Why I decided to Cut the Cord?

I am very happy that I cut the cord and while my story may not be applicable to everyone, it's certainly indicative of what could be looming as a disruptive movement if just a couple of things were to align.

Someone from Consumer Reports once said: "The are three certainties in life: death, taxes and the fact you likely hate your cable company". My cable company just recently received a 62/100 in the largest annual consumer survey of customer satisfaction, its highest score in the last five years, not exactly glowing, right?

My journey has been ongoing focused on the strained relationship between myself and my cable company - years of terrible customer service, inept call center reps, spotty internet service, high pricing and the overall feeling that I was just "stuck" - unfortunately because of the area where I live in, I have had no option of choosing another cable provider, ... until Now.

In addition, when I considered cutting the cord there were a couple of reasons that led me to explore this further:

1) Cost/Value - IMO my bundled cable, internet and phone bill has been fairly high. This year I would have easily paid $4k - just for what I would consider basic services - no premium services included at all. I figured let's explore if I can find a comparable but cheaper alternative.

2) Programming - I may have access to hundreds of channels but the reality is that probably like most people I only watch a few channels (10-15) on a recurring basis and then i watch a few movies thru Redbox or one of the services like Netflix or Amazon Video. Note: The number of cable channels in an average US household is 189 but on average viewers only watch 17 channels despite having another 172 choices.

3) Partial Freedom - Did not want to completely depend on my cable company because of the reasons mentioned earlier and also wanted the ability to take my TV service with me regardless of where I went. As long as I had Internet, I wanted to make sure I could connect to all my services and content in one consistent way.

I can tell you that only after 60 days I have achieved all the objectives I set out to reach: 1) I was able to cut my monthly bill by 60% - not bad as that went to fund other things. 2) I was able to retain all the channels that mattered to me and thru the service and the Amazon Fire TV device I chose, I now could get all these other TV and Movie content as part of my Prime subscription all under the same interface. 3) Since I cut the cord, I have been able to reduce dependency on my cable company and get the ability to take my tv service in an USB drive to other places I travel to- around the country.

There are 3 major choices of streaming content providers such as: Sling TV, DirectTVNow and Sony Playstation Vue and then you have hundreds of the individual channels / networks / content providers as apps.

These services may not all have all the bells and whistles yet, but very soon they will. These companies know that in order to compete with the large cable institutions, one thing where they can differentiate themselves is on speed to market, digital savviness, ease of use and technical integration. Finally, the rate of innovation; in the streaming world and in the apps, which act as the gateway to all my TV and Movies content, is exponentially increasing. I don't see the same rate of innovation from my cable company, not even close.

There is also an interesting ongoing race between the streaming device companies: Amazon, Apple, Google and Roku but we'll cover more of this in a subsequent article. Suffice to say that the streaming device firms are all doing a much better job than the streaming content providers.

The latest numbers on cord-cutting from research firm GfK might give a few people some pause. A full 25% per quarter of U.S. homes don’t subscribe to a pay-TV service, according to GfK’s 2016 Ownership and Trend Report. About 17% rely only on broadcast signals for their TV needs, while close to 8% only use the internet to watch their favorite shows on a TV set.

In my opinion, here are the 3 things that need to happen in order to accelerate the adoption of cord-cutting:

1) Programming Choices - The programming choices from the streaming providers need to continue improving to be at par with the cable providers.

2) Telco Intervention - The Telcos in order to compete with the Cable companies could start owning these streaming services and therefore even making them more competitive in terms of pricing: AT&T owns DirectTV Now, T-Mobile and Sprint could do the same. I would be very interested in seeing the T-Mobile offering if they ever offer it, they are very good at breaking the mold and truly disrupting the industry.

3) New User Interfaces and Metaphors- there's a tremendous opportunity that exists in improving the navigation of programming, apps, movies, etc and no one has figured it out yet - Google TV as usual was actually pretty close to doing it and actually a little early for its time but I think if Amazon or Google focus on this they can do it, specially thru the use of their incredible virtual assistants - Alexa or Google Now. At Globant, we are already exploring with internally developed next gen UX interfaces and the results are amazing.

Overall, I would recommend to at least explore the benefits of switching, specially if you are not happy with your cable company and the chances of that are probably high.

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About the Author: Alejandro Mainetto is a Senior Partner with Globant and he has more than 20+ years of experience in implementing Technology and Content Strategy, Emerging Technologies and Digital Products and Solutions across industries. Deep expertise and understanding of the Media and Entertainment Industries. At Globant, he helps transform industries and works with many leading firms in driving market disruption. For more information feel free to reach out to him at: [email protected]

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