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US: Do cable bundles cost consumers $34B in extra fees?

By  |  May 23, 2013

What, exactly, is the effect of the highly debated practice of cable bundling on consumers? According to one US law professor, cable customers are overpaying $34 billion a year due to channel tying and bundling. Professor Warren Grimes, from Southwestern Law School, has released a new article in which he calculates the overage fees for unwatched channels consumers are forced to buy as part of a package. The paper, “The Cable Television Case: A Giant Step Toward Irrelevancy?”, comes in the wake of a failed class action filed in 2007 against television programmers; Grimes was part of the plaintiffs’ legal counsel during his time as litigator at O’Melveny & Myers. The professor reaches his $34 billion number based on cable practices in Canada, where, according to the author, consumers pay about $342 less per year for the same television they would receive in the US.

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    Full Content: Thomson Reuters

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