Merger partners Comcast Corp. and Time Warner Cable Inc. are two of America’s least favorite cable companies, according to a new survey from Consumer Reports.
The cable giants showed up near the bottom of the magazine’s rankings in a survey of 81,848 users of television, Internet and phone plans, the magazine reported Tuesday. In the survey, whose results aren’t directly comparable with previous versions, subscribers gave the companies low marks for customer support and value.
“Everything else in consumer technology is getting more affordable every year - everything except communications services,” said Glenn Derene, electronics editor and the lead author of the Consumer Reports story.
Comcast is seeking regulatory approval for the $45 billion takeover of Time Warner Cable,giving it control of 30 percent of the pay-TV market. The deal would help the companies cut costs amid declining demand in the cable industry, where average bills of almost $2,000 a year caused the number of U.S. pay-TV customers to fall last year for the first time.
Susan Leepson, a Time Warner Cable spokesman, and John Demming, a Comcast spokesman, didn’t immediately respond to messages seeking comment.
Prices are climbing even with stiffer competition from phone carriers such as Verizon Communications Inc. That’s partly because networks such as CBS Corp. and Walt Disney Co. are charging cable companies higher fees to use their programming.
The Consumer Reports cover story shows just how much the pay-TV industry has infiltrated customers’ wallets. The rate of cable price increases was more than double the rate of inflation in the 15 years through 2012, Derene said. Providers of bundled phone, Internet and cable packages have ranked consistently low in the survey during the past six years, and are among the magazine’s lowest-rated consumer services, he said.
Comcast’s TV service ranked 15th out of 17 providers, while Time Warner Cable’s was 16th. They also were in the bottom half of phone and Internet providers and of 14 companies that offer packages of all three services.
The lowest-ranked TV provider was Mediacom Communications Corp., a cable company with 528,000 subscribers, mostly in the Midwest and South. Comcast has almost 22 million TV customers, and Time Warner Cable has more than 11 million.
Verizon’s FiOS was near the top in every category, while AT&T Inc.’s U-verse was in the middle of the pack.
Verizon’s prices are similar to what cable companies charge. FiOS customers pay about $150 a month, while Comcast got an average of $164 from video customers last quarter. Rising prices are one reason Comcast and Time Warner Cable, which each operate in different cities, are combining.
So-called cord cutters, people who have canceled TV service and kept high-speed Internet, have found an assortment of streaming services from Roku Inc., Netflix Inc. and Hulu LLC that provide some viewing alternatives.
The Consumer Reports article, called “Untangling the Bundle,” offers instructions about putting together a do-it-yourself “triple play” of individual services, with an antenna for broadcast TV, broadband for premium shows, and voice-over-Internet phone service from companies like Ooma Inc.
Business, Pages 26 on 03/26/2014