Cable Operators Will Sell Slow Broadband, Just Not Openly
from the slow-and-cheap-works-for-me dept
DSL has been able to win lots of subscribers over cable modem service by focusing on price, while cable providers have long claimed that people look at speed first and price second. There are plenty of people who are interested in having fast connections, but there are plenty more for whom low-speed broadband at a low price is good enough. Some have speculated that cable companies have resisted offering these "lite" plans because too many users would shift from the more expensive plans to them, but Karl Bode at Broadband Reports says they're being offered now, just only to users that call in to complain or threaten to cancel. Bode asks the relevant question -- while yes, some users might downgrade, wouldn't that be offset by the number of users upgrading from dial-up? DSL providers certainly think so -- perhaps that's why they're grabbing all those users.
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Canadian ISPs
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Re: Canadian ISPs
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Wouldn't volume make up for losses?
That's the thing I've never figured out about companies. They seem to think lowering prices will reduce profits. It will; however, if more people are able to afford the lower price then you've just opened up the market to more customers.
It's the same thing with CDs and DVDs; lower the price and "they will come". Just look at how well iTunes is doing w/ 99 cent songs.
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Re: Wouldn't volume make up for losses?
Heck, there's a local gas station chain here that actually sets prices so low when they open the store (at least they used to) that they LOSE money...just so it drives off competition and they'll make more later.
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Re: Wouldn't volume make up for losses?
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No Subject Given
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Re: No Subject Given
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Reliability Issues
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Re: Reliability Issues
And while DSL is cheaper in this market (about $18/month less), it should be since it has a maximum of 1.5Mbps download for their top level service, where cable is now at 5Mbps for all customers.
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My DSL connection sucked
The fastest DSL download speed I ever got during the two weeks I had it was 100Kbps. There were 4 service outages during that two weeks. Then I called the cable company and had cable modem installed. Connection was much more stable and didn't require PPPoe with download speeds averaging 250K-510Kbps.
I called to cancel SBC's DSL service and when they wanted to know why, I gave them all that data. At the time, DSL and cable cost about the same for the first year. Now cable is $45/month and DSL is around $20/month. But if it's slow and has network outages, what good is it?
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