If you have cable television, and some of the televisions in your home are directly connected to cable, with no box, you could soon be paying extra for the same service.

Cable Television
Flickr User Ho John Lee
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Edgar Dworsky, the founder of ConsumerWorld.org, says under a recent Federal Communications Commission rule change, cable companies can require that all of their customers must have a cable box connection - even for basic service.

He said, "This is going to be a big revenue raiser for the companies after the initial couple of years.  There's a great suspicion that a lot more people are going to be affected than what the FCC thinks."

Dworsky pointed out after an initial 1 or 2 years of complimentary service, "You'll be paying for every TV that's hooked up to cable, and the typical price around the country seems to be around 9-95 a month, so you're talking a hundred and twenty dollars a year, times how many years."

He said if you already have cable television boxes, this won't affect you.  It just affects people who have cable connections directly into the back of the television without a cable box.  Dworsky said, "Unfortunately it seems that the FCC wasn't watching out for the consumer because this is going to be a jump in many people's cable bills.  It's unfortunate that cable companies kind of hold sway at the FCC, maybe over the interests of average consumers and subscribers.  It certainly seems like everyone who is the situation of not having a box, but being a subscriber, after the initial year or two of the free box, your rates are going to go up."

 

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