Cable Giant Raising Prices, Lay Off Hundreds as 2024 Gets Rough - 'Services Have Been Impacted'
Cable TV giant Spectrum is raising its rates.
CNET reported the move Sunday, citing a Reddit post from a person claiming to be a Spectrum employee.
Spectrum confirmed to the tech site that rates are increasing this month but did not offer details.
The Reddit post said the base price for internet service would increase by $3 or $4 depending on which type of plan a homeowner has.
The post said home phone plans will increase by $3 and the TV Select cable offering will go up by $3 per month in certain states.
“We continue to expand and improve our offerings to ensure all customers have products and packages that best meet their needs,” a Spectrum representative told CNET without citing figures.
“While our services have been impacted by rising costs, we strive to keep prices as low as possible,” the representative said.
In January, Spectrum’s plan for low-income customers rose from $20 to $25 per month and the cost of renting a router rose from $5 to $7 per month.
The rate increases come after the company closed call centers in Grand Rapids, Michigan; Columbus, Ohio; and Rochester, Minnesota, over the past two months. The closings eliminated 745 jobs.
Spectrum announced in April that in the first quarter of 2024, it lost about 72,000 residential and small business internet customers.
At that time, the company’s figures indicated that from March 2023 to March 2024, it lost 405,000 TV subscribers.
Spectrum’s Prices Are Going Up in July. Here’s What You Can Do https://t.co/oTvZnwJ9Vm
— CNET (@CNET) June 30, 2024
The U.K.’s Daily Mail noted that the price increases come at a time when streaming services are also raising their rates. For example, the cost of an ad-free Netflix subscription has risen from $9.99 per month to $15.99 per month.
Writing for The Verge last month, David Pierce explained what’s taking place with television providers.
“Companies are looking for any way they can to improve their bottom line. They’re cracking down on password sharing, canceling shows for the tax breaks, and even selling their prized content to other platforms,” Pierce said.
“But the most common strategy is simply to charge you, the viewer, more. A dollar here, two dollars there. Add it all up, and the golden era of TV suddenly has a pretty startling ticket price,” he wrote.
In a May post on The Verge, Alex Cranz said consumers are paying the cost of entertainment evolution.
“When streaming first emerged, it was a beautiful alternative to piracy, which was very convenient and very illegal, and cable, which was festooned with ads and weighed down by channels you were paying for and didn’t want. Streaming gave you a world of content on demand for a fraction of the cost of cable,” Cranz wrote.
“But that experience was never sustainable. Content costs money to make, and companies are apparently obligated to ‘increase revenue’ and ‘make profit,'” Cranz wrote, adding that “streaming is becoming cable, and we’re all going to need to make peace with that.”
Spectrum provides service in 41 states, according to CableTV.com.
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