Just a day later, rival service FuboTV announced its own cost increases. Fubo’s base price will rise to $60 on August 1, and its “Family” plan, which includes a third simultaneous stream and more DVR storage, will jump to $65, a $5-per-month increase in both cases. Even worse, FuboTV is also forcing current customers onto pricier Family plans without permission, so they’ll need to manually downgrade to get the lower base price.

There’s no sugarcoating the news here: These changes are bad for cord-cutters who’ve tried to replace their expensive, bloated cable packages with cheaper streaming ones. And Fubo’s upgrade tactics are especially egregious, echoing the sneakiness we’re used to from cable companies. While both services are adding more channels to compensate for their price hikes, those additions aren’t optional, and the dream of having cheaper, more flexible TV packages continues to slip away.

For TechHive, I wrote a nuts-and-bolts story about what the changes are and what you can do if the new prices are too much. You can read that column here.

I also wrote a story for Fast Company about why these rate increases keep happening. While YouTube TV and FuboTV shoulder some blame for underpricing their services from the start, the real fault lies with TV networks that are unwilling to break up their channels. It’s the same dynamic that applied in the cable era, but it’s also been made worse through a series of mergers and acquisitions that have given networks much more power to raise prices. So far, they seem more intent on letting TV bundles crash and burn than trying to save them with smaller, more flexible packages.

Continue to ignore this service if you want to save money, but don’t confuse it with AT&T TV Now, a separate service that’s become oddly compelling in light of higher prices elsewhere. For $55 per month, you get the major broadcast networks, cable news channels, national sports, and a slew of other channels. Regional sports aren’t included in the base price—getting them takes the price up to $80 per month—but no one’s playing right now anyway.

ESPN+ price hikes (perhaps): It’s not just the big bundles that are getting pricier. Citing “internal documents,” The Verge reports that ESPN+ will raise prices to $6 per month or $60 per year, up from $5 per month or $50 per year previously. Existing subscribers will reportedly get to keep the lower price for one more year, though. Disney hasn’t commented on The Verge’s report, so the price increase isn’t official yet.

The timing isn’t ideal, but a higher price wouldn’t be surprising as ESPN stuffs more sports into ESPN+. While most of ESPN’s cable content remains unavailable on the streaming service, I expect that to change over the next few years, with prices rising accordingly.

Data caps relaxed (a little): Bad news: Comcast and Cox are no longer waiving data caps on their home internet service. Both internet providers stopped enforcing limits in March when the coronavirus pandemic began, and while the virus hasn’t gone away, their willingness to chip in clearly has. These data caps are unnecessary for network management and exist largely because providers can get away with them in uncompetitive markets.

The slightly good news? The limits are a little higher now, at 1.2 TB per month for Comcast and 1.25 TB per month for Cox, up from 1 TB for both providers previously. Comcast has also reduced its upcharge for unlimited data, from $50 per month to $30 per month.

But even Comcast’s benevolence comes with a caveat: As Stop the Cap reports, the company is only giving customers one free warning per year when they exceed the limit now, down from two warnings before, and if you break the limit twice in a year, Comcast won’t give you any more warnings ever. From then on, you’ll have to pay $10 for each 50 GB of excess use or upgrade to unlimited data.

Apple TV picture-in-picture: Last week, I noted that Apple TV streaming boxes will get picture-in-picture support this fall, but speculated that this might only work while playing video from two separate apps. Apple has since disclosed that it will, in fact, allow individual apps to have their own picture-in-picture modes. That means you’ll be able to watch two channels at the same time in services like YouTube TV and Hulu + Live TV, provided they bother to support the feature. If you have picture-in-picture with your cable provider and can’t imagine living without it, this should make cord-cutting easier.

We’re otherwise pretty light on the deal front today, though it’s worth noting that Amazon’s $25 Fire TV Stick 4K deal seems to be active again, at least for some folks. Try using the code 4KFIRETV at checkout.