Super Bundles: The Next Big Opportunity Is Adding Streaming Content to Wireless and Broadband
Super-bundlers are people who combine wireless phone, home broadband, and content together in a single bundle to save money. How prevalent is this practice? What are the pain points that consumers are looking to solve? What options are carriers and cable companies offering to consumers, who is doing this best today, and where are the opportunities going forward?
The Need for Super Bundles
It’s hard out there in TV-land. Due to inflation and the increasing fragmentation of the content marketplace, it can be hard to figure out which service has which season of the show you want to watch, and paying for each service can be prohibitively expensive as services raise prices. According to The Wall Street Journal, consumers are increasingly signing up for streaming services to watch a specific show, binging it, then canceling, only to sign up again later. This approach often leaves consumers with services that they pay for but don’t actually use – a pain point used in advertising for makers of apps that help consumers manage their budgets. (These apps naturally require their own subscriptions.)
At the same time, not all subscription services are equal: cellular service and home broadband are essential for modern life, even as consumers increasingly cut the cord on linear cable TV packages and juggle streaming and lifestyle services. One potential solution approach is to try to bundle together services consumers need – cellular and broadband – with a new bundle of streaming content. This trend has been dubbed “super-bundling” in the business press, though the concept of combining phone, Internet, and TV is not new (it used to be called a “triple play”). What’s different this time is that the bundles are now built around unlimited wireless plans that include access to streaming services, instead of cable TV packages that include Internet and wireless phones – or landlines.
How Much Bundling Is Going On?
Service providers generally love bundling – in exchange for a discount, they generate more revenue, get a larger share of wallet, and benefit from lower churn. You might then assume that carriers make it easy to create bundles, the bundles address consumer pain points around streaming content, and that most consumers use these bundles. My research suggests otherwise.
There are plenty of households combining wireless and broadband from a single provider, but not much content bundling going on. Omdia notes that only 18% of digital video subscriptions in the U.S. are sold as part of telecom bundles. Recon Analytics provided me with detailed breakdowns of content subscriptions by telecom subscribers, and at the carrier level it is even clearer. For example, Netflix is the second most popular streaming service in the U.S. behind Amazon Prime, and T-Mobile heavily advertises that it offers Netflix for free. However, while 56% of T-Mobile subscribers have access to Netflix, only 14% of them say that they get it from T-Mobile as part of its Go5G or Magenta wireless plans. Just under 15% of those subscribers are also bundling broadband Internet from T-Mobile alongside the wireless service and Netflix. There’s clearly plenty of room for growth to offer consumers super bundles.
Testing the Super Bundles Value Proposition
To see what a super bundle might look like, I looked at the four national wireless carriers and quickly eliminated two of them. Dish doesn’t have a full wireless network deployed, doesn’t offer home broadband, and doesn’t offer content bundles. I also excluded AT&T because it does not currently offer super bundles nationally*. That left T-Mobile and Verizon. Although availability varies based on address-level factors, T-Mobile and Verizon both offer national fixed wireless broadband, and both also offer content bundles with specific wireless plans. Verizon also has Fios fiber broadband in parts of the Northeast. I also wanted to consider a representative cable operator, as the large U.S. cable companies offer aggressively priced wireless services (typically running on a combination of their own local Wi-Fi networks and Verizon’s cellular network). I chose Comcast, as it is the largest, with 32 million subscribers on its fiber-based broadband network.
To create a reasonable comparison, I did not try to find the least expensive plans. Instead, I focused on a family of three and chose options that could be closely matched across providers. For wireless, a family of three is the sweet spot in carrier pricing where bundling starts making sense. For larger families, the value generally improves slightly with each added line, up to a maximum of five or six lines. For broadband, I chose the fixed wireless plan or a 300 - 400 Mbps fiber, which should be more than adequate for a family of three’s home broadband needs. Some providers have cheaper plans available, but this is a reasonable floor for a family. For content bundles, I was limited to what was available, but tried to choose the most popular services by number of subscribers. Since #1 Amazon Prime is not available in any bundle, that prioritized #2 Netflix, followed by #3 Disney+ and #4 Hulu.
| T-Mobile | Monthly Bundled Cost:** | |
|---|---|---|
| Wireless: | Go5G Next x3 lines | $180 |
| Smartphones included | iPhone 15 x3 upgradable annually | Free after monthly rebates One-time $35/activation fee per phone |
| Content: | ● Netflix (with ads) ● Hulu (with ads) ● Apple TV+ ●MLB.TV | Included with wireless |
| Broadband | T-Mobile 5G Home Internet Router cost | $40 $0 |
| Monthly total cost | $220 plus broadband taxes and fees $190 plus broadband taxes and fees (Go5G Plus without Hulu) | |
T-Mobile 5G Home Internet does not have tiers or TV resolution limits, but data is deprioritized after 1.2 terabytes of usage. In my testing, T-Mobile 5G Home Internet usually gets between 150 Mbps – 200 Mbps, but there can be significant variances in speeds based on external network loads.
