Comments on news posted 2010-08-02 09:13:55: Last week AT&T posted their second quarter earnings, and while wireless connectivity was hot -- the company noted they lost a whopping 347,000 traditional DSL customers on the quarter. ..
Well as a AT&T customer who is paying enough to rent half a good size apartment in many areas for my Telco/DSL/Cell service I say to heck with you. If you want to stop churn you need to address how you're treating the old customers.
I went to the link Mr. Bode was so kind as to provide, this is a 12 month teaser rate. Every large ISP does it.
From the site -
$14.95/$19.95 Intro Pricing Promotion: Customers purchasing new AT&T High Speed Internet Basic, Express or Pro will pay $14.95 per month for 12 months after application of bill credit. Customers purchasing AT&T High Speed Internet Elite will pay $19.95 per month for 12 months after application of bill credit. First 2 credits will appear on same bill within the first 3 bill cycles. After 12 months existing standard rates apply. Promotional rates will expire if customer upgrades or downgrades their speed tier during promo period. Qualifying Local access line required. Other conditions and restrictions apply. Offer expires 12/31/10.
Free Modem/Gateway Offer: Online orders only. Available to new customers purchasing AT&T High Speed Internet Pro or Elite and a modem or wireless gateway. Rebate is $75 for modem or $100 for gateway. Customer must sign up for Account Manager. Online Redemption terms: Redemption details provided to customer within 4 weeks of activation of qualifying service. Card sent to customers 4 to 6 weeks after redemption. Redemption requires customer to retain qualifying service a minimum of 30 days and at time processing of reward is completed. The AT&T Reward Visa® Prepaid Card is not redeemable for cash and may not be used at automated gasoline pumps or for cash withdrawal at any cash dispensing locations. Card may not be used to purchase AT&T products and/or services in certain states. Card expires 90 days after issuance. See cardholder agreement and card carrier for other terms and conditions. [For more details go to »rewardcenter.att.com/myr ··· ent.pdf]. Visa prepaid cards are issued by MetaBank pursuant to a license from Visa U.S.A. Inc. Offer expires 11/06/10.
Who wants to switch providers every 6 months or year? Fill out modem rebate forms, wait for the rebate? The AT&T forums are filled with people who can't get the rated speed from their DSL. Charging more for 3 mb service which is no faster than the 1.5 mb service, which is really an 800 kb service seems unfair to me. For AT&T it's business as usual.
No thanks, and you are correct, this is one big lol.
Interesting commercial coming from a bank majority owned by Uncle Sam.
It's easy to kiss customer ass when you aren't bothered by silly things like having to be profitable...until those customers are crushed by the effects of National debt anyway.
Interesting commercial coming from a bank majority owned by Uncle Sam.
It's easy to kiss customer ass when you aren't bothered by silly things like having to be profitable...until those customers are crushed by the effects of National debt anyway.
Quite the opposite actually. In a competitive market if you don't please your customers to the point of servility, you won't manage a profit.
Besides, the USA is a Constitutional Republic, as such the Citizens don't vote on hardly anything but their representatives. That's the JOB of Congress (got that out of a fancy high school civics class!
...now on to Pelosi and her Politburo in November.
Constitutional Republic works if they actually REPRESENT the will of the constituents. We are in an unprecedented era of politicians completely ignoring the will of the people.
Interesting commercial coming from a bank majority owned by Uncle Sam.
It's easy to kiss customer ass when you aren't bothered by silly things like having to be profitable...until those customers are crushed by the effects of National debt anyway.
Gee can we keep this thread ON TOPIC instead of some political rant hat has NOTHING to do with the TOPIC on hand?
I'm about to move out of my apartment to a home, which means I'll lose my 24 tier Uverse.
They don't have Uverse in that area which leaves me having to get my TV from Comcast (who I despise, and there are too many trees for DirecTV), but I won't be complaining about paying $19.95 for 6 until they get Uverse in my area. In fact that's great considering they won't require me to have a landline...
You're right... I could and even considered it, but my live in girlfriend wants DVR access to her bravo, vh1 and other shows that the ladies watch.
