Bundled services are the latest thing to hit the telecommunications industry, or at least the branch of the industry that provides services for people in their homes. Comcast is one of the premier companies to offer digital cable TV, high speed Internet, and home phone services that are bundled together in the sense that Comcast installs and administers all three services and that customers receive one bill for all of the services that they get from Comcast.
There are a couple of benefits for the customers to go for all three of these services from Comcast. For one thing, it's simple: there's only one company to deal with for all three services. For another thing, Comcast offers free installation for all three services. Perhaps most importantly, the customer saves money by having all three services bundled together versus getting them from separate companies.
Of course, there are benefits to Comcast when it comes to supplying digital cable TV, high speed Internet access, and a home phone line to customers. The obvious benefit is that Comcast makes a profit on each of the three services rather than just making a profit on one or to of them individually. The second, and perhaps more important reason for Comcast to offer these three services at a discount is in order to attract customers that might ordinarily subscribe to satellite TV, or even get some customers away from satellite TV providers.
There's been a long feud between the satellite TV industry and the cable TV industry. Each have their own advantages, but as cable TV technology has improved, the playing field between the two has largely been leveled. Now bundling digital cable TV service along with home phone service and high speed Internet service is Comcast's latest strategy for getting an edge on its competitors that use satellite technology.
The good news for Comcast is that the strategy has worked. For all of its strengths when it comes to delivering TV programming, satellite technology is extremely expensive and commensurately inefficient when it comes to delivering phone and high speed Internet services. By contrast, phone and high speed Internet services take advantage of variations on the same cable technology that Comcast uses to deliver TV. Therefore all three services fit together perfectly.
Of course, individually all of the services that Comcast offers are pretty impressive. For example, the TV programming is delivered with an all digital signal for the best possible quality. The digital TV service also comes with up to two hundred and seventy five channels (more than enough to compete with satellite TV) various forms of video on demand services, digital music channels, and HDTV channels. The high speed Internet service provides download speeds of up to 8 megabytes per second (which is about four times as fast as the most you can get out of a satellite Internet connection), and plenty of value adding bonus and security features. The home phone service will likely save you a ton of money because of the fact that it includes all of the domestic long distance calls that you care to make. It also includes things like caller ID and voice mail as standard features.
The bundling of services is a good idea both for Comcast and for consumers.