AT&T VDSL Won't Compete On Price → Did anybody actually read the article?!?

Before posting such inane chatter about "duopoly" and "unfettered capitalism", did anyone bother reading the article, or did you just take Karl's misrepresentation of it as fact?

The AT&T veep didn't say they weren't going to compete on price at all (as suggested), but rather the quote is "The notion of competing JUST on price doesn’t make sense to us...". [emphasis mine].

If they are to compete with incumbent cable providers, they'll have to compete with respect to both cost and features; people won't switch to a new service that costs the same simply because it has a couple extra bells and whistles that most people aren't interested in anyways.

Aren't some of you the same ones who look down their noses at slower but cheaper DSL while extolling the virtues of higher cost but faster cable and fiber offerings that cost nearly twice as much?

sez who? Comcast is already on record as stating they won't compete on price - remember, they offer BMWs, everyone else is a Hyundai; that being said, they do in areas where there is another wireline competitor, but the lower price usually seems to only be offered when someone calls in to cancel or threaten to cancel. In most cases, I don't think they actually widely advertise a lower price. That's price competition, but not in the way one would normally think of it - comcast seems to take great pains to not actually seem to compete on price.

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.

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.

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The AT&T veep didn't say they weren't going to compete on price at all (as suggested), but rather the quote is "The notion of competing JUST on price doesn’t make sense to us...". [emphasis mine].

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Imagine that! People on this site jumping to conclusions without paying attention to those pesky "fact" things? Say it ain't so!

Even the headline, as usual, is biased. As you said, they didn't say they won't compete on price. They said they won't complete ONLY with price.

I really DO wonder what the average IQ (or age) is on this board. Hooked on Phonics obviously didn't take...

Adam

He was referring to faster cable internet to slower but cheaper DSL; not terribly relevant to a discussion about IPTV vs Cable.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.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.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.