I know the movement is to cut the cord and go Internet only, but we like our DirecTV which being satellite I say is not cord, so there. But here is an example of why it may be the company shooting itself in the corporate foot.
The photo on top was taken in 1,999 after Hurricane Irene visited us and dumped an unholy amount of rain on us. We had recently moved, mom was visiting from Venezuela and got to enjoy (not really) a storm like that for the first time. Please notice where the yellow arrow is pointing, you may able see something squarish just under the surface of the water.
Now, this second photo was taken minutes ago and the arrow is pointed at the same location.
That is the Xfinity cable junction/distribution box. Yes, built on the shore of a lake in South Florida. This is the backyard, not the front of the house.
When I wanted to upgrade my High Speed internet, ATT which had been my DSL provider at a very low speed did not have plans soon to upgrade the area. I canceled and went with Xfinity because they provided 20 Mbps at a price that was “cheap” but only for 12 months. After that we were aware that we were to pay more, but that is another ball of yarn.
When the cable guy came to install the internet, he went crazy looking for the box. My brain finally remembered and I took him back and asked him if that could be the box. He looked at me like I was drunk and having sex with an ostrich, but he jumped the fence to check it out: it was the box. He muttered cusses and invocations about who was the moron who came up with such a brilliant location, took pictures for a report swearing up and down that this was going to be moved to a better location, but in the meantime, he would do the installation for my home. If you enlarge, you can see the orange cable still running out and through the fence.
I wanted to quit Xfinity because the service was spotty every time it rained hard (no shit), it was miserably expensive because they charge even for the labels of the frigging modem they rent you and would not stop calling me to upgrade to cable TV phone and Internet. About a year and a half, ATT called (surprise!) and informed me they went fiber optics in my area and could offer me service. It turns out I could get double the speed I was getting for half the price so I changed.
Twenty frigging years and they still have not moved the stupid box from its seasonal underwater location. I’ll stick with DirecTV and Amazon Prime.
ATT sucks
We had the opposite here. We had DirecTV and Century Link. It was costing us $240 for satellite without any movie channels and 10MBps Internet, and every time we got a thunderstorm or a hard rain, the satellite went out. Good thing we don’t get thunderstorms in Central Florida. Then about every three months or so, we would get a message that “your receiver is unable to communicate with the dish” and it would take 4 or 5 days before a tech could come out. By then, the system was working again. They replaced the receiver, the cable, the dish, and the LNB.
Then we found out we could get Xfinity for cable and Internet. We bought our own modem for $170 to avoid the rental fees. Now we pay $130 a month for the same channels plus a year of 2 premium movie channels AND our speed is over 50 MBps.