In The Broadband Battle Between Speed And Price, Customers Choose Price

from the doesn't-look-good-for-cable dept

Back in October we noted that DSL and cable providers were trying to differentiate themselves from each other. The DSL providers were focusing on being the low cost provider, while the cable guys wanted to be the high speed providers. At the time, we pointed out that this was likely to backfire on the cable companies. People like the speed of broadband, but for most applications there's a "good enough" speed - and many people want it more for the always on connection than the speed itself. It's looking like we were right. The latest study shows that, despite cable's commanding lead in the US, many more people are signing up for DSL these days because of the lower price. It's the basic "good enough" argument. What DSL offers is good enough for what most people want to do with their connections now. Also, the speed difference is minimal right now. You don't get that much faster speeds with cable, and there's not much you can currently do with that extra bandwidth. It used to be that people would sign up so they could download songs, but the music industry is cracking down on that enough that it's become less of a draw for many subscribers as well.
Hide this

Thank you for reading this Techdirt post. With so many things competing for everyone’s attention these days, we really appreciate you giving us your time. We work hard every day to put quality content out there for our community.

Techdirt is one of the few remaining truly independent media outlets. We do not have a giant corporation behind us, and we rely heavily on our community to support us, in an age when advertisers are increasingly uninterested in sponsoring small, independent sites — especially a site like ours that is unwilling to pull punches in its reporting and analysis.

While other websites have resorted to paywalls, registration requirements, and increasingly annoying/intrusive advertising, we have always kept Techdirt open and available to anyone. But in order to continue doing so, we need your support. We offer a variety of ways for our readers to support us, from direct donations to special subscriptions and cool merchandise — and every little bit helps. Thank you.

–The Techdirt Team


Reader Comments

Subscribe: RSS

View by: Time | Thread


  • identicon
    aReader(), 9 Dec 2003 @ 1:02pm

    I wonder...

    I wonder if RIAA is paying the DSL service providers to compensate for the low price so that more and more people sign up for DSL and get low bandwidth and cannot download music :-)

    link to this | view in chronology ]

  • identicon
    Anonymous Coward, 9 Dec 2003 @ 1:05pm

    No Subject Given

    I disagree that the speeds are "about the same." both in California and Georgia, with different providers, cable's consistently blown DSL out of the water.

    link to this | view in chronology ]

    • icon
      Mike (profile), 9 Dec 2003 @ 1:13pm

      Re: No Subject Given

      True, though, it depends on where you are and how close you are to the CO. Where I am right now, I am too far to get good DSL speeds. However, I know others who have DSL offerings that aren't noticeably different than my cable modem.

      link to this | view in chronology ]

  • identicon
    Adam Rice, 9 Dec 2003 @ 3:22pm

    No Subject Given

    I've noticed the speed balance has been changing here. When DSL and cable modems were both pretty new, cable was much, much faster. These days Time Warner's own ads only claim to be 2x DSL speeds.

    This isn't really surprising, as cable offers a ceiling on speed, DSL offers a floor. The more people use cable, the smaller a piece of the pie you get, because the bandwidth is shared.

    link to this | view in chronology ]

    • identicon
      ne0phyt3, 10 Dec 2003 @ 12:12pm

      Re: DSL vs. Cable

      I'm not an expert on this, but don't cable modems access bandwidth from a shared connection while DSL connections go through single, static circuit? If that's correct then it is not possible for Cable providers to consistently maintain their initial claims of a higher connection speed when a community becomes saturated with subscribers...

      link to this | view in chronology ]


Follow Techdirt
Essential Reading
Techdirt Deals
Report this ad  |  Hide Techdirt ads
Techdirt Insider Discord

The latest chatter on the Techdirt Insider Discord channel...

Loading...
Recent Stories

This site, like most other sites on the web, uses cookies. For more information, see our privacy policy. Got it
Close

Email This

This feature is only available to registered users. Register or sign in to use it.