Price cut fuels broadband battle
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Internet service provider Wanadoo has launched the latest salvo in the broadband price wars in the UK.
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Beginning next month, AT&T Inc. will raise the price of its most common broadband Internet services in many of the states where it operates, a company spokesman said Monday.
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Time Warner Cable is looking to revolutionize home broadband pricing in the U.S. by selling consumers service based on bandwidth usage.
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Time Warner Cable will try selling consumers broadband service based on how much bandwidth they use, a move that could turn the home broadband pricing model in the U.S. on its head.In a trial planned for later this year in Beaumont, Texas, the service provider will offer four tiers of service at different prices. Customers who used more bandwidth would pay more.The details of the tiered pricing plan haven&#39;t yet been set, according to Time Warner spokesman Alex Dudley. The offer will only go out to new customers, he said.Some service providers charge different rates based on the speed of a service, but in the U.S. they typically allow each customer to send and download as many bits as they like in a month. Under that model, some subscribers who exchanged large files through peer-to-peer services reportedly have been cut off. Comcast, the biggest U.S. cable operator, has said it&#160;sometimes slows peer-to-peer traffic&#160;during peak demand periods.In some other countries, Internet users have long endured bandwidth caps. And Web hosting companies typically charge site owners based on how much data they exchange with visitors.Tiered pricing could help settle the ongoing argument over the fairness of certain subscribers and online content providers using up more network capacity than others, according to Ovum analyst Mark Seery. In fact, he thinks the whole industry will go down this path eventually.&quot;It&#39;s difficult to charge, appropriately, different customers if they have such widely divergent uses of bandwidth,&quot; Seery said. And trying to target one type of application, such as illegal peer-to-peer file sharing, raises political issues, he added.&quot;There&#39;s no justification for blocking legitimate uses of peer-to-peer,&quot; Seery said. &quot;The right focus is on who&#39;s using what [bandwidth] and what they should be charged for it.&quot;Many other transport industries, such as shipping, rail and courier services, charge different rates based on how much the customer uses, Seery said. Some have shifted to that system over time. For example, toll bridge operators once charged trucks based on the value of what they wanted to carry over, and U.S. railroads could arbitrarily carry goods from one customer and not from another, according to Seery. Neither model lasted.Time Warner operates in 33 states but is a relative underdog in the U.S. broadband industry, with 7.4 million high-speed data customers. Comcast has 12.9 million.&#160;
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ONE Christmas ritual should be a lot cheaper this year for anybody with broadband. Calling friends and relatives just about anywhere in the world now costs nothing, or just over 1p a minute (0.02 to be exact
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Nearly four years have passed since the peak of the fiber-optic boom, but overcapacity continues to plague carriers, and prices for bandwidth continue to fall. By Joanna Glasner.
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Converged communications watchdog Ofcom is proposing BT more than halve its prices for making its last-mile copper telephone network available to competing broadband providers.
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Ofcom is cutting the price BT can charge its rivals for putting their broadband equipment in its exchanges by up to 60%.
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The long-promised battle between U.S. cable and telephone companies has so far been more of an uneasy peace. Thanks to their duopoly over broadband Internet access, it may stay that way.
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Competition alone can't fix problems with broadband speed and cost in the U.S
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SBC Communications said it will cut DSL prices to just $19.95 a month for people who sign up for its full unlimited local and long-distance phone plans. [Broadband Blog]
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By PULLAR-STRECKER Tom  RISING demand for broadband in Australia and New Zealand has helped the consortium that owns the Southern Cross Cable sell a further US$310 million (NZ$443 million) of capacity on the communications artery during the past six months.
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By Justin Hyde WASHINGTON  - AT&T Corp.  and Internet telephoneprovider Vonage said on Thursday they were cutting prices fortheir residential Internet calling services by $5 per month,the strongest signs yet of a price war in the nascent market.
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The networkâs charge for access to content over the Internet has been troubling.
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How much data can fit through broadband pipes? The next big broadband battle is going to turn on that very question. With data speeds increasing and monthly charges now within range of most family budgets, you
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Middle- and working-class Americans signed up for high-speed Internet access in record numbers in the past year, apparently lured by a price war among phone companies.
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LONDON - The UK took another step towards greater competition in and cheaper access to broadband technology as telecoms regulator Ofcom published its final proposals for local loop unbundling and ordered BT Group to cut the wholesale prices it charges