It's Not Content, But Price That's Stalling Broadband

from the no-one-wants-to-pay dept

For a while now people have been saying that broadband adoption in the US is slow because there simply isn't compelling broadband content. Of course, for years, companies have tried to produce broadband content, and they've all failed. Business Week points out that most people really don't care about the content online. They see the internet more as a communications medium - and not so much of a content delivery platform. That would explain why studies have shown that the "always on" part of broadband is more important to many people than the "high speed" part. The article suggests the real hurdle to widespread broadband adoption is the price of the service. People aren't willing to spend $50 a month. If prices dropped, they say, more people would flock to broadband, and the additional content would develop on its own (without extra pressure from the government). However, those lower prices could end up cutting into the various high speed providers' margins - which they're avoiding.

1 Comments | Leave a Comment..


If you liked this post, you may also be interested in...
 

Reader Comments (rss)

(Flattened / Threaded)

  1.  

    Broadband for $50?

    identicon
    LittleW0lf, Sep 18th, 2002 @ 7:13am

    I've got broadband (if 10mbps down/128k up is really broadband) for $24.95 a month. Not sure who is still paying $50 for theirs? Maybe DSL, but DSL is run by the "phone companies," which we all love to hate because they are inefficient and overpriced dinosaurs of a bygone era.

    Its like SBC always says..."anyone can call themselves a phone provider" but if they are far more efficient, care more about their customers than SBC does (which isn't very difficult,) and nickel and dime their customers to death with meaningless taxes like "number portability charges" which does not necessarily make the number you have portable (yes, other companies charge these taxes, but they also do what is required in order to collect these charges,) they can't call themselves a "phone company".

    reply to this | link to this | view in thread ]


Add Your Comment

Have a Techdirt Account? Sign in now. Want one? Register here
Get Techdirt’s Daily Email
Save me a cookie
  • Note: A CRLF will be replaced by a break tag (<br>), all other allowable HTML will remain intact
  • Allowed HTML Tags: <b> <i> <a> <em> <br> <strong> <blockquote> <hr> <tt>


A word from our Sponsors...
Follow Techdirt
Flattr rss rss
From the Techdirt Archive...
A word from our Sponsors...

Close

Email This