Broadband stat farm Point Topic this week released their latest report on global broadband prices, and found that worldwide, DSL prices dropped roughly twenty percent over the first three quarter of 2008. The firm notes that average subscription prices for cable are down just over 12% and FTTx down by 6.5%. Before you get too excited, most of these drops occurred outside North America, where prices remained largely static, and there's more to measuring value than just price per MB.
As you might expect, there are huge variations in how much users pay per megabit, with many customers in the Middle East & Africa paying over $46 per megabit, while many customers in Europe pay as little as $6.23 per megabit. The average price per megabit in North America is $16.10, while it's closer to $3.80 in Asia Pac.
While DSL price per megabit remained largely unchanged in North America, the deployment of faster DOCSIS 3.0 speeds helped cable's already lower price per megabit drop in both Western Europe and North America. In the first quarter of '08, the price per megabit in both areas was $7.45/Mb and $5.80/Mb, respectively. DOCSIS 3.0 deployment has shifted those numbers to $4.80/Mb and $4.89/Mb respectively. Europe is getting both faster speeds and lower prices.
Keep in mind that Point Topic is measuring standalone broadband prices, and while they don't include the savings from broadband bundles, they also don't include the below the line fees carriers omit from their advertised price -- used to raise rates without looking like they've raised rates. Also considering the cutbacks in services (newsgroups) users are seeing, price per MB doesn't show the full picture of subscription value (or lack thereof).
Of course, this year is also seeing an exploding interest in capped service and highly uneconomical overages (up to $1.50 per GB) from carriers like AT&T, Comcast and Time Warner Cable, despite extremely healthy profits and an overall decrease in bandwidth costs for these carriers.
The latest economic concern is about Stagflation, which is what you call a market where costs of producing goods are rising but the market will not bear price increases. This is really bad news for businesses. We aren't there yet but people in the know are pretty worried about it coming soon. If it does happen, it would completely derail the President-Elect's stated tax plan.
Comcast's HSI is extremely profitable for them so there's no reason to raise prices. They have also cut costs for themselves by getting rid of UseNet and implementing caps and throttling.
Finally they partially subsidize HSI with income from their TV packages so in theory when your cable TV rates go up, Comcast gets more money for HSI.
"Finally they partially subsidize HSI with income from their TV packages"
Totally false.
Actually it's true. That's why Comcast charges more for HSI if you don't sign up for the TV service.
Yeah, but what about the golden goo in that guy's shoe who outruns the land speed record vehicle on the salt flats? That ridiculous f'n bullshit doesn't come cheap! --
At least the price of Comcast HSI hasn't risen in years. Theoretically, it is getting cheaper due to inflation :-D
It has just in a different way. They hold a knife to the throat by bundling your HSI w/cable. If you don't have cable, you pay an extra 20%. But if you do have HSI/cable, they just raise the cable rates. Don't ever think Comcast has stagnant rates, they always find a way to raise them!
At least the price of Comcast HSI hasn't risen in years. Theoretically, it is getting cheaper due to inflation :-D
It has just in a different way. They hold a knife to the throat by bundling your HSI w/cable. If you don't have cable, you pay an extra 20%. But if you do have HSI/cable, they just raise the cable rates. Don't ever think Comcast has stagnant rates, they always find a way to raise them!
But even without HSI, the cable TV rates still go up. Cable TV gets rate increases from the likes of ESPN and the other networks. Do you think that they will just eat it and keep the TV prices down? Fuck no! They will slide those rate increases right over to you and I!
Now, my HSI has yet to get an increase... no amount of speculation can explain that - and it isn't because of TV.
your right, as the industry raises rates, comcast will pass those along. But your still paying an extra $15 to $20 if you choose HSI without cable. So in essence, they got you paying extra without cable, or with cable.
No, actually. If you want Cable TV you pay for Cable TV with all the nice rate hikes - cable companies are mainly a cable TV service.