T-Mobile heavily advertises its content bundles, but to get all four services you need to subscribe to T-Mobile’s highest tier Go5G Next plan. That includes Netflix (with ads), Hulu (with ads), Apple TV+, and MLB.TV. Go5G Next also includes premium smartphones that can be upgraded annually – a capability that tech enthusiasts will love, but may be overkill for average consumers. T-Mobile’s Go5G Plus plan has two-year hardware upgrade cycles but loses Hulu. That plan costs just $150/month for three lines and is still eligible for the 5G Home Internet bundle discount, so at $190 plus broadband taxes and fees per month, this would be extremely economical way to get unlimited wireless, free phones, Netflix, and Apple TV+.
| Verizon | Monthly Bundled Cost:** | |
|---|---|---|
| Wireless: | Unlimited Plus | $165 |
| Smartphones included | iPhone 15 x3 upgradable every three years | Free after monthly rebates One-time $35/activation fee per phone |
| Content: | ● Netflix (with ads) ● Max (with ads) ● Disney+ Premium (no ads) ● Hulu (with ads) ● ESPN+ (with ads) | $10 (Netflix & Max perk) $10 (Disney package perk) |
| Broadband | Verizon Home Internet 5G Home Plus Router cost | $45 (OR $25 300 Mbps Fios where available) $0 |
| Monthly total cost | $220 plus taxes and fees | |
Verizon offers two tiers of fixed wireless broadband: Verizon Home Internet 5G Home, which limits video resolution to 1080p, and Home Plus, with 4K HDR allowed for $10 more per month. I chose Home Plus for this exercise. (If our hypothetical family happens to live in a Fios service area, they will want to jump on that – it’s cheaper and faster.) Verizon does not tie its content options to a specific wireless plan tier, so I chose Unlimited Plus (rather than Unlimited Ultimate) to keep costs down. I could have gone cheaper still -- Verizon uniquely allows content bundles even with its Unlimited Welcome plans – but I wanted roughly comparable wireless plans across the carriers.
On the content side, Verizon puts the super in super bundle. Verizon’s perk system offers tremendous flexibility, at the cost of complexity and occasional confusion. For example, you are allowed to select each perk per line, even though most families will only need one of each perk per household. Next, you have some decisions to make. You can get Netflix and Max together for $10, or buy a $15 credit to +Play for $10, and use that to buy a different tier of Netflix on its own. You can buy various different Apple bundles. Or cloud storage. Or international data roaming packages. Or you can buy multiple +Play credits (each with a $5 discount) and use them towards 46 different subscription services. Those services are not limited to streaming channels, +Play options also include YouTube TV for linear television programming, or Peloton for workouts.
The exciting thing about perks and +Play is that Verizon truly does offer a strong variety of content, each for about a $5 - $7 discount to buying that service separately, and there is a dashboard for users to easily turn those services on or off on a monthly basis.
| Comcast | Monthly Bundled Cost:** | |
|---|---|---|
| Wireless: | Xfinity Mobile Unlimited Plus | $120 |
| Smartphones included | $500 off Samsung Galaxy S24 | For iPhone 15: $103.74 ($34.58/month per phone) For Galaxy S24: $37.50 ($12.50/month per phone after monthly rebates) One-time $30/activation fee per phone |
| Content: | NOW TV – Peacock Premium and streaming apps for 40 channels traditionally part of cable TV packages (ex: History, HGTV) | $20 |
| Broadband | Xfinity 400 Mbps fiber broadband Router cost | $35 plus taxes $15 One-time $50 installation fee |
| Monthly total cost | $293.74 plus taxes and fees -- before Netflix, Disney+, etc. (iPhone 15) $227.50 plus taxes and fees – before Netflix, Disney+, etc. (Galaxy S24) | |
Comcast’s wireless service is only available for Xfinity broadband households**, so its website signup process is all about building a bundle, with home phone, home security, and (linear) TV options in addition to wireless. The 400 Mbps broadband service is inexpensive but includes a 1.2TB data cap. Wireless pricing is significantly lower than the carrier competition, in part because Comcast says that 90% of its phone data traffic goes over its Wi-Fi network rather than Verizon’s airwaves. However, Comcast is not nearly as aggressive with hardware: you have to pay monthly for your home router, and if you want an iPhone, you’ll have to pay full price. (When I first started this research, there were no discounted premium smartphones available, but when fact checking, the Samsung Galaxy S24 was being offered for $500 off.) This, along with the fact that the most popular streaming channels are not included in its bundle, makes Comcast more expensive.
