The underlying frustration with utility bills is the feeling that you can’t do much about them unless you’re willing to suffer.

Turn down the heat and live in a cold house.

Turn out the light and live in the dark.

Turn off the phone and live disconnected.

Cable TV, for all the monopoly power it still maintains, is pushing its customers to find out how to get along without its services.

Adelphia Communications, the largest cable provider in the state, is increasing its price to most customers by $3 a month. To receive the company’s classic cable package, customers will have to pay $51.30.

Adelphia has been beset by problems, including corruption within its highest ranks. The company is in the process of being sold. Its operations in Maine will be taken over by Time Warner, which offers a more competitively priced service in Portland.

Just look at the numbers. Adelphia has been losing subscribers while satellite television and Oxford Networks, a local competitor, have been gaining. Between 2004 and 2005, Adelphia lost almost 7 percent of its subscribers in Lewiston and Lisbon, and more than 10 percent in Auburn.

Television holds a central place in most households. Furniture and life are arranged around it. But that position isn’t a birthright.

Crossing the $50 mark for its most popular plan feels like a psychological breaking point. No doubt most customers will simply shrug and move on – chalk it up, as Adelphia does, to the cost of doing business.

Time Warner told the Sun Journal that its acquisition of Adelphia wouldn’t lead to another rate increase. At least that’s something to look forward to.