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Broadband Usage Up 42% In The U.S. In 2003
Kickassthegreat writes "As reported here by Reuters, broadband usage in the U.S. jumped 42 percent in 2003 as compared to 2002. As more people sign on to high-speed access, how long will it be before we start seeing the cable companies (such as Comcast) start dropping their prices to levels which compete directly with dial-up?"
Never. Just like CDs are still more expensive than tapes.
the RIAA drops the prices on CD's to compete directly with cassette tapes.
Have you been touched by his noodly appendage?
You forgot the golden rule of monopolies. The more customers, the higher the prices!
yeah just like we see lower prices at the petrol pumps when the price of oil drops
companies are so desperate to make money, you really think they will drop the price when they can increase ROI for no extra investment at all !
never underestimate greed, especially in USA
"Well Mr. Jones, I know that people are signing up in droves, and many of our markets are over-capacity which is requiring us to upgrade our local services. But I thought it would be nice if we cut the price 75% to compete with AOL's dial-up."
Not in this lifetime, I'm thinking.
"As more people sign on to high-speed access, how long will it be before we start seeing the cable companies (such as Comcast) start dropping their prices to levels which compete directly with dial-up?"
Why would they? More people are signing up to these cable companies (such as Comcast) daily. Why compete with dial-up when people are migrating from dialup?
how long will it be before we start seeing the cable companies (such as Comcast) start dropping their prices to levels which compete directly with dial-up?"
When the companies stop seeing 43% growth. People obviously like the broadband at current prices. If you have a hot product, why lower the price? When growth stagnates, then the companies will start gettng aggressive -- adding services or reducing prices to either make new customers or steal customers from rivals.
In the long run, doubt that broadband will ever be the same price as dial-up because it both costs more and is more valuable to customers.
Two wrongs don't make a right, but three lefts do.
There's no pressure for Comcast et al to lower prices. Right now, they simply need to show up and in many areas (like mine) DSL isn't available.
It'll happen, as the market saturates and competition finds a way to penetrate the markets. Also, as additional services come up (perhaps like Comcast offering VOIP) they'll probably come up with package deals to make the combo very attractive.
blenderking.com over 50,000 blenders can't be wrong
First of all the cable companies will want to recoup their investment. Then they'll want to make a profit.
The only thing that will drive down prices is direct competition and, as I understand it, cable companies don't have a great deal of overlap. Now, if you were able to pick from half a dozen plus companies to provide broadband connectivity to your home (just as you're able to pick literally dozens of companies to provide narrowband connectivity to your home), then you'd have some active competition between companies, which would lead lower prices. But in a market where you're options are limited to one, two, maybe three companies tops then you're unlikely to see any really aggressive pricing.
And that's before you even start talking about what sort of value people attach to having broadband. If 19 out of 20 people have an expectation that broadband will cost $40/month then that's what it will cost. The fact that the last person in that group wouldn't pay more than $35/month for the service is irrelevant.
"Accept that some days you are the pigeon, and some days you are the statue." - David Brent, Wernham Hogg
Why do some gas stations in the middle of nowhere charge $0.25 per gallon more than gas stations near cities or in a large cluster of stations near an overpass? Simple - because they can. Now I'm no fan of Comcast, but if they're the only major high-speed player in a market, they can set the price. If TimeWarner moves in, they have to cut prices. Supply and demand, no different than any other commodity product.
WHen will broadband companies truly serve the populace by providing broadband capability to all, not just the city folk?
Eat a Chicken, You know you want to.
As technology develops, DSL will be available over longer and longer distances. Currently, you can manage a 192kb DSL line over about 21000 feet, if I am not mistaken (which I might be, but these numbers feel about right). I wouldn't be surprised to see that number double in the next few years. Also, as WiFi stuff gets so ridiculously cheap, all that would be necessary would be to put a repeater on every few power poles and voila, rural internet access.
The question is, when will METERED broadband access be in place? Probably when no-one uses dial up any more, although with reference to the last article, we (UK) may be paying for phonecalls by the MB by then anyway.
If I promise to be a good boy can I have some better karma?
As more people sign on to high-speed access, how long will it be before we start seeing the cable companies (such as Comcast) start dropping their prices to levels which compete directly with dial-up?
Perhaps when the growth rate slows down? Seems like they don't have much to gain at the moment by dropping their prices. Of course, by the time their growth rate slows, they might have killed off all of their dial-up competitors.
dennis
It all depends how much competition the government will allow amongst broadband providers. Not so much DSL and Cable which already are competetors, but allowing or requiring cable to allow other companies in.
Plus you have other technologies trying to become involved such as broadband over electric lines. Anything that may actually drive consumers to another company will drive prices more competitively, otherwise we're looking at high prices for a while.
I will shred my adversaries. Pull their eyes out just enough to turn them towards their mewing, mutilated faces. Illyria
In Belgium the percentage of people who have ADSL or cable is pretty high, compared to dialup. At this moment 15,4% marketpenetration for ADSL. 4th world wide.
The main reason might be the monopoly position of Belgacom, the main Telecomoperator. They dictate prices between cariers and abuse their monopoly in every way they like.
Because of that there are so many ADSL and cable subscribers. So here is the proove that a monopoly IS good for the customer. Uh, wait. That can't be right.
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
Or does anybody believe there is another killer-app for broadband? All the broadband providers need filesharing to grow.
What I am waiting for is when the RIAA finally starts to impact broadband profits. I think by then broadband will be several times more important than the whole music and film business. Some people might find themselves between a rock and a hard place...
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
Nice try, but Japan has _density_ which means economics of scale, thus high bandwidth is cheap and easy to offer. I lived in Australia for a while, DSL was expensive and restricted: now I live in London UK, DSL is relatively affordable, but speeds are not great (e.g. max 2mbps).
However, it's nice for us techies to talk about high speeds, but for the "web browsing masses", these speeds are reasonably acceptable for surfing, downloading and streaming. The other "mass market" for high bandwidth are online gamers.
The problem as I see it at the moment, is that there are no mass market killer application for high bandwidth yet - sure, iTunes, music downloads and games, but 2-5Mbps speeds are decent for that. You can talk about ISO and P2P sharing, but that's largely restricted to techies as well.
It won't be until "webcasting" offers us something interesting that sub 2-5mbps speeds will begin to look really poor. Websurfing has killed off 56k from being a useful access rate, and it will take Webcasting to kill off sub 2-5mbps.
I already watch BBS news and other information via. broadband rather than turning on the TV. As soon as BBC and other webcasters offer decent content, and the QoS is there, then (a) sub 2-5mbps rates will look poor, (b) ISP's will start to have problems with the "50:1" contention ratio they offer, (c) VOIP will be a reality at the moment.
Your 24Mb/s sounds nice, but it reminds me of Japan's 3G: the economist regularly reports that for all of the high bandwidth it offers, downloading games and tunes are about all it gets used for. In other words, speaking as an engineer, this is bad economics: design and maintain all of the high speed gear and bwidth, but offer no useful content or utility for it.
I'm sure it will come along soon: call it the "disruptive gap": the bandwidth is there, it's calling out for commercial operators to fill the space.