Even cable TV is getting a bit smarter and offering closer to ala cart selections. Rather than paying for 400 channels, of which you will watch 7–15, they are starting to allow you to customize your services. As with ala cart pricing, if you get over 20 channels, you might as well get all 400, but its a start
The cable bill ignores the price of internet service, which is the lions share of the cable company’s bill. I wish the Government had declared Internet service as a public utility, something like clean water, sewage and electricity was so important to the health and well-being of the population that the Government would assure its delivery until the systems were well established and could be privatized. Remember Trash Service, Sewer Service, Water companies and Power distribution used to all be public utilities.
Once they became ubiquitous, then private companies could out-compete the government (often with disastrous results in some cases (think Detroit Water)) because they didn’t have to build the infrastructure (laying sewer and water often takes Governmental Imminent Domain powers) and Rural Electrification was still working on connecting America to power into the 1990’s.
