FiOS Keeping Cable Prices In Check > Non sequitur

reply to aaronwt

Re: Non sequitur

I've been seeing a bit of a price/performance war in my region between Comcast and FiOS.

When Comcast came out with their digital voice service, Verizon immediately fired back with a similarly priced free nationwide phone service with all of the premium features like caller ID and call forwarding included at the exact same price. I'm also seeing the $90 price for the FiOS 50/20 tier, although Verizon publicly advertises this tier at $140.

I believe the competing FTTH technology is forcing many cable providers to expedite their move to a DOCSIS 3.0 system much sooner than they would have otherwise been prompted to do so on their own accord. Even those areas not in direct competition with FiOS may reap the benefits of improved infrastructure and service. If they cannot improve their product in many of these regions, when FiOS or a similar service is made available, it will be very difficult to retain customers if the gap in service is too great. Some of the improvements being made are simply attempts to proactively keep FiOS from stepping in with a vastly improved product and gobbling up an established user base.

And while the cable companies are able to offer similar speed packages on the surface, the reality is that this is more of a marketing gimmick. The fact is that in many of these areas they are simply overselling the service and have to use drastic measures to regulate and throttle the bandwidth consumption at these inflated speed offerings. With some exceptions, a 16/2 Comcast service with PowerBoost is not an equal product to a 20/5 FiOS connection. Having had FiOS now for a couple of months after being with Comcast for over 2 years, I'd prefer a 10/2 fiber service to my previous Comcast cable service. It's simply a more robust, higher quality product through and through for me.

reply to aaronwt
Comcast has been talking about 100mb speeds since back in 1997. And, that conversation was held in Sacramento CA which is no where near Verizon territory. I'm sure that cable speeds have been pushed solely and purely on Verizon's FiOS product.

I think the so-called professional analysts and the not-so professional analysts want people to think that we'd not see new technology ever to come unless there was competition. I can't say that I'd agree that services would not have improved. Cable, alone, went from a simple antenna feed run through the hills picking up locals for the neighbors to a small amplified system, to microwaved, to fiber links to nodes all with out real competition. It was done to improve service and also add more capacity. Does this give more selling options? Sure.. that alone would drive the improvements. However, keeping the prices down? ... that's another story..

.. the moral to the story is that (and as I've been saying here for years) competition doesn't necessarily keep the prices down.. regulation GENERALLY does more-so. If you don't believe me, look at gas stations on opposing corners. One simply waits to raise the price when the others do. Airlines are also guilty of this as well. As soon as one raises their fare, the others generally follow.

This who article is nothing but someone's speculation and not fact... but in the end, the author has to write an article to get paid.