In a highly competitive multichannel video marketplace, consumers are enjoying better value for their money as a result of the availability of more choices, higher quality programming and more advanced technology.  When you consider that the average cost of expanded basic cable service ($42.76 in 2007 according to SNL Kagan) is about the same as taking a family of four to a two-hour movie, the thousands of hours of quality cable programming each month are a real bargain.

Since the Telecommunications Act of 1996, competition spurred cable to invest more than $130 billion to deploy new broadband networks, leading to the introduction of exciting new interactive services that can meet consumers’ total entertainment, communication and lifestyle needs.

With a “triple-play” of high-speed Internet, digital voice, and digital video services, consumers are saving real money on their household spending.  Customers who purchase the triple play pay 31% less today, on an inflation-adjusted basis, than they paid for the three services 12 years ago – and the quality and breadth of all three services is significantly better.

Cable’s video service is a tremendous entertainment value, costing just pennies for every hour of viewing.  By using the Price Per Viewing Hour (PPVH) metric – most relevant because it measures actual usage of the service – consumers who subscribed to expanded basic service in 2007 paid just 13.9 cents per viewing hour, while digital cable customers paid 18.7 cents per hour in 2007. 

With the introduction of digital, HD and interactivity, video offerings have changed dramatically since the mid-1990s and consumers now have more choice than ever before.  With hundreds of programming options, better picture and sound quality and the proliferation of exciting new interactive services, today’s video service hardly resembles the service available years ago.

Cable prices reflect the actual cost of providing new services to customers, including the increased cost of creating award-winning programming, building and maintaining fiber-optic networks and significant labor costs to hire and train employees in an increasingly sophisticated environment.