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General discussion

Does the price of broadband go up over time?

Feb 17, 2008 6:34AM PST

I live in New Mexico, and I switched to Qwest for my broadband Internet access about 5 months ago. Qwest has this long running promotion where you can sign up with them for broadband and get the price that you sign up with "for life", or as long as you keep the service with Qwest. When I signed up with them, I declined that offer at the time, but asked if I might add it later, which they said I could. I declined to get the life time warrenty because I reasoned that the price of broadband service would go down, generally speaking, over time.

But now I am wondering. Does the price of broadband service from any service provider go down, or up, over time? What is the trend?

Discussion is locked

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I'm at the 99 buck and signed up for 3 years.
Feb 17, 2008 6:43AM PST
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Price of broadband...
Feb 18, 2008 1:19PM PST

Your ISP can supply broadband to you at "minimal" incremental cost to them,e.g. 10 users will cost them the same as 1,000 users- because of the "nature" of broadband, as oompared to dialup. However, over time, costs of replacement equipment goes up, and consumers have to bear this cost eventually.

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That's untrue.
Feb 18, 2008 11:43PM PST

Wiring 10 homes or 1,000 homes is a big outlay of cash for infrastructure, cable maintenance and more. Let's not talk about support lines for 10 or 1,000.

Bob

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So, the cost does go up over time?
Feb 19, 2008 9:28AM PST

So, basically I take you to mean that over time, due to the need to upgrade the infrastructure, the cost of broadband service WILL go up.

Correct?