If you want Cable HSI only, you get to pay full price for it - aka without the two service discount.
I had cable TV for years before ever getting HSI. Price has gone up kinda regularly.
5 years ago, I added HSI to my cable service. The price then was $42.95. About a year into HSI, I opted to pay $10 more for the added speed(mainly for the higher upload speed). That pushed my HSI to $52.95 per month Cable TV has kept on having the yearly/bi-yearly price increases. This month's Comcast bill states that my HSI is still $52.95.
Now, even if I didn't have HSI(with the discount), the Cable TV price will have still been increased, right?
So, my HSI has not had a price increase in 5 years(depending if you want to count the $10 Extra for speed).
According to my bill, the discount is $14 for having two srevices.
I understand what your saying, it's just that I don't except the premise of a "discounted" price. This is a overcharge, Comcast is losing nothing if your at $42 a month. They gain an added fee if your not a cable subscriber, or they get you with the incremental fees if you are. This is like one of those Jewel Preferred Customer cards that basically tell you how much they're overcharging you on a daily basis!
If you are like me I only use Comcast HSI and have never plugged a TV into the cable line. But I still pay for Limited Basic because its cheaper then going without it. So every time they raise their cable rates my HSI in effect goes up. The latest price increase is actually why I've been researching this whole thing for a bit this morning and how I ended up here. It's getting to a point that it's out of my budget and I don't need quite that fast and full of that many services. :/ I'd rather pay $29.99 that Cox offers for a slower sped... except they don't offer service in our area.
5 megabit unlimited = 1.3 TB giving you 50 megabit at 250GB cap is like giving you .1 megabit unlimited
so whats the price ( heard around 90$USD) so your really paying 900$/megabit of DOWNLOAD ( not speed , speed just means that you reach that cap that in 1987 you had as unlimited have dual compression 56K dialup modems)
Do the European and Asian broadband industries get significant support from their government? If so, where is this money coming from to provide everyone with these fantastic speeds and prices? If the people are paying more in taxes to have their government regulate and finance the infrastructure, shouldn't that be considered in the overall cost?
I didn't dig too deeply into the links, but did they bother to factor in currency fluctuations? $20 US today will buy a lot more overseas goods today than 6 months ago.
But is it really for us the consumer that prices have gone down!
It's fuzzy math. My guess is that costs for consumers aren't really decreasing that much, but the cost per mbps is as ISPs roll out more bandwidth to end users.
quote:Also considering the cutbacks in services (newsgroups) users are seeing, price per MB doesn't show the full picture of subscription value (or lack thereof).
Let's also not forget how inferior BB is in the U.S. compared to other developed countries like Japan & Korea.
although with the advent of caps, throttling, packet inspection, etc. one could make a case that we get an inferior product compared to a connection that doesn't have any of that sh1t happening.
I can see this degenerating into "they can do (insert point), why can't we?" with cherry picked facts or opinions to prove/disprove the 'point' for both deployment and charges.
I read an article synopsis released 01 May 2008 that I think balances the various polarities here on this site. It gives a good synopsis of why certain countries can do what they do compared to what other countries do. And I also know that some folks here will not care what the circumstances and facts are, but will continue to try and fit the size 14 foot into a size 5 slipper, so flail/flame away.
The part that seems to make the most sense with the least bias is at the top of the synopsis entitled "Key Findings and Conclusions:". This part seems to be well thought out and fairly accurate, at least for the mentioned countries I have spent time in. But I can assure you, I can pick any one part of this section and prove that any one of the opinions on this site (DSLR) is correct and justified, and do the converse. It must be considered overall with the circumstances for each locality taken into account.
The second major part of the synopsis entitled "Building a More Effective Broadband Policy" appears to be more biased towards the company's (ITIF) background but they do have some good suggestions. While I do not agree with all their suggestions, for various reasons that I will not go into, they do have some good ideas.
