Well, I would not say non-competitve but close when the local cable
provider isnt the greatest at customer service and they are marketing
them selves out of sales because
word of mouth moves very fast even though the metro is only 60k and the
county as whole is 90k population. The Cable provider says 50mbs but you
may only get 3Mbs or at best 12mbs
depending on where you are. Also, Fiber is not growing from trees like
other places so we have to set our prices to keep head above water on
overhead.
So, for us it just basically boils down to who is going to offer the
best customer service and so far we are winning steady and slow.
On 10/5/2014 2:23 PM, Travis Johnson via Af wrote:
Wow... you are in a very "noncompetitve" market. My surrounding area
has CableOne (even into the small communities of 500 people) and they
are doing 50Mbps x 10Mbps for $35/month for the first 6 months, then
it goes up to $50/month. Most people claim to get 30-40Mbps any time
they run a speed test.
Travis
On 10/4/2014 9:32 PM, David Milholen via Af wrote:
We had no choice after deploying the 450 and offering up a handful of
capacity for a competitive rate which basically put us at capacity in
less than 6 months with out the numbers we wanted to see. So, since
we had not raised rates in 10yrs we had no choice but to regroup and
look at how we compare to our local cable. Really we have the upper
hand because of what we do as a wireless
industry. The whole hybrid solution is the key. Basically WIsps offer
fiber to the home via fixed connections from a fiber carrier. Cable
isnt even close due to the party line affect. Cambium gives us a
scheduler that enables a VC per sub so we can imitate carrier class
connections for a much lower price than what a carrier would serve
while still making money doing it.
So we can market a wonderful new buzz word called hybrid until it
dies we will roll with it but so far the response has been very
positive for the new price plans we now offer. Our 5x5 plan is a
5Mbs/5Mbs Down/Up for $75.00 monthly. We limit our basic which is
3x1 @ $50.00 to only one video stream @ 768k per one device per account.
On 10/4/2014 7:27 PM, That One Guy via Af wrote:
i rarely have good to say about the way my boss runs things, but he
is a magician at the rate plan changes. we have never directly raise
prices, for the most part we have always either kept them the same
price or lowered the cost to stay where you are at. usually any
rate plan changes come with the option to get more for less, knowing
full well that they ultimately will move up a tier in the future
because they want more. since we quit directly selling the speed and
moved to consumption based pricing it gives a lot more leverage to
make global changes with a limited demand increase on the
infrastructure. It costs us alot less to offer more consumption than
to offer more speed, and everything is moving to consumption based
anyway, whether you like it or not. our absolute lowest tier is
marketed as an email only plan with a 5gb cap to throttled speed.
but we actually moved it to 10gb because there were too many hitting
6gb that would have needed to move up a tier just to get an extra
gb, easier to raise it for free, and we still get about a 50% take
rate to the next tier anyway. things like that are how we are able
to raise prices without actually raising prices. Because of it, even
though we went through a negative customer growth (i like that buzz
word) our profits increased, and now that we are on a positive
customer growth trend, that profit increases quickly which is why we
just dropped over 100k buying up the available 320 market at the
time (yeah, we were one of the ones that helped cause that). I wish
I could provide the specific details of the two major rate changes
in the last five years, because they were both pretty ingenious,
ultimately getting customers to thank you for raising their prices,
just by giving them ownership of the decision.
On Sat, Oct 4, 2014 at 5:12 PM, David Milholen via Af <af@afmug.com
<mailto:af@afmug.com>> wrote:
This is what we have done..
On 10/4/2014 4:02 PM, Jon Langeler via Af wrote:
Yeah I wouldn't raise prices on a 900SM customer. Get ready to
overhaul the network with faster options before charging more.
But definitely charge more as opposed to going cheaper. Markets
may vary...
Jon
On Oct 4, 2014, at 4:54 PM, Paul McCall via Af <af@afmug.com
<mailto:af@afmug.com>> wrote:
Very good input from all of you!
*From:*Af [mailto:af-boun...@afmug.com] *On Behalf Of *Ken
Hohhof via Af
*Sent:* Saturday, October 04, 2014 4:32 PM
*To:* af@afmug.com <mailto:af@afmug.com>
*Subject:* Re: [AFMUG] How frequently have you had a price
increase?
Everyone seems to expect our prices will go down, it’s the
Internet after all, everything is supposed to get cheaper
until it’s free, right? We haven’t raised prices in 10 years,
and we are feeling some pressure to lower prices about 10%, I
guess that’s from competition though and it sounds like you
don’t have too much of that problem.
JAB has people here expecting $40/$50/$60 for 5M/10M/15M
speed. They do have an equipment fee and a support plan in
the fine print though.
One school of thought is you gotta have added fees, otherwise
you just look more expensive in a comparison. (And people do
compare prices, even if the other guys can’t get them
service.) Another school of thought is, if you do a price
increase, make it big enough you don’t have another one in a
year. Although that never seems to stop the cable companies.
Another school of thought is to make it look like you are
giving them something for the price increase, that’s the game
the cablecos play, more content. Not sure what you could give
away though, if you are already at 5M and unlimited usage. I
guess as long as you are saying “up to”, you could raise the
number.
*From:*Paul McCall via Af <mailto:af@afmug.com>
*Sent:*Saturday, October 04, 2014 3:00 PM
*To:*af@afmug.com <mailto:af@afmug.com>
*Subject:*[AFMUG] How frequently have you had a price increase?
We are thinking of raising our prices on our residential
basic plan. Some of our customers have been on the same priced
plan for 7 years (or more). Around $ 45 / month for “up to
5Mbit/1Mbit”. Probably 25% of those customers, we are the only
“good” source for Internet. The rest have varying levels of
DSL or cable options.
Thinking of bumping those customers to $ 49. Maybe a little
more, haven’t decided.
How do you handle price changes and/or on your customers on
“rolling contracts” ?
Paul
Paul McCall, Pres.
PDMNet / Florida Broadband
658 Old Dixie Highway
Vero Beach, FL 32962
772-564-6800 <tel:772-564-6800> office
772-473-0352 <tel:772-473-0352> cell
www.pdmnet.com <http://www.pdmnet.com/>
pa...@pdmnet.net <mailto:pa...@pdmnet.net>
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All parts should go together without forcing. You must remember that
the parts you are reassembling were disassembled by you. Therefore,
if you can't get them together again, there must be a reason. By all
means, do not use a hammer. -- IBM maintenance manual, 1925
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