At Comcast Converge at its Philadelphia headquarters recently, Comcast showed off an elegant solution to a key pain point that consumers face in a fragmented media world: where to find the show that you want to watch. Its new Xfinity set top boxes can find your show/season on whatever channel or service offers them, and the system will prioritize results based on which services you subscribe to. However, Comcast does not do anything to help its customers subscribe to or pay for these channels. Comcast also offers NOW TV to broadband subscribers, which includes its own Peacock Premium channel along with streaming versions of 40 traditional channels.
Consumer Recommendations
If all you need is Netflix and wireless broadband, T-Mobile offers the lowest pricing at around $190 per month, or $220 per month with Hulu and the ability to upgrade your phone every year.
Cable operators offer even lower broadband and wireless pricing, but you’ll make up the savings paying for phones and routers. And, ironically for companies that started out bundling content, they only offer streaming services through their linear TV bundles – so if you want Netflix or Disney+, you’ll have to buy and manage those services separately.
Verizon offers more choice and flexibility on content than any other provider. Verizon is not the least expensive in this configuration, but its pricing is better than its reputation, and the more services that the user buys through perks or +play credits, the bigger the effective discount compared to buying the same services individually. If you’re a heavy streaming content household and you use +Play it can be the best value. Verizon also makes it easy to adjust its bundle on a month-by-month basis, which – if actively managed – can mean picking up a service to watch a specific show, and painlessly dropping it when you finish watching it. This is easier to do than you might think, because there’s an app for that – My Verizon lets you turn services on or off from your phone, no website or call center required. Finally, if you are in Verizon’s Fios footprint, you can get fast and inexpensive home broadband without data caps.
Verizon super bundles are not perfect. Perks are straightforward, but +Play can be somewhat confusing. myPlan does not cover many popular services. If you want Apple TV+ there’s a Perk, and if you want Paramount+ there’s a +play Perk. But if you want Spotify or Prime Video, those still have to be purchased and managed separately. Of course, you’ll have to do that on T-Mobile or Comcast as well – along with many services that Verizon does support.
Carrier Recommendations
Carriers have focused their pricing on family plans to reduce churn and left single line users to their prepaid brands. This might make a certain amount of sense when wireless is a single product, but when it can be combined with broadband and content into a larger bundle, single users are suddenly a much richer target. With the right wireless plan discounting within a super bundle, carriers can increase their share of wallet from individual consumers while keeping churn low.
Add more streaming content options! AT&T and Verizon both tried and failed to create their own vertically integrated content ownership/distribution stack. Comcast is following this strategy today with better results for now, but its customers are cutting the cord just like everyone else. As consumers cut the cord at home and watch more content on mobile devices, operators do not need to own the content, but they should make it easier for their customers to buy and manage it.
Verizon’s perk system is easier to understand and configure than +Play credits. Whenever possible, Verizon should offer +Play options as perks. While launching all perks at a single $10 price point is certainly simple, there is no reason why more expensive content and services can’t be made available as discounted fixed-price perks, too.
Verizon and T-Mobile don’t make assembling a full bundle easy online. You can start with wireless, or you can start with broadband, but there is no way to add broadband to wireless or vice versa within a single transaction. That is unlikely to be too much of a problem at carrier retail outlets, where salespeople are likely incentivized to create as many wireless/broadband bundles as they can. But online, why not?
Disclosure: This report was sponsored by Verizon, but Verizon had no editorial control over its content. The research, methodology, and analysis was done independently by Techsponential.
* It’s complicated. Unlike Dish, AT&T has a cable broadband footprint of about 15 million subscribers (“AT&T Internet,” the former “u-verse”) and is rolling out fixed wireless broadband (“AT&T Internet Air”) access in dozens of U.S. cities. However, AT&T’s Internet Air was not available nationally in March 2024 when I researched this report. As for content bundles, when AT&T owned DirecTV and Warner Media, customers were often pressed into wireless bundles that included HBO. AT&T does still offer DirecTV bundles with its fiber AT&T Internet plans. However, after AT&T spun out DirecTV in 2021 and Warner Media in 2022, AT&T stopped offering streaming media services bundles with its wireless plans.
**A quick note on pricing and service offerings: the research for this report started in February 2024 and concluded with fact checking in early March 2024. However, the market is constantly in flux with new pricing and promotions. It should be expected that some promotions may lower prices – or, for cable MVNOs, potentially include more of the smartphone hardware cost. Even without promotions, carriers offer numerous ways to configure bundles that can raise or lower costs with various tradeoffs. Comcast also recently announced prepaid broadband and wireless offerings, although without any bundle deals.
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