Verizon introduced a new broadband price-for-life promotion for specific DSL tiers. The promotion runs through February 21st and new customers have to commit to at least a two year term. The promotion guarantees no price hikes for as long as the customer keeps the service. Pricing for the promotion starts at $17.99/month for up to 1 megabits per second (Mbps); up to 3 Mbps at $27.99 per month; and up to 7.1 Mbps at $37.99 per month. Verizon also announced it’s DSL powered 7.1 Mbps service is now available to 9 million homes across their footprint.

Verizon also announced a new promotion for its DirecTV powered triple play bundles, with new introductory pricing of $74.99 (when ordered online) for unlimited voice, 1 Mbps broadband, and DirecTV video service. As Verizon’s press release title suggests, the new promotions are clearly targeting “Budget-Minded Consumers.”

New market research from Pike and Fisher predicts that cable companies will dominate new broadband adds by capturing 75% of the total market. P&F suggests that that despite FiOS and U-Verse progress, the majority of telco broadband footprints are still served by DSL, which “consumers are increasingly spurning because its speeds are slower than cable.” P&F also predicts that overall broadband growth will decline by 12% in 2009, with a total of 5.7 million new broadband households up for grabs. Their forecasts are based on “the nation’s economic crisis, which its increasing unemployment rates and slowing housing starts.”

P&F is basically forecasting a continuation of 2008 broadband conditions, when the first signs of slowing broadband adoption became evident. Cable had a great 2008 when put into context of significant drop offs in DSL growth from large telcos. Apparently P&F believes that party will continue. Time will tell. Telcos began serious discounted pricing promotions for DSL in the fourth quarter of 2008, which are continuing into 2009. Those discounts in the face of our bad economy may help move the needle in DSL’s favor,

Over the past couple weeks, Qwest has dropped pricing for practically all of their DSL tiers. We all know that DSL has had a terrible year for net new adds, at least from the big three “bells.” Cable cleaned their clock in 2008. Lowering prices, even promotional ones, appears to be Qwest’s (and other bell’s) strategy of choice to stop the bleeding. Their most basic tier of 1.5 Mbps is now promotionally priced at $14.99/month. Qwest first started these price reductions with their premium tier of 20 Mbps, which went from $99/month to a new “price for life” charge of $59.99/month. BroadbandReports.com has more details. Cable is responding to telco competition, particularly FiOS, by increasing speeds, but not proportionately increasing pricing, putting even more pressure on DSL offers.

AT&T will expand their metered bandwidth trial to Beaumont, TX. They began trialing bandwidth caps in Reno, NV in early November. Like in Reno, Beaumont AT&T broadband customers will see broadband caps ranging from 20 Gpbs to 150 Gbps, depending on their DSL subscription tier. Unlike in Reno, the Beaumont market is well aware of metered bandwidth, since Time Warner Cable introduced them earlier this year. It sets up an interesting competitive laboratory. For the first time, the two dominant broadband carriers in a given market will have bandwidth caps. Some analysts have suggested that metered bandwidth will not work in a competitive environment. The thinking being that competitors will simply aggressively compete with unlimited bandwidth plans, and materially impact metered bandwidth plans. But what happens if most broadband carriers decide to institute caps? So much for that argument. Is Beaumont a leading indicator of things to come for all markets?

Qwest announced a new holiday promotion for DSL which lowers their entry level tier to $14.99/month (from $39.99/month) for up to 1.5 Mbps. Their intermediate tier, or Qwest Platinum, pricing was lowered to $24.99/month (from $49.99/month) for up to 7 Mbps. Both offers are for one year of service. Qwest is also enticing existing customers with two months of free service if they agree to a two year commitment.

Qwest is following other telcos down the DSL value path, with high profile price promotions to try to stem slowing DSL growth. Verizon recently introduced a $9.99/month DSL plan. Will it be enough to reverse the slowing DSL growth trend?

Dallas, Texas, November 12, 2008 - Pull out the leather pants, call up your groupies and unleash your inner rock star. In conjunction with Activision Publishing Inc., AT&T Inc. (NYSE:T) today announced that aspiring rockers can soon get VIP access to Guitar Hero® World Tour, the recently released installment in Activision's massively popular Guitar Hero® franchise.

