said by nasadude:said by dynodb:...
If they are to compete with incumbent cable providers, they'll have to compete with respect to both cost and features; ...
sez who? Comcast is already on record as stating they won't compete on price - remember, they offer BMWs, everyone else is a Hyundai;
He was referring to faster cable internet to slower but cheaper DSL; not terribly relevant to a discussion about IPTV vs Cable.
...comcast seems to take great pains to not actually seem to compete on price.
Hasn't been much of an issue in the past, since most people only have one cable provider to choose from thanks in large part to municipal franchising.
as for features, a conscious effort is made to ensure they don't offer the same thing as a competitor (if there is one). How many broadband companies have exactly the same speeds as a direct competitor (if there is one)? That means there is always a tradeoff: 3M/768K DSL or 4M/384K cable? 8M/768k cable or 5M/1M FIOS? static vs dynamic IP, 5 email addressed vs 7 addresses and on and on.
Umm, yeah. That's what competition is all about. DSL is cheaper, and (at least until very recently) offered higher upload speeds; cable is more expensive but offers higher download speeds. No one is intentionally handicapping their service to benefit their competetor.
as long as there is no real competition, and duopolies are not real competition, these guys are going to do their best to make it as hard as possible to actually make a decision based on price, unless someone only cares about lowest price and nothing else. There are a lot of people out there like that, but a lot of people care about features also, but if it's confusing enough it makes it very hard to actually get the best deal.
Even more confusing is trying to decide what point you were trying to make in that last paragraph. In the case of DSL vs Cable broadband, it's not a terribly confusing choice for the average user- download speed vs price. If a "duopoly" wasn't real competition, we wouldn't have seen DSL prices drop as much as they have in the past year.
If AT&T offers IPTV with roughly the same channel lineup at the same price with only a few minor IPTV bells and whistles, it will fail. Period. If they offer IPTV as a part of a triple play package that comes in cheaper than competing cable companies, it'll sell.