I stumbled across this gem at Simple Kind of Life:
We’ve got this package deal from the cable company that includes cable, internet, and phone. The upside is that we’re saving money. The downside is that we’re stuck with one particular cable company, and they don’t have the best track record. I’d love to ditch them and find a different VoIP provider.
As some of those of you that know me have heard me say, one of my most contrary (some people have called it crazy) predictions is that unbundling will be all the rage in a few years.
Things tend to go in cycles or waves. Right now, we are in the midst of the “Bundle Mania”, Double Play, Triple Play, Quad Play. Any analyst worth his salt is telling clients to bundle, bundle, bundle. What fool would say otherwise? Give it time.
In a few years, I bet the cool way to differentiate will be to offer UNBUNDLED services. You heard it here first.
And by the way, I’d wager the person above is not actually “saving money” with careful analysis (especially after the promotional pricing runs out).
What’s her problem? If she gets internet she can do the unbundling herself. Install a Phonegnome or whatever. When there is bandwith there is freedom. 🙂
Well I can’t argue against that Markus! 🙂
But there are still a few issues with these bundles in practice. For one thing, they generally aren’t as cheap as they first appear. And once you’re in, you’re stuck for the term of a contract (often pretty long term). And then there’s the special CPE required to support the triple-play (see Blocking without blocking) where they can manage what the connection is used for and do local prioritization right at the router. What people are really buying here is not Internet (not an IP service) but Web and Email (more like "Internet" on cell phones). The ability to send/receive any IP packet is not necessarily part of the service, meaning VPN, VoIP, and whatever new thing gets thought up next week, might not work (probably won’t work) with this kind of "Internet" – and customers will be stuck with it for X years to come.
I’m the person quoted above, and yes, we are saving money. We get a discount for using this company as part of our HOA fees. We pay the fees regardless, so why not reap the discount? I’ve tallied up the prices if we used different providers for each, and it was quite a bit more.
As far as the company, I still don’t think they’re anything special, but they lowered my price by $20 last month, so I can’t complain.