Page 24 - ARUBA TODAY

A24 TECHNOLOGY
Friday 12 april 2019
Live online TV, once a bargain, is getting more expensive

By TALI ARBEL day, they have no choice
NEW YORK (AP) — If you but to keep raising prices,"
signed up to stream live TV said MoffettNathanson's
in hopes of saving money Craig Moffett. If that means
over traditional cable, you a steep drop-off in de-
may be in for a rude sur- mand from users, the enter-
prise. tainment companies could
Live online-TV providers eventually feel the bite.
like YouTube TV, DirecTV AT&T, intent on profit-
Now and Hulu with Live ability, announced a $10
TV lured users with digital price increase for DirecTV
"skinny bundles" that were Now in March; it's now $50
cheaper than cable. Now, a month for the cheapest
many are raising prices. tier, even after it dropped
The latest is Google's You- some popular networks
Tube TV, which is increas- that it didn't own. (Some of
ing its monthly fee to $50. them, including MTV, BET
It launched at $35 and has and Comedy Central, re-
raised prices as it added turned a few weeks later
more channels. after AT&T resolved
The first of this crop of TV a dispute with Viacom.) It
services was Dish Networks' also raised prices in 2018.
Sling TV in 2015. Its most at- Hulu raised the price for its
tractive feature was price, live-TV service in February,
since it offered a handful by $5, to $45. Sony's Play-
of popular, live TV chan- Station Vue raised prices by
nels for $20 a month. A This May 30, 2007, file photo shows a cable box on top of a television in Philadelphia. $5 last year.
string of other companies Associated Press "Pretty much all of them
announced similar services have come to market
in the years that followed, up. They have racked up AT&T canned big dis- traditional TV packages. from day one saying we're
many priced from $30-$40 more than 7 million users, counts. MoffettNathanson That could turn still more cheap cheap cheap," said
a month. YouTube TV, Hulu according to MoffettNa- noted that growth slowed people off, particularly as Frost & Sullivan analyst
Live, AT&T's DirecTV thanson Research, helping for the online-TV providers subscriber fatigue sets in Dan Rayburn. "It's no longer
Now and others were far offset the declines in tradi- overall. with a slew of new stream- that much cheaper than
cheaper than a traditional tional TV customers for en- Price increases starting last ing services coming from cable."
cable bundle, which costs tertainment companies like year — just like you get Disney, AT&T, Com- Dish has been more of a
about $100. Disney, Comcast's NBCUni- with your cable package cast and others. holdout. Last year, it raised
Cable executives derided versal and Viacom. — may be to blame. This But the problem for the TV the price of Sling's cheapest
the online TV packages as But that bump may be pe- year has brought another services is that program- package by $5 to $25, leav-
unrealistically cheap, but tering out. DirecTV Now lost round of price hikes, often ming costs go up every ing its fatter bundle alone
they have grown in popu- customers for the first time as the bundles fatten up year, so they're passing at $40. It's also currently of-
larity as cord-cutting picked in the fourth quarter after and more closely resemble those on. "At the end of the fering a big promotion.q

Yahoo to pay $117.5M in latest

settlement of massive breach

fornia. The value of that set- to be the biggest data mortifying end to the reign
tlement had been pegged breach ever. of Yahoo CEO Marissa
at $50 million, but Koh ques- And now the $117.5 million Mayer, eventually prompt-
tioned the calculations. settlement could become ing the company to reduce
A more detailed break- largest amount ever doled its selling price to Verizon by
down used in the revised out for a data breach, a $350 million.
settlement drove up the recurring problem in an in- Verizon has since written off
estimated cost. The money creasingly digitally driven much of the nearly $4.5 bil-
will be paid by Yahoo's cur- world. It eclipses a $115 mil- lion price for the Yahoo ac-
rent owner, Verizon, and lion settlement that Koh ap- quisition in sign of the erod-
In this Dec. 15, 2016, file photo, the Yahoo logo appears on a Altaba, a holdover from proved last year to cover ing value of that business.
smartphone in Frankfurt, Germany. Yahoo's past that still owns 79 million people who had Lawyers representing the
Associated Press a stake in Chinese internet personal information stolen Yahoo accountholders es-
company Alibaba Group in a 2015 breach at health timate about 194 million
By MICHAEL LIEDTKE and other potential restitu- worth billions of dollars. insurer Anthem Inc. people in U.S. and Israel will
SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — tion in a legal settlement If approved, the settlement Yahoo didn't begin to dis- be eligible to make claims,
Nearly 200 million people valued at $117.5 million. will become part of the fi- close the extent of its secu- according to court docu-
who had sensitive infor- The deal revises an earlier nancial fallout from digital rity breakdown until 2016 ments. Those people col-
mation snatched from agreement struck last Oc- burglaries that stole person- amid an FBI investigation lectively may have had
their Yahoo accounts will tober, only to be rejected al information from about that eventually linked some about 896 million of the
receive two years of free by U.S. District Court Judge 3 billion Yahoo accounts in of the hacking to Russia . Yahoo accounts hit in the
credit-monitoring services Lucy Koh in San Jose, Cali- 2013 and 2014 — believed The revelations brought a break-ins.q