Less Churn is Sorta Good, Sorta Bad

At home entertainment is up, while almost anything outside the home is down, a survey sponsored by the Cable & Telecommunications Association for Marketing suggests.

Industry executives--both telco and cable--have been saying that with housing starts down and housing activity down, so are home moves.

Ironically, that has made it harder to attract new customers, as moving automatically creates a "change event" that opens the door for new providers.

The CTAM survey also suggests there is less appetite for trying new providers. So all those customers who aren't moving, also are less likely to churn. Lower churn is good. But some amount of churn also represents a sales opportunity.

Service providers in the small and medium business space note a roughly similar trend: people are less inclined to take on some amount of additional risk by switching current providers.