Where are the broadband price wars?

[sandbox]

QUOTE

Jupiter analyst Joseph Laszlo uses broadband subscription numbers to make the point that broadband growth has been steady but never explosive in the US. Laszlo's graph shows only linear growth in broadband over the last six years, not the "hockey-stick" model some have suggested. He also point out that the market is now mature, with some 60 percent of Internet users having a broadband connection. In such a well-developed marketplace, competition must be thriving and prices dropping, right?

http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20061212-8407.html

[Xairbusdriver]

Doesn't 'competition' require more than one choice? Although there seem to be two sources locally, AT&T's DSL and RoadRunner/Comcast cable, the prices seem to be exactly the same, but the services are not.

DSL comes with DirecTV, not the same as cable in speed nor channel choice and can be affected by the weather. DSL speed is still dependent on distance from the switch. Cable speeds can be affected by number of nodes. Phone service via VoIP is limited by AC power availability ( had a two hour power outage just yesterday ). My point is that while the prices seem equal, the services are still not. And I suspect it will be a cold day in certain hot places before we ever see two cable companies and two DSL providers in many places.

[Gregg]

The "competition" is not much better than cable TV. A few states are breaking up the cable monopoly, and a group here in Wisconsin is trying, but no luck so far. Maybe the idea will catch on for broadband too.

[Paddy]

The lack of competition is because up until recently, cable companies had monopolies in various areas; they'd laid the cable, they had the monopoly. Things are slowly changing now - and where there are actually two or more broadband options, prices are actually dropping. North Reading, MA broadband customers pay about $10 less a month than we do here in North Andover, MA. Why? Well, Verizon is now offering fiber optic broadband service there too - as well as DSL. Comcast is no longer the only player. In North Andover, many of us can't even get DSL, because we're too far from the switching station.

Still - we DO pay waaay more for our service than those in Japan etc. However, both the US and Canada also have huge geographic areas to cover at much lower densities, compared with Japan or most European countries, and that is going to make things more expensive.

[jcarter]

I just got off the phone with a Verizon rep, she said that after testing our line for DSL, we would have download speeds in the ballpark of 3 mbps and upload of 760 kbps.  (Our Comcast speeds are about 3700 kbps down and 350 up.)
But we would have to stick up a Direct TV dish on our roof, and perhaps need to cut down some of our nice shade trees that are SW of the house.
The TV and internet bundle would be $69. And we now pay $115.
But the guys on the trucks, said fios will be here very soon.  The Verizon rep said that they are way ahead of schedule in the Boston area.
So I probably will wait.  
But the speeds of the DSL here are quite tempting, but do I really need them?
Jane