After my recent piece on the cost of small office/home office bandwidth was published, I heard from many people. Some sample responses to Verizon’s new monthly deal of 150 Megabits per second (Mbps) down and 35Mbps up for $194.99 include: “I pay $40 a month now and it works fine, why do I want to pay 5x as much for capacity I don’t miss?” “Okay, understand that I do, like 120% of my work on the Internet, I don’t think I could justify ~$200/month.” And, “You buying? Then yes. Otherwise, ha ha ha ha ha.”
OK. I get it. Verizon is going to have a hard row to hoe to find customers willing to pay almost $200 a month for business-class broadband. The reasons Verizon gives for people to want to the deal that “consumers can download a two-hour, standard-definition movie (1.5 gigabytes) in less than 80 seconds, and a two-hour HD movie (5 GB) in less than four and a half minutes,” and, “Downloading 20 high-resolution photographs (100 megabytes) would take less than five and a half seconds using the 150/35 Mbps service. With the 35 Mbps upstream speed, consumers can upload those same 20 high-resolution photos in less than 23 seconds,” aren’t that compelling. Well, not at that price-point anyway.
I see compelling reasons coming though.