Originally published July 18 2005
Broadband gets more appealing as prices plunge
by Mike Adams, the Health Ranger, NaturalNews Editor
Now that broadband service has plunged to around $15 a month, AOL users (paying up to $25 a month for dial-up) are switching over. Cable and DSL companies are heavily competing for these new customers.
For years, Michelle Phillips, a real estate agent in Indianapolis, used to drive to her office at odd hours just to check her e-mail messages and search Web sites because her company had high-speed Internet access.
Phillips has signed up for a promotional offer from SBC Communications: introductory broadband service for $14.95 a month, or nearly $10 less than what she pays now for a dial-up account with AOL.
Phillips is among the 7 million Americans expected to drop their slow Internet connections this year for high-speed lines, which are as much as 100 times as fast and are always on.
More people are dropping dial-up connections from services such as AOL, MSN and EarthLink because so much Internet content -- music, videos, games, interactive retail sites -- now requires high-speed connections for performance.
At the same time, cable and phone companies, between them, are expected to add 8 million broadband subscribers this year, to bring their total to 38.7 million.
Cable providers are chasing customers by making broadband service part of package deals with their traditional TV plans and new digital phone services.
Cable companies, of course, offer a similar array of free services to woo customers.
They also say their broadband customers get faster and more reliable connections and that those features justify the higher prices they typically charge.
They do offer some discounts if subscribers also order TV and digital phone services.
But those discounts cannot beat the prices offered by phone companies such as SBC and Verizon for their digital subscriber lines, or DSL.
In the first quarter of this year, DSL providers signed up a record 1.38 million subscribers, while cable companies added 1.19 million new broadband customers, according to the Leichtman Research Group.
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