Price increase if your out of contract with all inclusive calls

[Kel62]

Think you all should know if your on a contract for broadband with free all inclusive calls and it's due for renewal now have dropped the all inclusive calls package you now have to pay extra for calls so read your contact fully when they send you a renewal invite .

[redchiz1]

It will depend on what you are notified individually when your contract ends. Although I am not surprised that they may be gradually hiking the cost of their packages upwards. 

[Kel62]

Been with Now broadband for over 4 years now paying £23 a month for fibre with anytime call package which were free with broadband now they want £31 a month instead of £40 giving an £8 discount on Any time calls even on there web site now all packages for broadband are only with pay as you go calls which you can upgrade for different call packages if you want and the broadband is going up £3.50 in July .

[Grumpyfrog]

NOW are increasing their broadband prices, and just noticed an ad. on tv that SKY are offering theirs at half price. My brain didnt switch on quick enough to get all the detail.

I sort of get the feeling that SKY are looking to draw customers away from NOW. If that is true then it begs the question regarding the future for NOW.

[RoyB]

@Grumpyfrog 

I saw the whole advert, and it’s half price for a while, £17, and then back to £34. So Now, changing along at £25 or so, will be back to breakeven after another 6 months.

<pedant>And it asks the question, not begs it, by the way</pedant> 😛

[Grumpyfrog]

@RoyB 

Thanks for the info. Roy.

'And it asks the question, not begs it, by the way'   Now I is just a country boy, but I am not too old to learn something. 😀

I still like "it begs the question" rather than your version though.😀

[RoyB]

@Grumpyfrog 

https://youtu.be/zcKJdCWwva0

[greyeyes]

sky are offering sky stream on a monthly package, cancel anytime... you could be right.

[redchiz1]

Sky Stream has had that option ever since launch. Similar principle i.e. a streaming service, but only available via their dedicated devices. And at higher prices. I think I'll wait. 

[RoyB]

@redchiz1 @greyeyes 

And at least Now don’t ask for their sticks back if you cancel 😛

[greyeyes]

you had to buy them & they have limited life support.  They stopped selling them 2 years ago.  I have a couple of new & unused sticks (part of deals) as backups.

They'll come a point when they come to the end of their software life with Roku via Sky agreement, that will likely be the point when NOW migrates to Sky Stream or they discontinue.

They came about to compete with Netflix, now they provide netflix part of their sky stream, they'll lose content as the majority companies focus on capitalising via their own streaming services, which will get interesting as it's fragmenting and people won't be forking out for lots of services.

[redchiz1]

A lot of the time they were given away, or otherwise subsidised by attaching free packages. The point is you didn't need a specific device to access NOW TV, still don't. With Sky Stream you do. 

[greyeyes]

I alway got my part of offers, i still had to pay for them... i gave loads away to people as they were stacking up to get entertainment and movie deals.   I still have 3 of their last sticks (2 unused), 2 nowtv freeview boxes and 5 older black ones... i gave several away as well.  Plus i have a roku branded box.

I know you don't need specific device, once they did a deal with amazon by allowing each other on their steaming app platform, netflix, disney followed... then the nowtv sticks end followed.   There was no point as the majority of TV's include the lot now, plus roku and fire.

[redchiz1]

But NOW were always available on other platforms, that was the point?

[RoyB]

@greyeyes 

The only Now device that has been ‘sunset’, in Now’s happy phrase, is the original White Box.

Older hardware gets sunset over time, sure - LGs before WebOS, Samsung 2015 TVs (grrr, though Now did kindly send me an Amazon Firestick Lite to make up for that), even the Firestick 1st Gen.

I never saw Now as Sky competing with Netflix - rather as Sky mopping up those holdouts who weren’t ever going to go for the full Sky experience, but could still be an additional revenue stream for them. And thus carefully limited so as not to cannibalise the existing Sky customer base.

