BellSouth cuts DSL pricing

BellSouth has cut pricing on its 3-megabit-per-second service by $5 per month to entice customers to upgrade to higher speeds.

On Monday, the telephone company announced it would reduce the monthly price of residential FastAccess DSL Xtreme, which offers download speeds of 3mbps and 384 kilobits per second upstream, to $37.95 per month. The price cut was announced in an effort to get customers subscribing to its 1.5mbps service, which costs $32.95 per month, to upgrade to a faster service, said Nadine Randall, a spokeswoman for BellSouth.

"With the reduced price, there will now only be a $5 differential per month between the 3mbps service and our most popular service, which is the 1.5mbps," she said. "We're trying to make it simpler for people to upgrade."

BellSouth offers four tiers of service. Its fastest service was introduced in November and is called the FastAccess DSL Extreme 6.0, which offers 6mbps downloads and 512kbps uploads for $46.95 per month. Next down the line is FastAccess DSL Xtreme, which has the new price reduction. Then there is the FastAccess DSL Ultra, which offers 1.5mbps downstream and 256kbps upstream for $32.95 per month. And finally, the DSL Lite service that features speeds up to 256kbps downstream and 128kbps upstream for $24.95 per month.

BellSouth says that it's seeing a lot of growth in its broadband business. It ended the third quarter of 2005 with more than 2.6 million DSL customers. But in total, the company still lags in terms of total subscribers to the largest cable competitor in its region, Cox Communications, which has about 3 million subscribers, according to Strategy Analytics.

The battle for broadband subscribers heated up in 2005, as phone companies began offering lower-priced services to attract consumers who may be less tech-savvy. Cable providers led the market in total broadband subscribers in the third quarter of 2005, with 20.8 million total subscribers compared to DSL's 17.2 million subscribers, according to Strategy Analytics. Traditionally, cable companies have focused on increasing speeds to remain competitive, resisting sharp price cuts.

"BellSouth is taking a very market-oriented approach versus the cable television industry, which is simply charging the highest price for the fastest service, period," said Jeff Kagan, a telecommunications industry analyst. "While speed makes great headlines, not every customer needs the highest speed, and would rather turn down the speed and save money."

Unlike other phone companies, such as Verizon Communications and AT&T, which started offering $15-per-month service to customers last year, BellSouth has taken a more measured approach to pricing. It has offered some promotions, but this is the first permanent price cut it has initiated in more than a year.

[saleen351]

Naked Dsl????

I only have a cell phone, I'm not going to get a landline just to have dsl... This should be illegal if you ask me. What if cable companies did the same, there would be hell to pay if you had to actualy have cable tv.. I have DTV... So this article is bogus, they don't mention the landline fees.. grrrr

[aexep]

Now if only they could deliver the bandwidth

BellSouth announced and still can't fully deliver 6Mb DSL, and a large customer base is stuck on old technology and can't upgrade their speed to 3Mb (but are paying the same amount). They keep pushing back their plans to deliver the bandwidth and expand their service. Instead of talking about IPTV or preventing communities from deploying their own fiber, they would server their customer base much better by fixing the problems they currently have with their DSL deployment. This critique is aimed squarely at the senior management of the company, the tech and engineers do a fine job even though they are fenced in by management... One very frustrated BellSouth DSL customer!

[Harfeld Bilgewing]

Annoying Ads

You guys keep finding more and more ways to make your ads obtrusive.

[Earl Benser]

Like, Where's the Beef?????

I keep getting 'promises' but nothing ever happens. Looks like
Sales forget to tell Engineering what they were up to.

Com'on BellSouth. I waiting and ready for Extreme 6 !!!!!!!!

[pentium4forever]

expand

how do you get them to expand service to more places?

[jwmc1971]

Try Roadrunner

1.5 mb's a sec ...yeah , thats 15 megabits per sec...45$ a month (with tv/phone/cable combo ... )D/l'ing has never been faster...now if we could just catch up to overseas and their 30 a sec!!