I can see this degenerating into "they can do (insert point), why can't we?" with cherry picked facts or opinions to prove/disprove the 'point' for both deployment and charges.
Which is true for practically any topic. Just face the facts here. The U.S. pays the highest rates for the least quality. Caps/throttling/service cuts/outages. These are a just few of the "services" we pay for, and, the per month pricetag increases arbitrarily because there isn't any meaningful competition in any given market and the FCC lacks the political balls to do anything except kowtow to their provider masters.
ALL of the countries at the top of the rankings have meaningful competition and therefore better prices and better service.
You should read the information in the link he posted, it's nicely summarized.
I will offer this up though: where I live I have broadband access from Comcast (up to 50/10 service), Embarq DSL (up to 10/896 service), fixed wireless (up to 2mbps), metro wifi, EVDO/HSPDA coverage, and satellite broadband coverage. I currently have and use Cable, DSL, and EVDO (Sprint aircard) service.
Given all of that competition, I still have the same defined service caps and pricing as someone in MD that can only get DOCSIS service.
My point is this: it can't be only a lack of competition.
Thanks Espaeth, I figured most of the responses could/would not read the links. But that is the American Way, vote with what you hear and ignore reading the details that might change your mind.
I will still take the slower system I have here in the US over the faster one that is in certain parts of Korea. While I liked the food there, I can not live in those conditions. I like having an open park behind me and 30 feet to one neighbor and 60 feet to the next one. I hate mega-apartment blocks, especially when they are lined up for miles (sorry, kilometers), too many people in one spot. Only two things I miss about Korea, the people and the food (and yes, contrary the propaganda I hear, most people still like Americans overseas, if you act like you are the visitor and not like they owe you).
I will still take the slower system I have here in the US over the faster one that is in certain parts of Korea. While I liked the food there, I can not live in those conditions.
If the U.S. had Korea's broadband, you wouldn't have to move there to enjoy it, fool. That was the gist of the poster you alleged did not read your links. Looks like you're a self fulfilling prophecy of your own babblings.
I will still take the slower system I have here in the US over the faster one that is in certain parts of Korea. While I liked the food there, I can not live in those conditions.
If the U.S. had Korea's broadband, you wouldn't have to move there to enjoy it, fool. That was the gist of the poster you alleged did not read your links. Looks like you're a self fulfilling prophecy of your own babblings.
Troll, You need to take a trip over there and stay outside the bigger cities and the mega apartments which contain the population of many of our small towns. Last year in Chung Ju (small city, only 200K folks) we had dialup at the manager's desk, in Seosan (only 150K) I had what appeared to be DSL or maybe ISDN, at least it was only about 2 Mb down, and even in Seoul (10M folks) we had an expensive sub 1Mb connection in the hotel (the place we expected the good stuff). These are not the cheap hostel type hotels, but some of the top ranked business hotels for those areas. Our point of contact who lives outside of Seosan said he only had dial up in his village.
Yeah, "if we had"......like I said originally, you can cherry pick anything to prove anything. But still the best way to know is to go look.
Also, the Korean government contributed around 24 Billion in USD to get there (as of 2004 numbers). Look at the size of Korea and the population density and then compare it to the US, the US is 100X the land area and and only 6 times the population, one HECK of a lot more infrastructure just to get to the same percentage of people in the US (assuming that you are right and almost all of Korea has HS service). Where is that money coming from? You want to pay more taxes? And consider the number of folks on this site who do NOT want the US government back into the internet business or anything that says 'the people'.
And yes, I know that the figures are rough, we have western mountains, but Korea is a mountainous country. But it is close enough that if you think about the logistics, we can not do what Korea did. Plus, Korea had more of a monopoly in their system than we do. We have a lot more companies that are competing to keep high profits and paying off the house and senate. Korea basically had KT and almost no infrastructure in place and a closer tie (non-bribery type) to the government (so I was told by a KT staffer).