AT&T is now offering a rockin' deal to qualifying AT&T customers. Those who purchase new AT&T High Speed Internet or qualifying new U-verse TV plans will receive the Guitar Hero World Tour Complete Guitar Game, which includes the Guitar Hero World Tour console game and a new guitar controller. Read More ...

Dallas, Texas, November 6, 2008 - For millions of consumers with a need for more speed, the broadband choices just got better. AT&T Inc. (NYSE:T) today announced it will launch AT&T U-verse High Speed Internet Max 18 on Nov. 9, offering speeds of up to 18 Mbps downstream. Exclusively available for AT&T U-verse TV customers, Max 18 is the fastest high speed Internet package available from the nation's leading provider of broadband services. Read More ...

Verizon is putting some attention on non-FiOS triple play bundles by announcing price reductions for their DirecTV/DSL powered triple play bundles. Continuing decreases in DSL and wireline telephony subscriber counts are certainly helping fuel this latest promotion. These latest bundles offer unlimited local and long-distance calling, broadband via DSL at 1, 3 or 7.1 mbps tiers, and DirecTV satellite service. Prices start at $79.99/month, down from $95/month and go as high as $120/month depending on Internet speeds and video channel selection. For example, $99/month buys you “a triple-play package of Verizon High Speed Internet service at up to 3 Mbps, unlimited local and nationwide long-distance voice service with several calling features and DIRECTV's PLUS HD DVR package with more than 200 digital TV channels and DVR service, plus a free DVR upgrade and SHOWTIME premium movie channels for 12 months,” according to a Verizon company statement. Verizon is also promoting double plays of phone and either DSL or DirecTV starting at $49.99/month.

Several rumors are floating across multiple blogs and user groups about an upcoming 18 Mbps tier for AT&T U-verse, sans a video component. The service is supposedly code named “Max 18” and will be priced at $65/month. The service is expected to debut sometime in November. AT&T does need to address their broadband offerings on a market by market basis, as cable competitors begin to roll out wideband. Comcast is prepping wideband services that will initially offer a 22 Mbps tier for $62.95/month, as well as a high end tier of 50 Mbps for $139.95. They have publicly stated they intend to reach 20% of their markets by year end 2008. Next year will be an interesting one to watch, as wideband goes head up with both FiOS and U-verse. What will be even more interesting to watch in the years that follow is cable’s integration of WiMAX into their product portfolio to counter telco’s ace in the hole competitive advantage – broadband wireless.

As expected, wireless and broadband additions dominated AT&T’s third quarter. Like the second quarter before it, the third quarter posted the highest net gain in post paid retail wireless subscribers in AT&T’s history, with 1.7 million net additions. The net adds are being driven by the iPhone, with 2.4 million iPhones being activated in the third quarter, 40% of whom were new subscribers to AT&T. iPhones are also driving huge growth in wireless data revenue, which grew by 50% in the third quarter. AT&T U-verse is growing at a decent clip as well, with 232K new subscribers. AT&T reports 781K total U-verse subs, and feels confident they will exceed their 1 million subscriber goal by year end 2008. We’ll need to review these results in more detail, but here are a few initial interesting observations worth noting:

• Dramatic Increase in DSL Growth - AT&T added 149K new consumer broadband subs in 3Q08, compared with 34K in 2Q08. This dramatic increase will need to be analyzed further, as well as compared with other DSL providers to see if we’re starting to see a reversal in the slowdown of DSL subscriber growth witnessed over the past couple quarters.
• IP Derived Data Revenue Growth – IP data services now account for 44% of all data revenue. Consumer IP revenue, driven by U-verse, grew by 19%, and business IP revenue grew by 14.9%.
• New Combined Broadband Metric – AT&T announced that they will begin to combine both wireline and wireless broadband counts into a single metric as recognition of wireless broadband growth and relevancy. "In recognition of this trend, AT&T now also provides data on total broadband connections, which combines wireline and wireless subscribers." Using this new metric, AT&T counts 20.7 million total broadband subscribers (wireless broadband connections include data users with 3G LaptopConnect cards and broadband-speed integrated devices with a QWERTY or touch-screen keyboard).
• Wireline Voice Decline Continues – AT&T lost 1.02 million wireline voice connections in 3Q08, compared with 967K in 2Q08.