PacBell sets their basic DSL service at 256/64 @ $60/mo. This is a realistic speed. If they thought they could pull 640, do you think they wouldn't offer it? Well, they do offer the higher speeds, but then the price starts getting way outside of what marketing claims people will pay.
In a way it is a ploy by PacBell to discourage the higher speeds which play the devil with their circuit switched networks. They have gambled that they won't get much business interest which would opt for the higher speeds. If the gamble fails, they have one helluva mess, because they can't deliver even a 1% penetration of the business market without blowing out and shutting down POTS. That is like criminal.
PacBell didn't want to get into this can of worms, but their parent sees that the only way to avoid being forced into competition in local telephony by the nascent advent of cable would be to blunt the advance with a False Dmitri. Edsel front running by the people's ISP, AOL, will keep the public pacified, they think. This puts off having to acknowledge the true Tsar, thus sparing them the horrible losses that Fisher's competition inevitably brings.
The problem is that this strategy won't work. DSL is not a viable technology for the application RBOCs have in mind. You don't discover this until you try to scale. Then you discover what previous assessment revealed: the existing copper circuitry can't support much more than what it handles today. High speed Internet must have its own network, a cable network, the true Tsar of all the Russias. |
