Cable Bill High? Phone Costs Up? Now, Let's Talk

A number of savvy customers are realizing that while times are tough for consumers, they are also tough for cable and phone companies. Under intense pressure from Wall Street to keep subscribers as the economy sags and competition intensifies, many carriers are bent on retaining customers even if it means offering big price breaks. On the surface of it, the country's biggest carriers continue to boost prices despite the downturn. In January, Comcast and Time Warner Cable raised year-over-year prices by 6% for TV services, notes Craig Moffett, an analyst at research company Sanford C. Bernstein. AT&T Inc., meanwhile, increased the price of high-end services, such as bundled movie channels, by 30%. Behind the scenes, however, the companies are much more accommodating. Many are offering steep discounts to keep, win or win back customers. Consumers, reeling from the recession, are crafting novel ways to cut costs, including switching to cheaper prepaid cellphone plans and using Web-enabled mobile devices to connect to the Internet instead of buying home broadband connections. Negotiating with cable and phone companies may present a more direct route to saving on communications services costs. And companies are often happy to make deals with customers -- particularly if that allows them to poach them from rivals.