as mentioned before , almost 80% of people receiving high speed internet are from cable companies.
When people say they are cord cutters, they may be benefiting from the variety of sources online that provide free or low cost content but this is a temporary solution.
Comcast has already introduced capped internet in multiple cities where basically to get unlimited internet you'll see a $30 increase per month on whatever you are paying now.
The only real challenge will be competition like Google Fiber. I know in Cincinnati, the city council reached out to Google to bring in high speed internet and almost immediately, Cincinnati Bell introduced 1gb speed - which resulted in Google declining to come here. As soon as google declined, Cinci Bell stopped investing in 1gb and limited it to certain neighborhoods.
in my area, the best I can get is 20mbps. I'm paying for 50mbps from Time Warner but the best speed I get from "real time" speed tests is 22mbps and there is little price incentive to switch anyways.
Our local/state/federal government discourages competition in this area by allowing the cable companies to own the "last mile" - the direct connection to your home to the box thus creating much higher entry costs for any competition.
Perhaps in the next 5 years the wireless technology will be so ubiquitous that the current internet provider model will be obsolete - however in the meantime, as cord cutting becomes more attractive , look for the internet providers to start reaming you every chance they get. The only chance we have as consumers is to demand more competition or refuse caps on service.
For those of you getting into cord cutting or considering what your options are - I would forego getting a Roku
get a $40 android streaming TV box (or a hacked Amazon fire on ebay) with either XBMC or Kodi and read up about add-ons. From adding one zip file I had over 1500 channel options. I'm giving pre-loaded ones to all the siblings in the family this Xmas.
But few if any were supporting live streaming and none of them were ESPN (although there were many soccer channels along with NBA on demand and NFL).
