<<Within a year or 2 I expect to see tiered service, where you pay for the size of your pipe. This will give the cable providers the ability to supply a price point competitive with dial up ISPs.>>
This is very interesting. My friend is installing cable modem service this weekend. It's through Charter Communication and the ISP is Earthlink. The service is actually tiered. I forget the cost of installation (not cheap I remember though). The tier she got is 256K down and 56k up. It costs $49.99 a month. More expensive than @Home. She has been waiting for DSL, but got different answers back all the time. Finally, she concludes that DSL will not be available to her anytime soon. So cable she picked.
IMO, the battle on the last mile is over in terms of cable and DSL. Cable is better but only slightly better than DSL. For fiber optical lines, if that become necessary, it will probably cost even less for cable cos to run the line through residential than other companies such as Quest. Long term, technology wise, cable would have little advantage over DSL or fiber; however, people will still prefer cable because the bundle of digital TV, IP telephony, and Internet will be cheaper (yes, cable cos will start that bloody battle with telcos very soon). Just my wild guess. |
