Time Warner Cable Commits The Sin of Bundling Gluttony

When I read how one of the last media properties to resist online distribution of their content, HBO, has now launched a broadband download service, a big red light started flashing in my brain, because it comes with a catch:  you have to be a digital cable subscriber to the HBO cable channel, and you must use your cable provider for Internet access, in order to get the HBO broadband download service.  Of course, HBO is owned by Time Warner Cable, so Time Warner has no interest in unbundling their content from their purpose-built hybrid-fiber-coax headend-based video distribution plant. 

By restricting users of HBO Broadband to digital cable subscribers using a cable-owned Internet access, Time Warner is committing the sin of "bundling gluttony," and their customers will take note and resent it.  Time Warner is just resisting an inevitable unbundling of content and distribution.  There is a ton of content out there that isn't owned by the cable companies, and, as water always finds its way downhill, this "unaffiliated" content will seek out the most efficient and ubiquitous distribution service.  If Internet Protocol isn't already the most efficient or ubiquitous, it will be, someday. 

Any more, when I get a bundling offer from any service provider, my internal "marketing alarm" goes off and I get suspicious that the service provider has a lot more to gain than I do if I take the offer.  And what is the worst kind of bundle?  It's the kind that mixes layers in the network stack, like this latest HBO bundle does.  Okay, so if I want The Sopranos on my PC, I can't get it if I buy my Internet access from Verizon?  And, even if I buy Internet access from Time Warner Cable, then I still can't get The Sopranos on my PC if I don't buy the digital cable package with HBO from Time Warner, too.

It's enough to drive a man to illegal file-sharing.

Please, please, just let me choose my Internet access, and let me make a separate choice about what kind of content I want to buy. 

Comments

[Dan Misener]

Interestingly, "banks in Canada are not allowed to engage in "coercive tied selling" or "forced purchases". This means that banks are not allowed to unduly pressure or coerce you into obtaining a product or service from them or from their affiliates, as a condition for obtaining another product or service from them. This practice, called coercive tied selling, is illegal in Canada."

From Kirby via the Spark blog: http://www.cbc.ca/spark/blog/2008/01/bundles_love_em_or_hate_em.html