While some claim the future of business is free, cable networks and operators don't seem to be buying it. According to television industry insiders, AT&T, Comcast, DirecTV, Time Warner Cable and Verizon are all exploring a subscribers-only approach to putting shows onto the web. Time Warner has been running limited pilot trials of the HBO on Broadband service for the past year, with seemingly positive enough results to plan broader tests to more areas in the U.S. this summer. Users who subscribe to Time Warner Cable and HBO can download a (Windows only) client to a desktop or laptop, sign in to the service and download episodes from a selection roughly equivalent to what's available via HBO's cable video on demand service. Subscribers can create up to five separate accounts per household with parental controls to allow family members to keep their own viewing collections on individual machines.

We think it's a reasonable business play to approach IPTV as a paid subscription service but we're hoping the cable companies make the next step, which is to decouple individual channel subscriptions from a typically bulky cable package that includes dozens of channels individual subscribers never watch. If a customer could subscribe only to HBO or Discovery or to a handful of favorite channels and get all of that content online as well, cable companies just might hang onto that sector of customers contemplating killing their cable altogether for a bit longer, and snatch up some new paying customers who would be thrilled to pick up a few a la carte channels but unwilling to pay a large monthly cable bill.

Would online availability be enough of a value add to continue your cable subscription, or would you prefer a la carte channel pricing for television?

This story around the web: