| Usage pricing already sort of exists in the flat price model Usage based pricing already sort exists within the flat price model. Comcast for example has an economy plan with speeds around 1mbps for a lower price than their standard $45 service. Also, they charge you more for internet if you don't get their cable. There are also higher speed plans offered at higher prices. There would be no real need for them to worry about people consuming more online videos, since the economy plan wouldn't really be fast enough for much intensive streaming video. If a lot of people started dropping their cable tv for some reason, they would have to pay the higher internet bill rate. The content providers would have to come up with some alternate means of obtaining revenues to pay for their programming, but this would be the media networks, not the cable companies. The profit margin Comcast gets from its internet services is actually pretty good. That is probably why they are using fairly high soft caps. They also have invested in some online video.
Time Warner seems to have had difficulty making upgrades to its network over the past several years. This could be preventing them from being able to offer people variety in internet service options. The equivalent would be if a fast food place only offered its customers hamburgers, and no other menu items. AT&T I could see playing the metering game on their non-UVERSE dsl service, but metering UVERSE is not going to encourage adoption. In a Time Warner vs AT&T market, AT&T may get significant market share. I doubt that that in Comcast vs AT&T markets (which is a quite common overlap in places like Chicago, much of Florida, and the San Francisco/San Jose area) would get get much U-VERSE adoption with the rather low caps.
Verizon's behavior is too confusing to even begin to understand. Offloading FIOS areas in Oregon and Washington to Frontier makes no sense. |
