June 2, 2005 4:00 AM PDT
SBC ups the ante in broadband war
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other services such as telephony and, eventually, television. SBC is already in the process of upgrading its network to carry television service over its existing DSL lines.
While Project Lightspeed, which will extend fiber deeper into the network to support higher bandwidth for Internet-routed TV, is SBC's answer to the cable company's "triple play" service offering, the reality is that SBC's service won't be ready for more than a year. What's more, rollout of the television service could take even longer since SBC could be required to go city to city to negotiate franchise agreements.
SBC and Verizon Communications, which also has plans to offer television services over a new network it's building, suffered a serious blow over the weekend in Texas, when the legislature failed to act on a bill that would have allowed new entrants to the television market to get a statewide franchise. Similar laws are being considered in other states.
As SBC stares this reality in the face, signing up subscribers no matter what seems to be a top priority.
"It's all about driving DSL growth," said Wes Warnock, a spokesman for SBC. "Broadband is a sticky product, and it helps us compete against the cable companies. It also offsets the access line loss, so it's strategically significant."
Reading the fine printWhile the list price for SBC's new service is far below that of competitors' offerings, it is not without conditions. First, the $14.95 price is a promotion, and it's good for only one year. After that, subscribers pay whatever regular rate SBC is charging at the time.
Customers must also agree to a one-year contract for the service. If they decide to terminate the service before the contract expires, there's a $200 cancellation fee. And finally, the $14.95 rate is only available for customers who also subscribe to SBC telephone service, which most can get for about $20 a month.
Some cable competitors argue that customers get a better value from their services. For example, Time Warner is offering a promotional rate for its high-speed service--$29.99 a month for the first six months. Once the promotion period ends, the price jumps to $39.95.
Unlike SBC, which requires subscribers to also get a phone line, Time Warner customers can sign up for high-speed access without subscribing to any other cable service. What's more, the Time Warner service offers connection rates of 5mbps, whereas the $14.95 offer from SBC provides only up to 1.5mbps.
Cox offers a 256kbps broadband connection for $24.95 a month. The service is not a promotion and is offered throughout its service region. It also doesn't require subscribers to sign up for any other Cox services and it doesn't require a contract.
But if push comes to shove in a particular market, the company could respond on a local level, said Bobby Amirshahi, a spokesman for Cox.
"It's not in our plan right now to lower our rates," he said. "But we allow each market to do whatever it needs to do to react to changing market conditions."
As for the other Baby Bells, which do not compete head-to-head against SBC for DSL customers, Verizon and BellSouth both say they have no immediate plans to lower pricing on their DSL service.
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Now if you have cable, like my-self: You are constantly inendated with commercials every 3 minutes, your monthly bill fluctuates like the stock market, and you'll never be quite sure if there still charging you for the "LINE CHARGE" 2 years later.
If you can get past of all they above, and a loss of internet at leat 3 times a week (MediaCom Cable in Saint Bonifacius, MN). Then maybe Cable is for you! Of course you'll have to get past the $50.00 a month fee, and the fact that the sales lady will tell you that you need to have "EXTENDED CABLE" service to get high-speed internet.
The truth is that: due to video-on-demand (like MediaCom provides), there bandwidth pipes are open full blast anyway, so the need to charge $50 a month is just plain robbin' the general public.
$14.95 is a very respectable price for DSL (768Mb), and unless your KAZZA-ing or Morpheus-ing, you will never, ever, ever, ever, see the whole bandwidth that the cable company charges you for (3000Mb).
We, as server manager's, rarely, if ever, allow more that 200Mb from any one connection. So if your downloading a file, most of the time you will see the download at a cap. The cap in bandwidth is set on the servers so that any one person wouldn't suck all of the power from the machine at once.
Imagine, with my 3000Mb line here at home, I download a Linux image from LinuxISO.org. That image is about the size of a fully burned CD (650MB). If the owners of the website would allow me download the file at full speed, I could possible get it in SECONDS while crippling there server. This includes the fact that no one else would be able to get files from that server as long as "My download" was in progress.
