OK, I am so far below you guys in understanding all of this that my head is spinning, but here is something to think about. We live next door to a millennial who has just graduated with a degree in some sort of technology, and he says that all cable and satellite systems will be obsolete in a few years. He claims the up and coming way that all programming will be delivered will be by streaming. This, of course, will not be free, but he thinks most streaming providers will offer some type of "pay per view" services so that you will pay for each program that you watch along with some type of monthly service fee. I don't know if he knows what he is talking about, but after all the talk about satellite systems (which I do not currently have) I don't think I'll be rushing out to get one.
Has your techy neighbor checked out the current streaming options? It's easily possible to replace pretty much all of the cable/satellite programming with streaming programming. Not every service carries all channels of course, so more than one subscription may be needed. The streaming service providers are dealing with the same program providers as the cable/sat folks, and have many of the same packaging problems when making deals with them. According to their financial filings, most of the current streaming services are either losing money or barely breaking even currently, as they try to build a larger subscriber base. I fully expect to see streaming prices go up in the future as cable and sat viewership declines. We're already seeing some price hikes such as YouTubeTV's recent $5/mo increase. They did add a few more channels though.
He's correct in the direction it's going, but it will take a little longer than "a few years". As far as campers go, streaming services (Hulu, SlingTV, etc.) will be competitive with satellite distribution of broadcast television when broadband internet is truly available everywhere. That includes campground systems and coverage from cell phone providers. You can already see some of the satellite providers move in that direction - DirecTV Now, etc.
For people who live in "sticks and bricks" homes and have access to cable or fiber internet this is pretty much becoming true for many people, especially younger ones. Two of my kids have dropped cable and/or satellite TV and watch all of their video via streaming. However, for those of us who are full-time RVers and who have to rely on cellular-based internet there's no way we're likely to be able to afford sufficient data to do this, at least not until the new 5G cellular systems are fully operational and that is probably a decade or more away. Although "unlimited" cellular plans are widely advertised, most of them have significant limitations. My wife and I watch a lot of streamed video content and currently burn through about ~150 GB/mo of data. I have considered eliminating the ~$100/mo I currently pay DirecTV but when I do the calculation of the increased data usage vs cost it still doesn't make economic sense. By the time we would subscribe to a service such as DirecTV Now to be able to watch the handful of cable channels we like, we might as well keep the regular DirecTV subscription which AT&T discounts because we have other accounts with them. One last point, if you're considering going to DirecTV Now because AT&T will let you stream it "free" if you have an unlimited AT&T phone, consider the fact that this summer we spent several weeks in locations where there was Verizon but absolutely no AT&T service. I can't afford to stream that much video on Verizon and it would have been a bummer not to have had any TV. A similar situation will exist for us next summer if we spend it in Canada as we currently are planning. I was able to get great DirecTV reception a couple of years ago on PEI but I surely wouldn't be able to stream that much video on a US phone operating in Canada even with the free usage Verizon allows. All of this is a long-winded way of saying that RVers have issues that are unique to them and, therefore, we're not going to go completely to streaming for a long time yet.
Yep, I'm not looking forward to the day our current $20/month grandfathered unlimited 4G/LTE AT&T service goes away. Our Verizon $5/mo unlimited 3G service is already quite limited as more towers are prepped for 5G using the old 3G space.
I think the good news is that the bandwidth available using 5G is so much larger than with 4G/LTE that data plans will probably reflect the increased availability. The same thing happened with cell phones years ago. I remember the first phone plan I purchased for a son who had to drive home to Albuquerque from Las Cruces through >250 miles of wasteland. As I recall I was paying ~$20/mo in 1993 dollars (almost twice that in today's $$) for something like 10 minutes of talk time!! Think of that in terms of today's phone plans, virtually all of which provide unlimited talk time!
Really, I'm not complaining about the reallocation of the 3G resources to 5G, just noting that 3G is disappearing as it occurs. I think the cell companies can easily offer unlimited talk time now, since the call volume has reportedly decreased as texting has become the new norm for many people.
Hmm, let's see, there's 3G, 4G, 4GTE, and 5G and probably 6 and & 7G's right around the corner. I have this old "LG" that I've used with great success in this new "G" world we live in now but I'm thinking I may have to finally give in and sell this collectible old cellphone that only takes calls and makes calls. It will text but I'm too cheap to sign up for one of those texting, tweeting, twerping and terzting G plans being offered for triple to quadruple my current monthly bill of $34.82 with unlimited minutes to anywhere in the not so free world. Anyone interested? I'd be willing to let this wonderful old and still working white elephant masterpiece go for say............let's start the bidding at about $350 plus free shipping. Any takers.......... BankShot............(aka Terry..........with a "T")
Terry, just so you know, our Tracfone LG Stylo3 Android smartphones using Verizon towers give us 20 hours of annual talk time for about $8.50/mo paying annually. That also includes 1,500 test messages and 1.5 GB of 4G/LTE data. Extra texts are $5/1,000 and extra data is $10/GB. We usually have one of our unlimited data hotspots with us, so the phones use that data instead of the phone data. If necessary, we can even turn on the phone's tethering feature and use it for Internet for our laptops and tablets. We've only done that in testing so far though. Oh, and buying the phones refurbished direct from Tracfone, they were only $60.
