Lower priced Covad product

Great news for the lucky few who can get it. The only thing holding this back will be availability.

I don't think people will see the $21 price and get so giddy that they don't see the $39 price after four months. I don't see it flying when you can get 3X the speed for $10 more.

said by 2farfromCO:

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Great news for the lucky few who can get it. The only thing holding this back will be availability.

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I just want to go ballistic when I keep reading about cable companies and DSL providers improving their existing services. I don't care anymore about these new plans WHICH I CAN'T GET than I do about the weather in Afghanistan. It will never affect me until someone is nice enough to offer me service or if the government is nice enough to MAKE someone provide me with service.

You wonder why all these companies are failing and then you see stupid ideas like this one....

Who in the hell is gonna switch? If you could have got dsl before, you would have. If you have price concerns, this is a horrible deal. 56k in this town is about $10-$12 a year. $33.95 a month for 1 year service on 200k? That is a joke and will be labeled as such by the average consumer. Good luck getting all the 56k people to "broadband" with that deal.

Agreed. 200kb for 40 bucks? You can get almost 2 THOUSAND for five dollars more in many markets.

Mayhaps they are marketing to the "not so bright" market segment.

Let's see if I understand. I can go through all the headaches of DSL for a whopping 4 times dialup speed?

The ONLY thing that made all the DSL headaches tolerable was the 768/128 speed. At 200/64 it's just not that much better than dialup.

DirecTV DSL offers similar promos to that (albeit with a contract), for full speed telco ADSL. I had 1500/128 service for $19.95 a month for the first three months. Their current promo is 29.95/month for the first three months (it seems to change frequently).

Shaving off ten bucks off of the regular price to $39.95/month, brings the price real close to what most cablemodem access is, but at 2/15ths the download speed. Yuck!

It wasn't long ago that full speed DSL was $39.95/month.

I set up DSL and cable for lots of folks who do little more than surf and check e-mail, but I would never recommend such a crippled product. Why doesn't Covad try offering a decent speed service for $39.95/month so it's actually competitive with the telco's plans?

-- Rob

That's what pisses me off the most about these fly by night CLECs. They do nothing to make DSL available to people who'd be more than happy to buy their product.

that would be too easy.

They want to try and maximize returns on what they have in place. i think in order to do what people want done the only solution i see is to light the dark fiber with us cash and string fiber to every city. a wired country thats what we need and thats what our tech savy country wants.

Hey Bill Gates Wanna invest in my ideas. Yet another market for you to dominate. Plus might make a hell of a decent Gaming/internet/vod Network

Thats how to invest and make money back in the long run.

Covad.net - $33.95 a month a year for 200k/64k
earthlink via covad - $45.82 a month for 1.5mbs/384k

HMMM. Some company is planning making money off bandwidth, or lack of.

Just adding more thought, I guess this would offer more people ADSL over that expensive IDSL B.S. solution if you're far away from the CO.

If they're going after AOL users, how will people know besides reading DSLreports and covad.net? Covad has a budget of about $6.12 for marketing!
[text was edited by author 2002-06-19 14:13:03]

As long as no one else is offering this bandwidth range, they will charge whatever they want. A little too high? I think they're using the bulk philosophy here, where the bandwidth gets cheaper per MB/s the more bandwidth you buy. Not that the bulk idea plays out here the way it does with tangible products, IMHO.

Alternative: Maybe there was a typo somewhere and it was supposed to be $29.95 after month four. Because I'm paying about $43 for a 1500/256 cable connection.

They've given no indication that this is an "upgrade" for IDSL users. This is an ADSL service and therefore probably subject to the same distance limitations as their other ADSL services (meaning you have to be under 15000' from the CO).

Why do you have to be within a couple thousand feet for 8mb ADSL? The signal starts to die.

So you're telling me Covad would most likely cap a 1.5mbps product the same as a 200kbps? That is just bad business practice then.

This service was mentioned a few weeks ago in the Covad forum and people were frankly befuddled by the logic of it... In my opinion, the cost should be under $30 permanently !!

Also, if you look at Speakeasy's website, who are offering this already, they make it a rather no-frills product: a dynamic IP vs SE's much touted static IP offering, no shell account access, only (1) e-mail address, *no* webspace, and *no* dialup access.

Are you saying they should increase the distance limit on this service ?? I think they probably could and it not be a problem... But, are they or will they ??

I'll try and ask a Covad friend.

What headaches, I order DSL from earthlink and 2 weeks later I plug the modem in and have been surfing for 14 months with only 3 minor outages.

Covad is pretty reliable!

Less speed, 'weaker' signal, more allocated distance, more customers possible.

SBC might of been onto something dumping millions upon millions into Project Pronto to get a larger footprint.

said by Leviathan:

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Mayhaps they are marketing to the "not so bright" market segment.

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AOL already has those.

oWn3d

A. How is Covad a "fly by night" CLEC.

B. Covad is available in West Chester, PA.

said by dslfan2002:

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A. How is Covad a "fly by night" CLEC.

B. Covad is available in West Chester, PA.

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A. CLECs seem to come and go every day. While Covad may have emerged from bankruptcy, as long as they are beholden to the ILEC's network, they face the risk of being shot down if they start, in any way, to pose a threat to the ILEC's DSL subscriber base. Case in point: A friend of mine who had Earthlink DSL in the DC area would have his connection shut down every night, "on schedule" between 8-12pm. When he had Verizon DSL previously, there were no problems. I wonder why...?