And now we have Sky Stream slipped into the middle ground, and Sky don’t seem to care if it cannibalises Sky Q, or else they are just confident it won’t. And Sky would like Now customers to migrate to Sky Stream, but both price considerations and the device model are limiting that.

Sky must be dreading losing HBO in 2024 though, just as we are dreading having yet another streaming service to add to the roster. Maybe Sport, Cinema and perhaps Hayu will hold up, but Entertainment will be holed below the waterline.

[greyeyes]

I did say "They'll come a point when they come to the end of their software life with Roku via Sky agreement"  All NowTV branded boxes/sticks are on borrowed time, it's coming.  Approximately up to 8 years from launch most offer software support.

I wasn't disputing others... talking about NowTV and reference to @Grumpyfrog comment about the future of Now.

I did see the fact that people around me once their contract ended with sky, quit and jumped on the freesat (humax at the time) bandwagon, as the majority of what people were watching was free to air.  Plus with the saving, they could sign up to prime and netflix on a rolling cancel anytime.. no long term contracts.  It was stated that Now came about to the rise of the likes of netflix / prime, as i said, people were leaving sky and going to these services.  Then it also created the opportunity for holdouts as  your termed it.  If they sat idle waiting and not jumped on to that bandwagon, they would have lost a lot of customers quitting sky.  I got my first freesat box well before Now came into existence.

"Sky don’t seem to care if it cannibalises Sky Q,"  delivering TV services over IP is the future.  Eventually all houses will have fibreoptic and no for satellite broadcasting.

They lost Fox, i used to watching things on that via the entertainment package.  Netflix too will suffer, they're also losing content, victim of their own success.

[Jayach]

I think "begs the question" is correct, as the previous statement alludes to the fact they will probably not exist much longer.

Begs the Question: How to Use ‘Begs the Question’ Properly - 2023 - MasterClass

[RoyB]

@Jayach 

No, that Master Class is all wrong 😢

In ‘A sentence that correctly uses the phrase “begs the question” will describe the pressing question prompted in a listener's mind. It can also point out a fallacy or a circular argument in the original sentence. It would be incorrect, however, to use "beg" in the literal sense.’

they give two ‘correct’ usages, of which the first  - the pressing question - is an incorrect usage. Only the fallacy/circular argument is a correct usage. (The third usage, the one they do actually call incorrect, looks like a straw man to me).

Of course, usage changes over time, and if enough people use it incorrectly often enough, it will come to have that first meaning.

But  thus is the language impoverished; you can see this in that there are several other words that can be used instead of ‘begs’ for the first usage, but no other word can stand in for it in the correct usage 😢

[Jayach]

---

@RoyB wrote:

@Jayach 

No, that Master Class is all wrong 😢

---

Who would have thought a Google search could have brought up an incorrect answer?

And that wasn't even the A.I. search, which is known to get facts wrong.

Still, I never believe anything on YouTube.

[Grumpyfrog]

@RoyB 

@Jayach 

What have I started?

It appears an English grammar lesson has pushed the Now price increase a little further from our minds. 😀

Just to maybe provoke further discussion, we often read that English is a living language, and often new words and their usage are adopted as acceptable.

Why not 'begs' the question? That is my contribution.

[RoyB]

@Grumpyfrog 

Because ‘begs the question’ isn’t a new usage; it’s an age-old usage for the particular logic fallacy of implying the answer in the way the question is phrased.

But we have this recent, and growing, error of using ‘begs the question’ to mean ‘prompts the question’, probably by analogy with ‘begs us to ask the question’.

As you say, English is a living language, and if enough people commit, and continue to commit, this solecism, then ‘begs the question’ will indeed become synonymous with ‘prompts the question’.

So what, then, will we use when we really mean the logical fallacy? Maybe ‘begs the answer’, which, when you think about it, is maybe better than ‘begs the question’ anyway, for the fallacy.

I did use a cod HTML markup around my first reference to this, anyway 😛