GigaOM

[...] what you see is a landline business that is starting to show real signs of strain. Om Malik has a breakdown of the loss of landline subscribers by Telco. He also has a post about the addition of new DSL and cable broadband subscribers. These [...]

Explain exactly how the phone companies are not in my house with respect to voice.

They have copper wires and a fully depreciated infrastructure.

All of them also have a wireless vector the cablecos lack. More landlines are migrating to wireless than cable voice, and that is a higher value customer.

At the end of the day, incumbency matters.

Here’s a question for Dick Parsons: If your cable’s already in my house, why isn’t NFL Network on it?

Verizon only still gets landline money from me for DSL. You know, until they offer “naked DSL” in 2025. TWC still charges a fair bit more and there was some problem with lines in my building when I first moved in.

But as you mentioned a few days ago: “Did anyone notice that AT&T introduced a three tier DSL pricing structure and are now offering a 6 megabits per second connection for $28 a month. (1.5 Mbps and 3 Mbps cost $13 and $18 a month respectively.) That’s twice as much as what BellSouth is charging for the same speeds.”

Holy crap! Verizon offers crappy 3/768 or so connection for $29.95 in addition to a landline I don’t use at all, which comes out to about $20/month (literally more than 50% of that is taxes/fees). So that’s over $50 for relatively slow DSL. Lovely! This is in NYC. Damn I wish they’d figure that powerline thing out…

Check out…
(link)

Is this the beginning for a huge runup on NWS?

Considering the telcos could offer you 20 Mbps down and 5 Mbps up over DSL without digging up your yard, but are being damn slow about it, it’s there own fault that cablecos are talking smack. For that matter, if they had offered DSL when it first became available instead of waiting for cablecos to eat their lunch, the world would be a different place today. We only have our current duopoly thanks to telco incompetence.

The percent declines in access lines you give are overstated. A decline in lines at AT&T by 600k from 49.4M to 48.8M is -1.2%, not -6.0%. The BLS lines dropped by 0.6%. etc.

Try $554.95/mo for 6Mb down/1.0 up from Cox Communications where I live - Tyler, Texas. No, that is not a joke. That is called a monopoly. And a very unfair one at that.

Why? Because Verizon won’t step up to the plate. Nor will SBC build out their network. Cox came in and took the market. Now they are taking the prices.

For your enjoyment:
down/up
1.0Mb/128K - $60/mo
1.0Mb/256K - $75/mo
1.5Mb/384K - $130/mo
3.0Mb/512K - $185/mo
4.0Mb/768K - $255/mo
1.5Mb/1.5Mb - $370/mo
6.0Mb/1.0Mb - $555/mo

Om, feel free to post this on broadbankwiki.com. I own an I.T. consulting firm in the area and these are the ridiculous numbers we deal with every day.

Anybody have any ideas on a free and non-time consuming way to get them to lower the rates?

Don’t believe the numbers of disconnects reported to you by the telcos. Until I resigned recently, I worked for Verizon Communications. The telcos play number games when reporting customer loss to control company stock prices.

Thanks OM for covering the subject concerning RESIDENTIAL…the NEW “”NEWS” comes out today in DENVER as COMCAST CABLE goes after the sacred CASH COW biz line of QWEST…CABLE is going to go after Qwest business lines with new product and NEW PARTNERSHIPS for doing ”Two Way Trunking”’ into Business Districts never covered before by CABLE! The “”"METRO REACH” of Level3 comes into play in a big time way…
Skibare

Many of the line loses are in fact discounted 2nd or 3rd residential lines which get dropped when DSL or cable modems are substituted for dial up.

What is the real number of primary lines lost should be the question!

All the profit comes from business lines in any case.

at 20,000 NEW VOIP customers per day , I think its time for some folks to wake up and SMELL the VOIP COFFEE brewing…imagine STARBUCKS installing VOIP phones inside every STARBUCKS!
SizzlingSkibare

Thought you would like the latest numbers. From their press release this morning.

Highlights include:
� Basic video customers up 38,722 or 1.3% from December 2005 and 80,915 or 2.7%
from March 2005; eighth consecutive quarter of basic video subscriber gains
� iO: Interactive Optimum digital video customers up 164,659 or 8.4% from
December 2005 and 504,297 or 31.1% from March 2005
� Optimum Online high-speed data customers up 112,289 or 6.6% from
December 2005 and 366,044 or 25.4% from March 2005
� Optimum Voice customers up 133,967 or 18.3% from December 2005 and 500,828
or 137.4% from March 2005

Sorry…that is Cablevision’s latest numbers