B. No to my phone number, so in my view, they suck. Any broadband technology which I can afford, but is not available to me, is worthless "vaporware". As a result, Comcast does not suck, whereas Verizon, Voicenet, Covad, Kennett Internet, etc... all suck.
[text was edited by author 2002-06-19 15:33:22]

Or are all these broadband companies getting a little crazy with their pricing schemes? Why would anyone pay $40 a month for 4X as fast as dialup? Seems like these providers want to rape their customers if u ask me. OOL is $40 a month and it is 10000/1000. Why are all these other providers being such schemers? I love how they hook u with the cheap rate up front and then jack up your price. Anyone seen those Verizon commercials. "$29.95 for your first 3 months" and then in teeny tiny writing on the bottom "$49.95 monthly after the three months". They seem to think that people cant live without broadband so they cam charge what they like. Well screw them.
Prices are supposed to go down while the product improves. Would anyone pay $200 for a 2X CD burner? Obviously not. So why should we pay more for an inferior service?

Ok, so if a service isn't available in your house it sucks? That is the nature of the technology. If cable broadband works for you then that is great. Any broadband is good. Except when your whole neighborhood gets on it at the same time. If that is not the case for you then that is great. For many other people, cable broadband "sucks". As far as the "fly by night" comment, doesn't that usually imply a shady, corrupt, or fraudulent company? I don't think that you could consider Covad to be any of those things.

$39.99/mo for 200/64? Thats a rip off.

I pay $45/mo for 1472/256.

said by dslfan2002:

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Ok, so if a service isn't available in your house it sucks? That is the nature of the technology. ... For many other people, cable broadband "sucks". As far as the "fly by night" comment, doesn't that usually imply a shady, corrupt, or fraudulent company? I don't think that you could consider Covad to be any of those things.

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Yes that is true. For me, cable modems sucked until 4-19-2002 I guess I started feeling that way because Verizon would always call us trying to sell us DSL when they knew it wasn't available, or they would stuff DSL ads in with the phone bill, etc. As for Covad doing shady business practices (In no way am I implying the ILECs are saints either), you may want to check out this link. Maybe I am being too critical, but I consider CLECs telling me that I can get their service when I really can't to be false advertising. The CLECs I mentioned above all told me initially that I could get their DSL service, but it turned out they were all wrong. To me, this is not very honest.

pnh,

I agree, any telemarketing is frustrating. Especially when it is for a product that you would love to have and they can't even get it to you. As far as "The CLECs I mentioned above all told me initially that I could get their DSL service, but it turned out they were all wrong. To me, this is not very honest." The only thing I have to say about that is the distance of a phone line is not an exact science. It can't be measured by a map because the line isn't run "as the birds fly". I'm sure any company would love to be able to get you DSL and honestly believed that they could until something proved that it was too far. By the way, I don't have a problem with Cable when it is good. Especially for residential use. It it a great option to have.

As for that link, VZ and the rest of the ILECs just lost a bogus suit against CLECS. And in the past it was VERY difficult to get the ILECs to do what they were supposed to do by law. That was Covad's complaint. This article was from June of 2001. Do you know what the outcome of that suit was?
[text was edited by author 2002-06-19 15:59:28]

said by dslfan2002:

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pnh,
The only thing I have to say about that is the distance of a phone line is not an exact science. It can't be measured by a map because the line isn't run "as the birds fly".

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There actually was an ISP, I believe it was DCAnet (I don't know if they are still around), which actually ran a qualification through Verizon (probably through a hidden web link) and they were able to give you accurate information about DSL being available or not.

I've noticed that Verizon seems to do a lot of "reactive deployments." I have a feeling that now that cable modem is available, DSL may also become available as well. However, by the time it is deployed (if ever), Comcast would have already swipped all the broadband customers away.

I suspect by the end of the year the Bells will be dropping prices (either directly or by reduced service plans - 348/128 @ $31, e.g.) not because of competitive pressures but because of slow growth at the current pricing. They have now a large enough customer base and a good commitment to the service to want to expand at a greater rate and this would be the way to do it.

..if they charged $25.95 permently and perhaps teamed-up with MSN.. I believe they could make a killing!.. but at that price noooo way!..

Yes, they should offer whatever speed the customer wants for $10 a year. AOL charges $23.90 a month and you don't even get a phone line and you expect anyone to offer DSL at any speed and MSN ISP service for $1.10???? The bulk of the cost of DSL is the actual connection, not the bandwidth

You get what you pay for. If you want to spend $23.90 plus a phone line per month, that is your option. If you don't, maybe this fits into your budget better than $49.99. Maybe if you look at it logically and combine the $23.90AOL service plus whatever you pay for a phone line you will realize that 4X "always on" connection is better than dialup for the same price or less. This only goes for those who use a pricey dial-up like AOL.

Let's be honest here. The price for a year comes out to $33.95/month. We are talking $10/month more for an always on, 4X faster connection. I would think that it would be worth it to either cancel a phone line or free one up for $10/month. Not such a bad deal for a dial-up user.
[text was edited by author 2002-06-19 16:38:13]

Sure, light up all the dark fiber and watch the backbone routers crash.