My rabbit ears/Netflix (which I have) suggestion did not go so well. I keep crossing my fingers that by the time October rolls around I'll have another option outside of Comcast. (that or I need to cut down some trees)
Then why are they losing customers? Hundreds of thousands of them in fact.
Over the the last year, I've seen to it that AT&T lost a dozen customers in Los Angeles.
It was never a matter of price.
Every customer was willing to pay substantially more.
All they wanted was for their circuit to actually perform even remotely as advertised. For instance, 384kbps. Also, this concept called "dial tone".
No amount of effort, escalation or threats would budge AT&T, to get off the dime and do ANYTHING to improve DSL performance beyond a typical 80-100kbps. Getting landlines repaired took weeks and repeated calls for service and bucket truck visits - getting and keeping a good pair is a roll of the dice.
It wasn't like they wanted to up-sell to U-Verse. They don't offer it.
There are other price factors like triple play, cost of POTS, etc. $25 isn't a deal if you have to have a $20 POTS line on top of it or have to pay a higher price for video or other service from other vendor as a result of breaking up services.
What about the friggin people who are paying the old original rates. We are chopped liver..
I got a solicitation for U-verse. They CLAIM it is available to me but upon investigation.. Watch a nice AT&T tech throw her hands up in disgust, it is not available...
REMEMBER FOLKS OLD clients deserve something too other than a HIGH BILL
called and complain and they should give you a better price. When they had all speeds at 24.95, I called and complained/threaten to switch to comcast (which is 12m here) and they gave me $24.95 for six months. I haven't tried with the new pricing, but I will soon.
and never will. about 97% of the entire T footprint won't meet the FCC definition. But that is just that. A Definition and nothing more than that. Or a suggestion. And the Telcos and MSOs know this.
With all AT&T's overhead, they must be losing money on this one. But hey, as a second connection in addition to something more speedy, 3/512 (or, rather, 2.5/450) at $15 isn't bad AT ALL...and the price is low enough that I'd have no problem having it sit there as a backup connection. Oh, and it's faster than my parents' current 1.5/384 DSL (they'd have 7.1/768 if it was available).
Will this tier gain customers? Yep. Will it gain customers from cable companies that have folks tucked neatly into triple play deals? Probably not. Also, as said before I'm sure that a $15 per month DSL plan is costing AT&T money...unless it ends up being $20-$25 after taxes and fees, in which case they're breaking even.
I know it's not anywhere near what cable providers can offer as far as downstream speeds, but I've found it's great... at least for now.
I have no problems watching Netflix streaming content in HD (4 bars all the time, maybe a drop to 3 bars once every few weeks for an hour or so). And for gaming it can't be beat, since the latency is so so SO much better than when I had Comcast. Comcast is the worst ever, at anything. Though I have moved since I last tried them, maybe they'd be good here. Can't get Uverse yet at my apartment. I'm in Chicago.
Time to switch back to cable for an intro deal, I think. No way am I going to continue paying $47 a month when they're offering the same thing for $20.
Complain all you want, but, always remember there are people out here who can't have DSL or cable at all. My friggin neighbors up the road have DSL, but AT&T can't get me a signal. If they could, I would pay $50 per month for it or MORE.
So, always put it in perspective that there are many who have no access to wired broadband who would cut off their own nutz just to get it....
Sure a few went to uverse but alot went to cable for faster speeds. Face it AT&T, DSL is the next dial up. you are going to lose more and more customers (well atleast in the DSL market). Time to throw it in high gear by either deploying uverse in more places or recycle the copper and go for fiber.
inb4 they wont, they love their copper and will continue to use it for ages. All that copper has been paid off for awhile now. Even if everyone walks away from dsl, they still got a good role in the wireless market.
Sure a few went to uverse but alot went to cable for faster speeds. Face it AT&T, DSL is the next dial up. you are going to lose more and more customers (well atleast in the DSL market). Time to throw it in high gear by either deploying uverse in more places or recycle the copper and go for fiber.
inb4 they wont, they love their copper and will continue to use it for ages. All that copper has been paid off for awhile now. Even if everyone walks away from dsl, they still got a good role in the wireless market.
also read my sig.
