As some of you know I recently moved to Seattle, which meant that I had to set up cable service and phone service (no DirectTV option for me in my high-rise). This gave me a perfect opportunity to test exactly what is happening in the broadband internet market. If you have read this blog before you know that I believe consumers are the big winners in the DSL vs. Cable Modem race, and when fixed wireless broadband comes around, consumers will win even more... so today was market test time.
I called Qwest, my local phone company here in Seattle, and they offered me DSL for $26 bucks a month if I took phone service (I need the phone service for my old ReplayTV or I would be all about Vonage). So I took the phone service and said I would call back around the DSL. Next call was to Comcast, where they told me that my cable modem would run me $45 a month if I took digital cable. So I told them thanks but no thanks, DSL would only run me $26 a month... it was like I said the magic word "DSL", because the rep on the phone quickly offered me the cable modem for $29 a month... which I then took since it will be about 3x faster than the DSL line.
This is why the federal gov't needs to do more to stimulate competition, in this case I saved $16 a month... that is $16 bucks that could have gone to a local monopoly, but instead will probably end up going to another local business.
No comments:
Post a Comment