Broadband Bytes for 2015-01-23

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13 Responses to Broadband Bytes for 2015-01-23

  1. charles says:

    “The company has also introduced a new service option targeting potential new customers. UTOPIA’s services once started at $65 for 100 mbps. Curious Murray residents can now test the network at 10 mbps for $40 a month. Eyre also noted the appeal of the 10 mbps option to senior citizens and lower-income customers.”

    finally someone wakes up

    • charles says:

      I’m betting the $40 price point will draw from current $40 DSL customers. Customers Utopia currently doesn’t have.

      The buck of the market is closer to $40 than $65. That is why Utopia take rates have been so low.

      • Jesse says:

        Check out any online thread about “which ISP should I get”. The #1 concern is quality. Price barely budges the needle. People will pay for the good stuff. That’s why Comcast’s two most popular tiers are at $70 and $80.

      • charles says:

        Comcast offers 3M for $30 and 6M for $50. So 10M for $40 is going to be competitive.

        • Ronald D. Hunt says:

          Its not enough to have competitive prices, People need to know about said prices, or about the existence of the option in the first place.

          Comcast has the money to advertise like crazy, you can’t go 15minutes without seeing a Comcast ad on the tv or radio.

          Utopia has to work with an adverse distribution of consumer market knowledge, The only people that will hear about this are people already aware of Utopia, AND are watching it.

  2. Ronald D. Hunt says:

    Depends on how many 100mbps customers downgrade their service for the cheaper price. The transport fee ( $35 on 100meg connect last I heard), will have to be lowered on a 10meg connection, I suspect into the $20-$25 range. They will have to pickup a fair number of customers, And without any active promotion of the services being carried out by either Utopia or the service providers.

    I would more likely suspect that they are only doing this in Murray as a test market to satisfy the demands of Orems Mayor, without risking large loses in a city with more addresses available for service.

    This test case will likely fail to increase revenue.

    • Jesse says:

      Now we get to find out if cannibalization is real. I suspect that the revenue picture won’t really improve since you’ll lose some 100Mbps customers to the 10Mbps plan and not make it up on volume.

      Also worth noting: the lease option doesn’t build out neighborhoods without fiber. It provides a way to hook up customers that at least have the fiber in front of their house. Most likely they will concentrate almost exclusively on houses that are hooked up but not currently taking service.

  3. Greg says:

    Hats off to the Murray mayor. UTOPIA really needs to advertise. I’m not sure why more customers aren’t using UTOPIA. It could be they had a bad experience with them, or they want TV bundled with their product. Personally, I’d be willing to pay the $3k just to have UTOPIA service at my home; it’s even part of the reason I bought a home in a UTOPIA city.

    The problem that UTOPIA is going to start facing is that companies like Comcast are starting to increase their internet speeds. They have increased my download to 100+Mbit. If Comcast hadn’t burned their bridge with me (as a customer) already, and managed to get symmetrical speeds (minimum 100/100), I might not have a reason to switch to UTOPIA at all.

    All things considered, I’d rather have UTOPIA as the wire provider and be able to choose my ISP, but the longer it takes UTOPIA to complete their build-out, the less impact it will have on customers making the switch.

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