Not to mention that there are many prospect ATT-Uverse customers who would want to get the Internet package but without TV. ATT won't let you have standalone internet unless you pay a high cost for installation ($149) or add TV package and then you only pay activation ($30).
Sure a few went to uverse but alot went to cable for faster speeds. Face it AT&T, DSL is the next dial up. you are going to lose more and more customers (well atleast in the DSL market). Time to throw it in high gear by either deploying uverse in more places or recycle the copper and go for fiber.
inb4 they wont, they love their copper and will continue to use it for ages. All that copper has been paid off for awhile now. Even if everyone walks away from dsl, they still got a good role in the wireless market.
also read my sig.
Not to mention that there are many prospect ATT-Uverse customers who would want to get the Internet package but without TV. ATT won't let you have standalone internet unless you pay a high cost for installation ($149) or add TV package and then you only pay activation ($30).
That was the reason why I switched to Comcast.
Im one of those people. andim sitting on my 6 meg dsl,very lame when i would pay for the full tier. No big deal though after 6 years of consistent DSL service at the same address that 149.99 installation is going to guarantee their return. Well its going to guarantee i sit on dsl.
You can't beat the price. I just got dry dsl 6/768 for $20/mo for one year. The speed is not top, but for that price I'll get a dual wan router and connect my DSL and cable. Or cancel the cable internet and eventually make the jump over to Uverse once they have a special on the RG or install fee. The service will be turned on by the 4th.
I have been paying $24 for the ex Bellsouth DSL lite plan (768kbps/128kbps) for over 3 years now. Back then I could do many things with this speed, but nowadays as more websites require faster connection, I have to upgrade for a smoother experience.
Id say $45 for 12mbps+ isnt that bad, considering I pay half price for less than 1mbps. DSL reliabilty is no more, I get more than 10 disconnects per day. AT&T techs said my line was OK and I shouldn't be experiencing this. We even have a Homerun from the NID to the room where the modem is located.
$20.00 for 6MB is a good deal, but AT&T needs to tinker with their tecnology rather than their pricing. With dry loop and bonded lines, they can offer even better deals. Pulling out the copper lines is a big mistake.
Speed wise, my house almost never uses a fraction of the bandwidth. It's not necessary, even if 3 people are watching Youtube videos at the same time (something like that). Downloading a 1 hour HD TV show only takes about 35 minutes, and downloading a 720p movie images only takes a couple of hours. I've never been in that much of a rush to care about the small wait times.
Reliability wise, I think on average the DSL is down about 4 hours in a year (one short incident per year). 99.999% of the time it's working. That was not my experience with cable modem (the opposite really). Reliability would be my #1 concern.
I've switched back and forth from AT&T to Comcast over the years. Comcast gives me the speed and AT&T gives me the reliability. Sure AT&T is slower, but at least it's not down twice a week like the Comcast service in my area. It would be great to live in an area where I could get fast and reliable service, but that doesn't seem to be in the cards for me in Connecticut.
It's the same way in my area. I could get faster speed from cable but sometimes their internet will go out. At&t is slower here but it hardly ever goes down.
Dang. RR only has iffy 18/512 for $50 month w/ tv extra. And 512 up is not true, more like 400. Only an issue up when sending a small .jpg now & then and watch it crawl. Videos play fairly good as well as prg downloads. Wouldn't be happy w/ modem charges & teasers. Plus my early adopt DSL years back cost me pants load in stock market one critical morning when DSL went out once again. Watched as $20k became $17K while I tried to use dial up to exit a crashing position w/ no sell stop on it. By next month TWC became available. It had a shakey outage start & slow speeds circa 2003 but finally been solid past 2 yrs. Forget DSL if can.
hey not everyone needs that much bandwidth, i mean honestly i work on computers and do large downloads, and i could get away with 3Mbps just fine, as it's fast enough to be reasonable with large downloads and my netflix, hd youtube, hulu and such do not ever need to stop and buffer.
And all of this is with my Landline (T-Mobile @Home VOIP), Cell Phones (UMA - Calls over WiFi), Wii for Netflix, and two laptops using the same connection..
now i just went to 40meg down/5meg up service from qwest, but i will never need that kind of speed for anything.