Comcast Merger Condition: Standalone $50 Broadband > Modem rental fee?

Modem rental fee?

Yeah I know...I'm using standalone service right now. And it's darned expensive.

I've got Comcast business and pay $60 per month. It isn't expensive imo. My speeds are decent and service is great.

My concern isn't about Comcast lowering the cost of a basic internet tier by $10 per month for 3 years, it's about the long term consequences of Comcast owning NBC.
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"People demand freedom of speech as a compensation for the freedom of thought which they seldom use."

reply to iansltx
Buy the modem. It's only $80, you'll re-coup the savings in 10 months.
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My Blog 2.2

Why solve the problem when I can complain about it?

I have a DOCSIS 2 modem that I own. Just haven't made it to the local Comcast office to give back the D3 modem I'm renting.

reply to iansltx

$60 + modem rental for a 12/2 connection is expensive, yes.

Why is it expensive?

1. Comcast charges other providers to connect to its backbone network, rather than the other way around. Except for a few providers. So their bandwidth costs on the back end average maybe $2 per megabit, if that. Probably closer to $0.
2. They are using plant that has been around for years and has been amortized multiple times over.
3. The plant is 860MHz or so capacity-wise. There is a TON of potential there. Even counting the channels that they're actually using for internet, 12/2 is less than 10% of the capacity of the system in one direction (and we're talking last mile here) and less than 8% of the capacity in the other direction. The equivalent in wireless terms would be taking a Canopy system and selling 384/128 service for $60 on it when your bandwidth costs are $20 per meg.

I stand by what I just said. Given the amount of infrastructure available and the amount of upkeep Comcast needs to keep the infrastructure going, $60 + modem rental is expensive.

Whereas $50 for 15/2 is reasonable. And profitable apparently; Time Warner Cable does this in a lot of their markets.

People see that in some areas (in the US, not Korea) the price-performance ratio is much better than Comcast. This is generally the case for any other cable company in the US with more than a few thousand customers, in fact.

As far as markets setting prices go, terrestrial networks are natural monopolies at the last mile. That's why Earhlink wants Comcast to share its coaxial last mile so they, as an ISP, can stay relevant. However Comcast sees that the barrier to entry is high, and as long as they can hand-wave at the telco, they can keep the wires to themselves and price well above what economics would otherwise dictate for their service. When another wireline competitor comes in (rare), Comcast tries to edge them out of the market by running ads, price promotions, etc. So there are few that are brave enough to compete.

As for the 1M for $50 reasonable side of things, Comcast charges $35 per month, plus modem rental, for 1.5/384 internet last I checked. So a little less than what's reasonable in an area with a few percent of the population density that Comcast tends to serve...

All I'm saying is, Comcast is taking their economies of scale and using them to stagnate the market rather than advance it. Why else would they have a standard tier slower than what Cablevision is rolling out in former Bresnan territory, at a higher price?