Cable Industry Values Bundle To Consumers at $35 Billion Annually: NCTA [Multichannel News]
How much is the bundle of digital cable television, digital phone and cable broadband worth to the American consumer? Based on a report commissioned by the National Cable and Telecommunications Association (NCTA), the cable industry's trade association, the bundle is worth $35 billion each year. Economists Michael Pelcovits and Abigail Ferguson of Microeconomic Consulting & Research Associates completed the report for NCTA, which was submitted to the FCC as part of the agency's annual analysis of competition in video services.
CableTechTalk quotes the report:
In addition, these savings can be passed on; according to the report, “[b]undled services are priced between $5.00 and $50.00 lower than the sum of the prices of the components.” MiCRA estimates that that cable’s investments - $129 billion spent in upgrades between 1999 and 2008 - have resulted in about $35 billion in annual consumer benefits. The study shows that the benefits from offering new services and new service bundles are shared across all demographic groups, including lower-income households.
As the cable industry invested in its networks in the later '90s and early part of this decade, upgrading networks to hybrid fiber coax, cable providers the groundwork for advanced services, like broadband and phone and more and higher quality television channels. And the value of those enhanced services is now paying off dividends for cable customers. Around 60 percent of cable customers subscribe to cable broadband and around 26 percent subscribe to digital phone service.
The entire report is available on NCTA's web site here.
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