Thats not actually what they said. They said that there isnt enough demand to justify the cost for them to do it basically. There is always a demand for something, eventually someone will want it. I dont blame them for not keeping competitive with google fiber. There is a demand (although small) for symmetric connections too but we dont see them doing that either >.< Also they mention people choose other teirs of speed. From my experience, 100mb down 10 up costs just over 100/mo so obviously i chose 50mb down instead because thats an absurd cost for that. Also, i would venture to guess that most customers have no concept of what gigabit internet means. My parents for example live in a rural area and can only get 1.5mb down, and they really have no idea or concept of anything faster. I would place them in the technologically not so savy group. For me, what google is doing is saying hey, you can 50mb for $60/mo or you can have 1000mb for $70/mo. They are upselling the local areas providers im guessing, likewise with their TV option, currently i pay $115/mo for TV and Internet, where as google's TV option is 120 and has more channels. Again, a simple upsell, the overall value of the internet is what would get me to purchase. Granted, this is iowa for me, i dont know what the local providers for KC MO are offering, but i know its not great, have friends there Google is basically sniping the enthusiast/top tier market. although its funny that TW mentions their bunsiness tier, cuz i bet google fiber is destroying their butthole on price and skimming their customers too.
That availability and cost of higher speeds is atrocious compared to the ISP's costs. They got a bunch of federal money to expand networks and basically sat on it as profit. As far as KC is concerned, cable access there still pretty much sucks because Google is only going into KCK and KCMO which were low subscriber/poorer areas to begin with. The burbs where I used to live still has the same 15mb/s at the same price it was at several years ago ($45/mo, IIRC I can call up my parents). You can get the bigger connections but it's $$$. The Google option is a bit more expensive but it dominates in $/bandwidth. And the $25 a month for a single year to get 5mb/s is incredibly cheap. Everybody best get ready for not just crappy costing speed tiers but bandwidth caps with overage charges as well.
I disagree. I will be very surprised if land service widely implements a cap, at least in the near to mid future. There is always going to be a competitor that will give a higher limit for the same money because that's how free markets work. There may not be a strong enough demand for faster internet, but I cant accept that in an increasingly volume hungry world their isnt demand for an unlimited plan. The only logical eventuality is that all go unlimited and any cappers would be fall in line or go out of business. In the short run, is it possible we see some companies experiment with capping and charging (we already have in a few places,) but it isnt a sustainable model. It makes no sense in the long term when there are other providers who dont. basic econ 101. Another good argument concerns the fact that providers are moving towards a digital cable package that includes tv over a shared internet bandwidth- because its cheaper and its better to collect marketing data to advertisers. What are the TV/ISP's going to do? Limit your tv consumption? I think not, the advertisers would have a shitfit. The only reasonable compromise is that providers supply enough bandwidth to keep 2, 3, possibly more tv's (I know i would want as many as I could contractually negotiate if I were a cable network with paying advertisers collecting licensing fees from a cable company) on different channels at least 16 hours a day. Do you realize how much bandwidth that is? The argument is moot.
It's very easy for them to exempt TV-on demand from their own caps. In fact Comcast already does for TV-over-IP it where they have caps and charge overages. Most areas don't have any competition in cable access and most areas have a maximum of two high-speed providers: The cable co and the phone company. Your competition argument is fictitious for the majority of America . It also didn't stop caps from happening in Canada and Australia ect. Caps are also on the rise here and have been for some time. From no one with a cap in 2007 to about 63% last year. They really want tiered plans like that, it can make them a ton more money. If you use their streaming service/IPTV they make more money on you or if you use netflix, they make more money on you. They already did it in cellular service. For AT&T it used to be unlimited, then "unlimited" with a cap, now it's the same cost but you only get 5gb. Verizon did the same...and Sprint is doing so very well competing with their unlimited plan...
lol last i check sprint isnt doing very well competing with anyone in my area lol sadly i have to say my local cable provider recently did implement caps but maintained a more expensive unlimited option, but they have always had a 250gb/mo 'fair use' policy but i would assume ive blown through that on several occasions in a weekend and never heard anything from them. Honestly i dont care about a data cap on my phone, 2gb is plenty unless im in a rom flashing mood. that being said and ive said it before, with phone dev companies pushing for no SDHC slot in phones and having a limited amount on onboard memory, it pushes more people towards streaming more and more things on their phone instead of storing the data locally, and with data plans becoming less unlimited and smaller amounts of data, something has to give one way or another. Update: Latest Rates
Most of those speeds for the price are about the same as where I am in the US, the real difference is the bandwidth cap amounts.
That's more expensive than Comcast is here. And WAY more expensive if you include all the overages I'd rack up. Holy shit.
yeah for comparison, i pay 60 for the 50mb, the 105mb is around 120 i think, and the 3mb is 20. I forget what the others are. 15 for $30 and 30 for 40 maybe