Verizon: We Could Offer 1 Gbps, But Don't Think You Need It Thursday Nov 13 2014 12:31 EDT For the last few years ISPs have spent a lot of time responding to Google Fiber by insisting that users don't need 1 Gbps connections, hoping to shift the conversation away from the elephant in the room: their high prices. Time Warner Cable doesn't think consumers need ultra-fast, inexpensive connections and neither does CenturyLink or Frontier Communications. Of course several of those companies then turned around and themselves started offering limited deployments of 1 Gbps services nobody apparently wanted. Verizon's the latest, company CFO Fran Shammo telling attendees of the Wells Fargo 2014 Tech, Media & Telecom Conference this week that while Verizon could offer 1 Gbps services, consumers don't need that kind of speed: quote: Speaking at the Wells Fargo 2014 Tech, Media & Telecom Conference, Fran Shammo, EVP and CFO of Verizon, said that the company has put in the network infrastructure to support 1 Gbps, but he does not see a market for it today. "We're now offering 500 Mbps in the home and you could take it to a Gig even though there's no application today that would ever need a Gig in the home," Shammo said.
While it's true that nobody "needs" 1 Gbps right now, Google's $70 price point for such speeds managed to excite consumers as a price proposition, something that doesn't often happen in this market courtesy of limited competition. Consumers don't "need" Verizon's 500 Mbps service tier either, especially at Verizon's price point of $290 a month, four times the price of Google Fiber's offering at half the speed. Of course it was only a few years ago Verizon called 101 Mbps an unnecessary marketing "parlor trick", so this guessing game on what consumers want or need isn't traditionally very productive. |
Mike Mod join:2000-09-17 Pittsburgh, PA
7 recommendations |
Mike
Mod
2014-Nov-13 12:36 pm
it's not that they're wrongI mean they can barely peer netflix or youtube on a 35mb service.
Here's 98% more of nothing. | | |
6 recommendations |
shmerl
Member
2014-Nov-13 1:07 pm
Where is 500 Mbps for $35?What Verizon offers now is a rip off comparing to other services which charge less than $100 for a gigabit connection. | |
5 recommendations |
bcltoys
Member
2014-Nov-13 12:34 pm
WirelessMost of our custermers would prefer to have high priced low cap wireless. | | elray join:2000-12-16 Santa Monica, CA
2 recommendations |
elray
Member
2014-Nov-13 12:37 pm
Spot on!Verizon is correct.
The public, at large, certainly does not "need" 1 Gbps.
Moreover, they do not want it, either, as the majority does not even want to pay the price for existing Fios tiers. | |
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