Ten years ago, 5% of the country had access to broadband Internet. Now over 95% of the country has access. In other technology markets, notes the authors of a new study, prices tend to drop significantly once a technology matures--but with broadband, prices since 2004 have dropped by less than 10% in most markets, if at all. So what's going on?
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11 comments:
Because of the cost of the constant upgrades and upstream and downstream speed enhancements.
They only reason we are reading about this is because the government wants to take over the internet so they can filter information.
its because people are willing to pay it .... if everyone said hey lower the price or cancel it would drop real quick
Ever played the game Monopoly?
When you all of the properties of one color you get to collect more rent. You even get to build houses and hotels (invest in upgrades) and triple of quadruple the rents!
Yippee.
There is no Free Parking in life.
its a monopoly. you cant get it from enough sources to lower the price.
many times your only option is cable. some people have cable or dsl/fios. but not many
why lower the price with little or no compitition?
heck i bet over 25% of the geographic area of delmarva isnt even served at all. i know im not.
That's about to change 9:53!
You have the option of Comcast,Verizon or Satellite. It's about government regulating information and taxing internet sales.
10:07 really? tell us how. i call comcrap regularly to get them to run me service, they wont
10:34 not always. maybe in more populated areas. but in much of the shore you only have 1 choice, sattelite, 2 if your lucky enough to have cable in your area.
There is no competition. Thank Salisbury for negotiating a 99 year franchise to Comcast, and the FCC for giving Verizon control over the copper around here.
Your first option is Comcast. While prices are really high, at least reliability and speeds have gone up substantially. Granted, where my folks live there are 2 cable companies and Verizon's FiOS to choose from. He pays around $70/mo for voice, tv (with lots of premium channels), and Internet in one bill. That's a lot less than we pay!
Your other serious option is Verizon DSL. That service is limited by distance. Our rural area never has had the density needed to build a strong, reliable network. Our copper is subpar by a long shot. And Verizon isn't spending any more money on their copper network (the one that WE paid for with all of those obscure fees, btw). It will never get any better for us - only worse.
Sure, somebody can set up their own DSL service and sell on top of Verizon's (our) network. But Verizon charges high fees and generally provides them with crappy service when they need to fix their part of the transmission system. Then you end up with companies like Cavalier, who offer a better price but a horrible service. For a few more bucks, you can pay Verizon directly and get better (although still poor) support.
Amen 9:36.You know exactly what you are talking about.Since there is no competition(such as Cox,etc)Verizon will NEVER upgrade all these old copper lines on the Shore.They have no incentive to do so.Everyone who can get DSL already has it so why do they(Verizon,Comcast) waste so much money on advertising?Sure you can get another phone company,but the average Joe doesnt realize that the competitors use the exact SAME decrepit network that Verizon does.If theres no infrastructure in your community you are out of luck regardless of who you use for service.
I dont like the government interfering either,but sometimes thats what it takes.People in the rural areas would have went without electricity until the 1970's if the government hadnt had stepped in with Rural Electrification.
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