Qwest to offer DSL without voice
From Forbes magazine comes this story:
bq. Qwest to offer DSL without voice, national mobile
Qwest Communications International Inc. will reveal plans on Wednesday to become the first major U.S. telephone company offering broadband Internet separately from traditional phone services in a bid to hang onto customers in a cutthroat market.
bq. The fourth biggest U.S. local telephone company and the dominant provider in 14 states from Minnesota to Washington also plans to launch flat-rate nationwide mobile phone services, using Sprint PCS's network next Monday.
And more:
bq. From Saturday Qwest customers will not need to pay the company's monthly telephone service fees of $14.95 if they only want to subscribe to its broadband or Digital Subscriber Line (DSL) customers in a service it nicknamed "Naked DSL".
bq. Local phone providers such as Verizon require DSL customers to also subscribe to at least basic telephone services.
This is a good start - there is no reason why the DSL service has to be coupled to the telephone account, it's only a marketing policy set by the phone company.
The problem here is that the standard US Corporate business model is based on continued growth and not on a steady-state revenue generation. The phone business has pretty much saturated the market with cell and landlines so they are starting to shuffle around to find ways to corner various bits of the market. Look at the recent proposed buyout of Cingular.
Posted by DaveH at February 25, 2004 8:56 AM