Yes, we need a better system, but as long as the US has the environment and people in Washington DC that are there today, the multitude of semi-monopolies fighting to keep turf and deny anyone else any profit, the desire for double digit returns on stocks every month, greedy top management and lawsuits instead of building, and probably *AA's/Hollywood yelling "piracy tool", it won't happen tomorrow.
My point is this: it can't be only a lack of competition.
Agreed. Part of the problem, I would argue for publicly traded providers, is the American problem with instant gratification. The investors in companies like ATT and Verizon want short term returns instead of long term stability and growth. That type of attitude and pressure from the investors and shareholders GREATLY impacts how a company does business. It is why ATT is afraid and unwilling to upgrade to FTTH. It is the reason that caps and overage charges are coming.
But when caps get fully enforced and they charge you per GB. THEN IT WILL BE MORE EXPENSIVE!!!
heres a question. How could they implement caps if you do not have a user "Im computer illiterate" odometer to tell you how much data you are using.
Also it should be on the hardware where it resets every month. (there could be issues if you have software say if the computer crashes or you have wireless router)
It's like buying a car and they tell you it can go 0-100 in 5 sec BUT I cant tell you how many miles you put on it.
Also it should be on the hardware where it resets every month. (there could be issues if you have software say if the computer crashes or you have wireless router)
The concept of calculating "cost of broadband" by dividing speed by monthly cost is just as stupid as the FCC's old stunt of counting a zip-code as fully serviced even if only one household in the zipcode could get broadband.
Beyond a certain point, the really important thing is how much net bandwidth I get. I don't care that much whether a Netflix movie is an overnight download, or whether I can stream it realtime. What I do care about is whether or not a Netflix movie per week blows my cap, and either costs me a ton extra, or gets me kicked off the ISP.
Beyond a certain point, speed doesn't matter. That point will obviously be different for different people (e.g. guy with a wife + 2 kids each with their own computer surfing simultaneously), but for 90% of the population, an extra 25% bandwidth is more important than an extra 25% speed. I'm not the only one who thinks so. See a thread here from 3 days ago... »Comcast's Faster Speeds Have Many Users....Downgrading? [76] comments
Japanese are paying YES 5.6 cents per megabit, add there millions and ya your going to get a lowering add a very very small other decrease in a few places and you get "drastic fall in prices" so these already greedy buggers that overcharge us can .....that's right increase prices.
ALSO thinkk about this... a 5 megabit = about 1.3 terabyte unlimited
if they cap you to say 1 5th that theprice is equivilent to YUP 5 times as much
so if you pay 90$ for 50 megabit and they cap you at 250GB thats actually 50 times 1.80 = 54$/megabit compared to what you used to pay unlimited 5megabit ( in fact the full speed allowed 1.3 terabytes) at 3.20 per megabit
hope this gets it thorugh your head hat 1000 megabit with a 60 GB cap is about a useless as a 5 megabit with a 60GB cap , only thing is the 1000Megabit will get you screwed up fast.
--------------- now take the time how long ago you paid that 3.2 per megabit for 5 megabit, add in each years inflation and see the greed , that would be how a true study would shot TRUE costs of bandwidth. It is why 56USD /month in japan for synchronous 1 gigabit, you can't give me the BS thats 5.6 cents per megabit ( now 30GB[1TB roughly]=btw 5 megabit UNLIMITED!!!!!!!!!!! down no uplimit(140 TB max rough))
So even the japanse ISP on downspeeds are ripping people off yet at least they are above most of it in giving you ability to share!! ------ remember also that for 10 hrs all of canada = traffic shaped to a mere 150kbit ( so during that time multiply your monthly cost by 7 ) take the differance and average them. This is totalllllllly off people. Were are paying 450% more at teksavvy due to what bell is doing for what we get. Its even worse for bell and rogers peeps. And may be slightly better with telus not throttling.
So canada is dragging up that average large and it woudl be neat to see how mexico is faring.