Troy Cortina, 24 years old and living at home, can enjoy a smorgasbord of entertainment, since DirecTV beams hundreds of channels into the family home in Waterford, including premium offerings such as HBO, Starz and Showtime.

Sipping coffee and reading his iPhone 7 at the Books-A-Million store in Waterford one morning last week, Cortina, who works for the Connecticut Humane Society, said he prefers to read, but watches shows like AMC's "Walking Dead." He gets his news from CNN. 

Most of his friends who are living on their own are using the internet to stream TV shows and movies from sites like Netflix and Hulu, Cortina said. They don't have cable or satellite service.

"I see a big trend of people gravitating toward streaming from cable," Cortino said. "I think a lot of it has to do with price."

A large number of millennials have never paid for their own cable or satellite service, and a significant number of older consumers have "cut the cord" that tethered them to hefty monthly payments. According to a March 26 article in The Motley Fool, a financial publication, the pay-TV industry lost 1.7 million, or 1.7 percent, of its customers in 2016.

Instead, the cord-cutters and cord-avoiders are accessing content via internet services such as Netflix, Amazon Prime, Playstation Vue, Sling, Youtube or Xbox, which charge smaller fees to deliver TV shows and movies on televisions, tablets, laptops or phones.

Companies like Atlantic Broadband, which provides cable, internet and phone service to East Lyme, Montville, New London, Waterford and other towns along Interstate 395, have taken steps to address the evolving viewing habits of their consumers.

"The world in general has changed dramatically in terms of their demands and how they watch services," said Chap Hanley, Atlantic Broadband vice president and general manager, who has 30 years of experience in the cable industry.

"I look at us now as predominately a network provider," he said. "We provide connectivity. It could be the viewership of television, accessing the internet anywhere in the world or traditional plain old telephone service." 

Atlantic Broadband is the first company in Connecticut to offer a full gigabit (one billion bits per second) of internet speed, according to Hanley. With "GigaEdge," as the new product is called, customers can download a two-hour movie, in high definition, in 32 seconds. He said it would take an hour using the competitor's service, though he acknowledged the competition is on the brink of introducing similar service. 

"It's all about network and bandwidth," Hanley said. "We've evolved from being a plain old cable television business to a network industry. The same is true with Comcast and Cox."

The cable companies are incorporating Web streaming services into their offerings so customers can access internet programming in addition to the traditional offerings, putting them into competition, or sometimes partnership, with providers of TV streaming boxes such as Apple TV, Chromecast and Roku.

Atlantic Broadband has partnered with Netflix, which streams media and video on demand.

"We don't see them as a competitor," Hanley said. "We see them as a method to view programming. Instead of having to use your internet to log in, you can actually get it with our screen. That's the way consumers are watching."

Atlantic Broadband, which acquired the area's former provider, Metrocast, in August 2015, is owned by Montreal-based Cogeco, which is the ninth-largest broadband operator in the United States.

"It's not just the speed," Hanley said. "It's the number of users you can have in your household. It's both speed and the 'pipe' coming into your house so multiple users can be on at the same time using multiple devices."

Comcast, the nation's largest cable TV provider, services the majority of southeastern Connecticut towns.

Lisa Scalzo, senior director of corporate communications at Comcast, said the company would not comment for this story and instead emailed a news release indicating that later this year Comcast and Google will launch the YouTube app on Xfinity X1, its television platform, across the country.

"X1 customers will be able to easily browse and seamlessly access over the Internet the entire YouTube catalog of billions of videos alongside the live, on demand," the release said.

How about a la carte?

Cortina said his family switched to satellite when 4K ultra-high resolution televisions became available. DirecTV was the first TV provider to offer access to 4K content, and he said the company's introductory rate was attractive. The family still purchases internet access from Atlantic Broadband. Cortina said that even when the price goes up, DirecTV still would be less expensive than cable.

A perennial complaint among cable customers is that they pay for channels they never use. Cable companies are exploring the idea of "skinny bundles" that offer basic broadcast channels and some of the more popular programming choices, for a reduced price. Customers can't pick and choose what they want because the cable companies are constrained by the programmers who sell them the content. The cable franchises say their rates are driven by the media giants that control programming.

"Some people say, why can't we do a la carte," said Mike Meinz of East Lyme, a retired IT professional who serves as chairman of the local Cable TV Advisory Council. "The big problem with rates is the big conglomerates like Comcast/NBC Universal and ABC Disney say to the cable companies, 'You have to take all these channels as a package.' That drives up the cost of cable."

"Part of the challenge in our industry, and this is something consumers don't necessarily understand, is that we pay for the programming piece of our business," said Hanley from Atlantic Broadband. "The satellite channels and other channels come to us at a cost, and that is built into our pricing strategy."

The Federal Communication Commission deregulated cable rates in 1996, so consumers, for the most part, are at the mercy of the market when it comes to pricing. In Connecticut, the Public Utilities Regulatory Authority regulates the state's cable franchises in areas such as subscriber service requirements, public access requirements and franchise renewal standards.

The local cable TV advisory councils promote community access television, where members of the public can go into a studio and produce their own programming. They also serve as consumer advocates, mediating when a customer has a complaint. Meinz said most consumers air their complaints over social media, but when they do come into the council he forwards them to Hanley at Atlantic Broadband, who either calls or emails the complaining customer.

Sometimes it pays to call the cable company and ask for a better rate. Hanley said Atlantic Broadband wants to keep customers after their introductory rates expire.

"I am constantly aware of people falling off packaging and of retention," he said. "I have those conversations with consumers all the time. I say, 'Don't leave me. I will retain you. I can offer you X, Y and Z.'"

Cost is 'insane'

One of the reasons many continue to pay for cable and to shell out even more for premium packages is for live sporting events, such as the NFL, which are more difficult to find on streaming services. Millennials who are forgoing cable are following in the footsteps of their elders who go to sports bars to watch sports events that aren't broadcast locally.

"I'll just go down to the pub and watch soccer," said a 34-year-old New London man named Brian who was hanging out in the Washington Street Coffee House on a recent morning. He said he uses an old tube TV to watch DVDs and videos, gets his news via Facebook and has no intention of paying for TV.

At a nearby table at the New London coffee house, Stacy Miller and her 13-year-old daughter, Margaux Walz, eating breakfast while waiting for the ferry to take Margaux to the Fishers Island School, said they don't have cable and don't miss it. The family does stream content via Netflix, but the cost of cable, Miller said, is "insane."

But Hanley said millennials who aren't purchasing cable now may become customers later.

"We are finding that once that generation starts having kids, their dynamic changes pretty dramatically, and they want to have traditional TV in their household."

k.florin@theday.com