Now with all that said. It is to our, and your, benefit not to allow all of this bandwidth to one person. So in restrospect, the general consumer will never need a 3000Mb line. That fact is that MedaiCom and other companies use this number as a marketing technique.
If a client asks me this same question (Cable VS. DSL), I give them the same answer, Go with the CHEAPER SERVICE. Besides, I'm ready to charge back MediaCom for the Loss of Bandwith that they DON'T GUARENTEE.
My webservers are UP 99.9% of the time (www.tech1hosting.com). They are hooked up to the same backbone that you are MedaiCom. So why does your service go out at least 3 times a week. And sometimes on Sundays and Mondays for most of the day. WE, the comsumers, PAY YOU, The service providers for service.
ChaskaNet hasn't been charging there clients becuase there system dosen't work properly, so why do you continue to charge US?
Bandwith is something that is Ala-Carte to the phone and cable companies. Give us the Ala-Carte price and stop trying to gouge the consumer. These words aren't written in spite, there written with knowledge!
Gotta Cruze.....Justin
Now if you got that top speed constantly, it would take you 30 minutes to download that ISO.
Now I have a 4 megabit internet connection through comcast, and I very much enjoy downloading huge game patches, mods, and demos of things at high speeds. I actually get 505 kb/s consistent on a good server.
Cable isnt that bad, your company just sounds like $@#$
I pay $100 for a premium cable service (not the highest, but 3 steps above basic). They then charge me $42 for internet service that typically costs $54. So, instead of paying them $154, I pay $142 a month. Do the math, carry the one, 6 gazinda 4, THAT'S an 8% discount. EIGHT PERCENT! Big F'n Deal. I had DSL, they were just as ridiculous, of course, my phone service was a much cheaper expense than cable so the percentage discounted was greater.
Let's hope that the cable operators will lower their prices accordingly. Let's also hope that the Phone companies are able to roll out their IPTV services also. Talk about price wars. Please Texas, don't F this up for the consumer.
Let's see what happens when a REAL competitor enters the market.
Look at AOL dialup. There is still around 20 million customers that pay AOL 23.95 per month for dialup. What do you call that? ignorance, laziness or something else?!
How convaluded is that?
Are you talking about South Korea? I just came back from two semesters in Western Europe (Portugal, Spain, France, and Italy) and internet access isn't that fast there, nor is it that inexpensive. They have fast cell connections, but it costs like $200 a month.
The quality of what is on the market has always been well below what could be on the market. Thousands of CPU's are clocked well below their functional limits because enough customer demand doesn't exist for the highest speed processors. So they clock them slower, and sell them for less in order to make the sales.
When DSL and Cable first came out, they didn't come out with multiple speed levels. This was a bad oversight on the marketers, and they are correcting this to meet customer demands. Customers only want "a little more" than they have now, so they meter the service out and offer discount lower bandwidth services. Failing to do so will prevent them from picking up those customers.
There are a few customers like you and me, who want the DS-3 in our homes. Don't worry, that service too will start to have demand and become available. I could deal with spending $200 for a DS-3 in my home, just waiting for the price to drop in my area...
Your standard telephone service operates below 56Kbit. Voice mail, caller ID, 3-way calling, 411 service, additional phone lines and anything else you pay extra for are provided at the service provider end. Throw in 10 to 20 times the bandwidth and the service is provided at the customer end via hardware and software that runs in the home and is out of the control of the Telco.
Since the Cable companies did not have Internet dialup subscribers or telephone cusomters yet, they had more to gain by offering the bandwidth service and trying to add other services on top of it. So while the Telco stalled to deploy their technolgoy, the Cable companies jumped on it and deployed new technologies to capture a market they were not in fear of losing.
You won't find a Telephone Company executive that will admit to being afraid to deploy DSL, but you can see it throughout the growth of DSL and Cable Internet services.