Cable Internet Access - Bundled Service Offerings

Bundled Service Offerings

Many cable TV Internet access providers offer Internet access without tying it to a cable television subscription, but stand-alone cable Internet is purposely provided at higher rates—the extra cost is said to cover the cable line access much like phone companies charge a small line-access fee for having DSL Internet service without a phone subscription. There are those who allege that the higher stand-alone rates are not so much to more efficiently cover actually-increased cost as it is to compel the customer to bundle it with a cable television subscription (and thus to buy or lease a television receiver from the company). In the instances where a cable Internet customer insists on using stand-alone cable Internet, the cable TV signals are often removed by filtering at the line tap outside the customer's premises.

Meanwhile, Internet service providers (ISP) who purchase and then re-sell high-speed Internet access from, or through, cable companies (such as TekSavvy in Ontario) are generally not subject to the cable companies' higher rates, and thus can pass on regular-market-rate cable Internet to their end-user customers (giving the appearance of a "lower price"). Billing for such ISP-sponsored cable Internet services is still handled by the cable company, albeit on behalf of the ISP.