SBC lowered its promotional price for new DSL accounts to $14.95 – good for one year, only available if you order online and use SBC local phone service.
(As always, if you order from Sonic, you get virtually the same price and far nicer people for sales and support. I just spent an hour with SBC DSL tech support speaking incomprehensibly to me from India. It wasn’t any fun. Trust me – order from Sonic.)
As the linked article points out, there are going to be two interesting things happening in the next year or two.
The first is that the other Baby Bells will probably cut prices as well, trying to bulk up their subscriber numbers. The cable companies claim not to be competing on price, but they may be forced to drop prices as well. Comcast already offers a discounted promotional price for six months.
The second is that the services offered by the cable and phone companies will begin blurring. The cable companies are trying to roll out telephone services – essentially Internet telephony, but handled smoothly enough that you won’t care what the underlying structure is.
And the phone companies are building out their networks so they can deliver television programming. Again, the underlying traffic will be Internet-based, but you won’t need to know that.
A lot of the news from the regulatory agencies will be the result of these two industries sparring with each other.
