FRAMINGHAM, MA – Ever since Community Cablevision came to town in the 1970’s, one-by-one, most people took down the rabbit ears or roof-top antennae and ran coaxial cable into their homes instead.

Today there are several options available to Framingham residents in regard to how they obtain “tv signal”.

Choices range from using a digital converter box connected to those old rabbit ears or aerial antennae, by “cable”, by satellite — or a popular choice lately: foregoing traditional formal television programming and watching news, entertainment and other forms of video on an internet connected device.

Cable providers have long realized that improvements in speed and quality of online video transmission would make people less dependent on traditional television as a media source and today cable tv is usually bundled into some form of broadband cable access.

Framingham’s cable t.v., internet and residential phone needs are served primarily by three companies;  Comcast, RCN and Verizon.

Each company markets their service by brand name or sales-mark, (e.g.- FIOS, MACH-10, XFINITY, etc), this is an effort to stop you from easily comparing their services to those of their competitors, and to attempt to differentiate themselves, (even though they all offer basically the same things). When shopping for broadband don’t let the brand names or package names confuse you — compare service to service, speed to speed, option to option, and number and type of channels to similar number and type from each company.

The table below lists the ala carte’ pricing for t.v., internet and phone with low end, high end and medium services levels for each (if available), then low end and high end bundled package pricing and each company’s current promotion and contact info.

An average Framingham family that wants cable tv (with a fair number of channels), internet with enough speed for typical modern use, and an unlimited local/national phone calling plan (with basic phone features like call waiting, voice mail, etc), can expect to pay $120/mo minimum once you add on taxes and fees to the low end package offered by any of the three cable providers.

Some people like the idea of getting one monthly bill and having all services come through one wire — and only having to deal with one company.  To entice new users, the local cable providers frequently offer “bundles”, (with low introductory rates and “free” months of premium services).  But beware! The companies’ goal is to get you hooked on their services — knowing once you start using email addresses from their company, and your family gets used to watching shows in the channel line-up they offer, they can go up on your rates and you’ll find it hard to switch or cut back on services.

There are other options. You can mix and match services from various plans ordering just what you need and possibly save a little money. Many people are giving up residential phone service and using their cell phone as their primary phone.  Others use VOIP service, (like Vonage or MagicJack which works over your internet connection), although some people still don’t need or want internet at all. Satellite t.v. is a an option for video programming if you don’t want or can’t get cable.

For the absolutely lowest cost t.v., phone and internet you could; 1). connect a digital converter box to a pair of rabbit ears and pay nothing to watch t.v., then; 2). order Verizon’s “unlimited local” phone service, ($19.40/mo), and; 3). subscribe to a dial-up internet service, (like PeoplePC for $10/mo), total cost once you have a modem, digital converter for t.v. and a phone — about $35/mo with taxes and fees.

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