking at their streaming service I opted to go that route, which cut my TV bill in 1/3, plus no more paying for boxes, dishes and all that other add on stuff. In it's place I went to DirecTV NOW streaming. Same company same content. The channel lineup was nearly identical. There is I would imagine a significant difference in cost to provide a streaming service over the internet versus conventional satellite service which probably explains the fairly significant price difference.

Content providers cut different deals with the various MSOs and the streaming services. That a number of providers own percentages of some of the streaming services means they can preserve their income streams even as viewership of linear TV continues to drop. Streaming services like DirecTV Now, SlingTV, Hulu, etc. tend to have lower opex than traditional MSOs. It's a different distribution model using different (and cheaper) technology.