You’re stuck at home. So, of course, cable and internet bills are rising (again)

Rates for many of the communications and content services we’ve all grown to rely on over the last year have risen recently or will rise in 2021, and there’s little you can do about it. Pay-TV service providers have watched their revenue decline as a growing number of Americans cut the cable cord and rely instead on internet-based streaming services. To compensate, and to keep shareholders happy, the industry keeps steadily increasing the cost of broadband internet access — and claiming that the higher fees are justified by ongoing investments in data networks.

That’s a bogus argument. Mark Cooper, director of research at the Consumer Federation of America, said there’s no need to expand broadband cable networks. “They already have plenty of dark fiber,” he said, using the industry term for unused network capacity. That is, even though there’s more online streaming to people’s homes, the networks have more than enough bandwidth to handle the load. Harold Feld, senior vice president of the advocacy group Public Knowledge, said the same. “If you want to make your cable network go faster,” he said, “you’re talking about software upgrades. You’re not talking about new fiber.” 

Thanks to years of mergers and industry consolidation, many of the companies that provide pay-TV and internet access are also in the programming business. When they insist, therefore, that they have to raise rates because of higher programming costs, Cooper observed, “they’re just paying themselves.” “All they’re doing is making up for their pay-TV losses with higher charges for internet,” Cooper said.