Telephony quotes The Convergence Consulting Group Ltd., a Canadian consultancy as saying that if Phone guys want to compete, they really need to cut prices, now.
In ‘The Battle for the North American Couch Potato: Bundling, Internet, TV, Telephone,’ TCCG examined the strategy, prices, products and technology of telcos, cable companies, satellite providers and others in both the U.S. and Canada. Its analysts believe that, in the U.S. particularly, cable companies are well positioned to stem the tide of basic cable subscriber loss and to continue dominating broadband usage through well-priced service bundles.”
The price cuts over at SBC indicate that phone operators might be getting aggressive in chalking up numbers, worried about the cable operators superiority …. for now.
Research by Yankee group (and another company that is very close to my heart) 😉 looked at profitability for cable operators in western Europe. The report highlighted that cable broadband average arpu will decline by 2008 (as will the rate of growth in BB adoption overall). The solution there (much as it is here) is to offer converged services such as IP telephony, home networking and VODs in order to remain competitive. New technologies such as DOCSIS allow up to 1 gigabit per second broadband speeds over existing hybrid fiber coax networks.