Is Cable TV’s Replacement Just Internet TV Acting Like Cable?

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Is it time to start talking about cord-cutting again?

Two days after analysts at research firm SNL Kagan forecast that 12.1 million homes will have abandoned traditional TV providers for video-on-vemand services by 2015, Verizon and AT&T released their Q2 2011 subscriber numbers and, well, if people are planning on abandoning traditional television service for the internet, they’re going about it in an odd way.

(MORE: Study: 32% of Netflix Customers Plan to Cut Their Cable Costs)

Verizon reports an additional 184,000 new subscribers to its fiber-optic TV service for Q2, while AT&T added 202,000 subscribers in the same period, marking the third consecutive quarter of growth, following two quarters of decline last year.

While the argument could be made that both AT&T’s and Verizon’s offerings are alternatives to traditional cable, both offer what are essentially the traditional cable set-up with multiple channels available to choose from, in addition to on-demand options.

Perhaps this is the future of television—where one of the choices available on-demand is the way things used to be. After all, I’m sure you could get 12 million people to sign up to that in the next four years.

MORE: Are Theaters the Real Winners in the VoD/DVD War?

Graeme McMillan is a reporter at TIME. Find him on Twitter at @Graemem or on Facebook at Facebook/Graeme.McMillan. You can also continue the discussion on TIME’s Facebook page and on Twitter at @TIME.