INSIGHTS
MAR
4
COSTA’S CORNER: BRAVO MILLENNIALS
As you have gathered over the last few months, my column can sometimes turn into a bitch fest and today’s column will be no different.
Somehow, I think this is one of the legacies my father passed down to me, the biggest thorn in my side, the cable bill.
For years, because like most Americans, I am addicted to television, I have noticed one not so surprising thing. My cable bill always goes up. Maybe for a month or two it will remain the same but after a short break, it will go up. Maybe four cents, maybe a dollar, but it will always be more at the end of the year than it was at the beginning of the year. I know, I know, subscriptions to all the various channels and what not go up, so I just suck it up and pay.
The amazing thing about Millennials is that they do not like to pay for anything. It doesn’t matter if they came from an upper middle-class background or not, if they can figure out how to get it for free, they will. This does not bode well for cable companies as their next batch of loyal (imprisoned) customers isn’t so loyal and they are willing to do what no generation before them has, cut their ties to cable.
Good for them I say!!
What I don’t get, is why cable companies don’t see this and try keep them in the nest by changing the way they do business.
Why bundle telephone, internet and cable together? The Millennials don’t use landlines, they don’t really watch normal TV. All they want is a secure internet connection. Even if it’s not totally secure they don’t really care. They trust the encryption protocols of the companies they deal with to keep their information secure and prefer paying zero for that connection.
By the end of this year, 98% of Manhattan will have free WIFI and access to the internet will be free.
Granted, as that system is being used more frequently, it will bog down and you will be forced to have some sort of internet in your home anyway, it’s possible to push the cable companies out of your life and be free from their tyranny.
If you think the technology does not exist where WIFI can be streamed into your home without the need for cable wires and routers and modems and all the other nonsense that cable companies dump on you, your mistaken. If the communities where these cable companies operate were not so beholden to the cable companies themselves, the financial incentives to build an open WIFI network would be there.
Since most towns, villages, counties receive rights fees from the cable companies to operate in their communities, they have no incentive to allow a competitor in and that’s where the progress of technology stops.
What the Millennials are doing by their tight-fisted ways, is changing the landscape once again and this will eventually force cable companies to operate differently and hopefully lower our connection fees and do away with that bundling scam, they have perpetrated on us forever.
Keeping it the same. I don’t own any cable or telephone companies in my model portfolio.
50% Stock
25% Fixed income
25% Cash
Somehow, I think this is one of the legacies my father passed down to me, the biggest thorn in my side, the cable bill.
For years, because like most Americans, I am addicted to television, I have noticed one not so surprising thing. My cable bill always goes up. Maybe for a month or two it will remain the same but after a short break, it will go up. Maybe four cents, maybe a dollar, but it will always be more at the end of the year than it was at the beginning of the year. I know, I know, subscriptions to all the various channels and what not go up, so I just suck it up and pay.
The amazing thing about Millennials is that they do not like to pay for anything. It doesn’t matter if they came from an upper middle-class background or not, if they can figure out how to get it for free, they will. This does not bode well for cable companies as their next batch of loyal (imprisoned) customers isn’t so loyal and they are willing to do what no generation before them has, cut their ties to cable.
Good for them I say!!
What I don’t get, is why cable companies don’t see this and try keep them in the nest by changing the way they do business.
Why bundle telephone, internet and cable together? The Millennials don’t use landlines, they don’t really watch normal TV. All they want is a secure internet connection. Even if it’s not totally secure they don’t really care. They trust the encryption protocols of the companies they deal with to keep their information secure and prefer paying zero for that connection.
By the end of this year, 98% of Manhattan will have free WIFI and access to the internet will be free.
Granted, as that system is being used more frequently, it will bog down and you will be forced to have some sort of internet in your home anyway, it’s possible to push the cable companies out of your life and be free from their tyranny.
If you think the technology does not exist where WIFI can be streamed into your home without the need for cable wires and routers and modems and all the other nonsense that cable companies dump on you, your mistaken. If the communities where these cable companies operate were not so beholden to the cable companies themselves, the financial incentives to build an open WIFI network would be there.
Since most towns, villages, counties receive rights fees from the cable companies to operate in their communities, they have no incentive to allow a competitor in and that’s where the progress of technology stops.
What the Millennials are doing by their tight-fisted ways, is changing the landscape once again and this will eventually force cable companies to operate differently and hopefully lower our connection fees and do away with that bundling scam, they have perpetrated on us forever.
Keeping it the same. I don’t own any cable or telephone companies in my model portfolio.
50% Stock
25% Fixed income
25% Cash