US Telco Support > Verizon > Verizon FIOS TV > FIOS prices getting outrageous

FIOS prices getting outrageous

I agree 100%, unfortunately there is no alternative. All the providers will charge about that much.

reply to navyson
Can you let us know what packages you have?

I have 15/5 internet and Prime HD and my bundle is only $74.99 per month. Add in a cable card and the free standard def set top box and it still is only $81 after taxes.

How are you getting to $155? 5 DVR's plus higher internet speeds or something?

Robert

Is 15/5 speed quick enough to use the internet for normal stuff like facebook, emails, youtube videos?

thanks so what good is having this fancy quantum speed?

reply to navyson
Thanks and yes I agree the pricing is getting too high. I may drop down to a lower speed to offset the price bump. I cant get much from retention as they already gave me ultimate basically for the price of extreme last time.

it pays to use the "Directv is asking me to come back" line to try and get them to knock some money off the bill.

reply to navyson

reply to skierrob
We pay 99.99 for double play Extreme HD and 15/5 internet.
Plus 2 DVRs and 1 other box total is ~$150.

Sounds like the prices are different in the different areas.

reply to navyson
Just one year ago in Jersey I was able to get a new user triple play (25/25,ExtremeHD,voice) for $64.99 (with boxes and taxes runs around $95). Today the lowest price I have found for a new user is around $109.99 for the same package (the $84.99 they advertise is 15/5,PrimeHD,voice). Pretty amazing price increase of 60% in just one year.

reply to Ted Shekler

reply to skierrob
I have Extreme HD with 25/25 internet.

1 DVR and 2HD boxes

reply to navyson
That sounds high. I have 75/35 and the lowest TV with lifetime SHO free and a free SD box for $91 a month.

reply to navyson

reply to navyson

Re: FIOS prices getting outrageous

Making ones prices identical is 'collusion' isn't it? (also illegal) --Where firms agree on what price to charge. Also, the concept of 'whomever doesn't pay you, pays me' (and vise-versa) helps reinforce the collusion. I'd posted this before, but the DoJ should investigate the top 2-3 residential Internet providers' cost structures to ensure they're charging based on their costs plus a normal profit.

The top 2-3 ISPs are assuming an 'infinitely elastic' demand curve - fancy-talk for, "customers will buy the product regardless of its price". They might be right, for the most part, because only so many firms can supply hi-bandwidth internet, and if you want that product, you're going to be paying one of those 2-3 firms.

Gosh, this is almost sounding like Internet is as necessary as electricity. And most large utility companies are regulated monopolies. There's no downward pressure on prices; people will pay any price for this Internet necessity. Prices will float upward forever, unless something stops it....

Well, the solution is kind of obvious, isn't it? The last mile networks need to be either nationalized, or at the very least, regulated PUC style, the way copper is, such that an unlimited number of competitors can appear on your coax or fiber drop, and offer to sell you internet and telephone service.

And I know, that might sound like a horrifying proposal: taking private property away from private companies that have invested in its construction, or at least effectively forcing them to give others free access to it, with very similar results.

But think of it this way. Imagine that in this country, there had never been any such thing as public roads. From the moment you were born, every street you had ever walked or driven down was privately owned by various feudal lords charged you high tolls any time you traveled them, even going so far as to meter every one of your footsteps, and every revolution of your car's tires. You would be pretty outraged by that, I'd think. Most would. It would be an incredible drain on everyone. Virtually anything that moved would make a tiny handful of people money, to the penalty of all others.

And yet that's exactly what's happening on the unregulated fiber and coax last miles in America. Not because consumers have no choice but to use those roads. But because everyone who might want to become a competitor in home internet and telephone service delivery has no choice to use them. So if you want to start Batsona's Totally Awesome Internet Company, it turns out you already live in that imaginary universe where all the roads are privately owned and cost a fortune. Which is wrong. And not because the coax and fiber leading to people's homes is private property, but because the only coax and fiber leading to people's homes is private property. That's called monopoly. And in actuality, those monopoly lines are even worse than the toll roads in my imaginary example. Because unlike the toll trolls who measure your every footstep and tire revolution in my fictional analogy, the toll trolls guarding our coax and fiber last miles won't even let competitors set foot on their toll roads, for any price.

It's simply time for people to demand that their public utilities commissions begin applying the same regulations they've been enforcing for decades on copper to fiber and coax as well. And yeah, the companies running those last miles will raise hell and make every claim in the book for why it shouldn't happen. Such that consumers have multiple choices for making telephone calls and getting online today (cellular and wireless internet). However, consumers in the 1970s had multiple choices for communicating with others too -- everything from CB and ham radio to telegrams, the mails, and letter couriers. But those didn't outweigh the importance of access to competition on the grand daddy of them all, direct wireline. And so for the same reasons (such as that wireline internet is the only possible way to even get unbottlenecked internet for consumers), the same arguments won't hold water today.