Service Electric Customers, Check Your Mail: A Price Increase Is Coming

Dec. 18, 2025

— Jeff Ward, Lehigh Valley News Briefs

Service Electric Cable TV is welcoming 2026 with a batch of price hikes.

The bad news arrived at my home yesterday in a letter listing seven increases.

Among them, economy basic cable, up $2 per month. Full basic cable (full basic?) will go up $4. Some equipment fees will go up. I have the list below from the holiday greeting I received yesterday. Bills go up Jan. 1.

Here’s the list from Service Electric. I’m particularly concerned about the surcharges and fee in the seventh item. Who has to pay these? All of us?

I will be on the phone to SECTV about this. Here is a link to their contact page and for Lehigh Valley customers, the phone number is 610-865-9100.

They should have included a note about what my new bill will be rather than have me work through a math problem.

Be nice if you call. Service Electric employs pleasant, helpful people. The person answering the phone didn’t jack up your bill.

“Our cost of doing business has increased but our goal is to keep your monthly rate as low as possible,” the letter says. “Any new increases are the result of changes within the industry by Cable TV program providers and the increases of Retransmission Fees from Network Broadcast Station.”

The catch is, I don’t watch too many of those stations but I’m paying for them anyway.

Service at my home has been pretty good. Service Electric Internet is reliable and I can reach an actual local person on the phone when I have a problem.

That won’t stop me from looking at other options. Service Electric founder John Walson came up with the idea of cable in the 1940s, and a lot has happened in the almost 80 years since he used his antenna and wires to help sell televisions in Mahanoy City.

There are other options. I’ve stuck with cable because it’s easy and I had a fixed-price (sort of fixed) contract.

This price increase has me looking elsewhere. Service Electric might still be the best, but there are more options.

— Disclosure: I worked at Service Electric’s TV studio part-time back in the 1980s and early 1990s. It was a great place to work, with a lot of good people on the staff. That was when Service Electric had a news channel.