Word: modems
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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Once Lynn Huffman lifted his new modem out of the box, it took less than a minute to get online at the computer he keeps in the den. And it took just a few minutes more for Huffman, a retired great-grandpa who recently discovered e-mail, to decide that his new high-speed Internet service was fast, simple to set up and, best of all, cheap. At $26.95 a month, it beats the $42.95 a month he would have had to pay to get broadband from his cable company...
These days most broadband subscribers use either a modem from their cable company or a digital subscriber line (DSL) from their phone company. The first wave of BPL roll-outs doesn't pose much of a threat to the Comcasts and Verizons of the industry, which boast millions of customers and have been selling high-speed access since the late '90s. Some 22 million U.S. households already subscribe to a broadband service, according to Forrester Research analyst Jed Kolko, making it one of the biggest hits of the digital...
...huge chunk of the market is still up for grabs: namely, the 40 million-plus homes using dial-up to connect. For some of these users, a 56K modem is plenty. But budding BPL providers are betting that a significant number of consumers really do want broadband service but are simply holding out for a better offer...
...could very well win them over. For one thing, it truly is plug-and-play. Plug the modem into an electrical outlet, and you're online. The connection speeds are likely to be slower than the typical cable-modem setup (which clocks in at 1 mbps or faster), but they are comparable to most DSL services, which tend to run at about 500 kbps (10 times as fast as dial-up). And BPL is a symmetrical service, meaning it's just as fast sending out digital photos and other fat files as it is bringing them in; cable...
...already reach virtually every home in America. There's no need to make major capital improvements in order to launch, so they can charge less and still turn a profit. Providers say they will price BPL service to be competitive with DSL: about $30 to $40 a month. Cable-modem service is often more expensive (and practically exorbitant if you don't have cable...