What Competition?

Peter : On Rad's Radar?
Peter
| Peter Radizeski of RAD-INFO, Inc. talking telecom, Cloud, VoIP, CLEC, and The Channel.

What Competition?

In this article about independent ISP's fading away, CenturyLink talks about competition of ILEC DSL - from cellular 3G/4G, muni Wi-Fi, and cable. There's also fixed wireless in some ares from independent ISP's, but that is mainly in areas without competition.

But competition is a myth today. VZ is co-marketing with cable now. The Duopoly isn't even competing any more!!!

According to Akamai's State of the Internet report, "The U.S.'s average connection speed is 5.8 Mbps -- a 14 percent increase from the previous year." That's thanks to FTTX and DOCSIS 3.0 mainly.

BTW, Customers prefer flat-rate pricing in study after study.

"In other words, the broadband cap may have less to do with managing congestion on Comcast's data network than with making over-the-top video services like Netflix and Hulu unattractive for heavy television users who are the most lucrative customers for Comcast's paid video services."

Would we even have a cap if we had true competition? Probably not.

With consolidation in the telecom industry, there aren't many players left. In many markets, it's ILEC versus cableco, except where they are co-marketing! Lots of OTT (over-the-top) but I'm not sure how much longer they are allowed to survive.

In the B2B space, lots of consolidation, but cablecos are buying up market share with cheap pricing. It's interesting, because I'm not sure how much longer the nationwide CLEC will be relevant. Everyone is competing for the same dollars: federal and state government, Fortune 5000 and Enterprise, and the multi-location customers. These are a limited supply - maybe 110,000 customers??? But in the small business space there are 5.2 million businesses with under 20 employees! Who services those accounts? That's where all the growth and opportunity is. Unfortunately, broadband and VoIP have cannibalized the pricing structure in this market. It will have to be a bundle of more than data and voice that wins here.

It's also expensive to market and sell to this space - and to support this space. That means it has to be more than voice and Internet, so that the monthly recurring is high enough to rate the work required. We'll see who steps up there.



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