I often get asked how to price gigabit service by clients that are rolling it out for the first time. For an ISP already in the broadband business, layering in a super-fast Internet product on top of an existing product line can be a real challenge.

Google certainly lowered the bar for the whole industry when they priced a gigabit at $70. And that is the real price since Google doesn’t charge extra for the modem. I think the Google announcement recalibrated the public’s expectations and anybody else that offers a gigabit product is going to be compared to that price.

There are a few other large companies marketing a gigabit product in multiple markets. CenturyLink has a gigabit connection for $79.95 per month. But it’s hard to know if that is really the price since it is bundled with CenturyLink’s Prism TV. The cheapest Prism TV product offered on the web costs $39.99 per month and includes 150 channels of programming and also comes with an additional settop box fee of $9.99 per month – the highest box fee I’ve seen. I don’t know exactly what kind of bundle discount is available, but on the web I’ve seen customers claiming that the cheapest price for the gigabit bundle is around $125 per month. That’s a far cry from Google’s straight $70. And for customers who want to use a gigabit to cut the cord a forced bundles feel a bit like blackmail.

Verizon FiOS has not yet given in to the pressure to offer a gigabit product. In looking at their web site their fastest product is still a symmetrical 500 Mbps connection at $270 per month plus an added fee for a modem, and with a required 2-year commitment. A 1-year commitment is $280 per month.

Comcast will soon offer a gigabit in more markets than anybody else. In Atlanta where Comcast is competing against Google Fiber a gigabit is $70 per month with a 3-year contract, including an early termination fee (meaning that if you leave you pay for the remaining months). This package also requires an additional modem charge. Without a contract the price for the gigabit is $140. It’s unclear if Comcast is offering the same lower-price deal in other markets with newly upgraded DOCSIS 3.1 like Chicago. The word on the Internet is that customers are unable to sign-up for the lower-price option in these markets, but the company says it’s available. I’m sure the availability  will soon become clear.

One thing that happens to any company that offers a gigabit is that the prices for slower speeds are slashed. If a gigabit is $70 – $80 then slower products must become correspondingly less expensive. Google offers a 100 Mbps product for $50 and each of the other companies listed above has a range of slower bandwidth products.

The first question I always ask an ISP is if they are offering gigabit speed for the public relations value or they really want to sell a lot of it. There are plenty of ISPs that have gone for the first option and have priced a gigabit north of $100 per month.  But for somebody that hopes to sell the product, the dilemma is that they know that the majority of their customers will buy the least expensive product that provides a comfortable speed. The rule of thumb in the industry is that, in most markets, at least 80% of customers will buy the low or moderate priced options. But if the choice is between a gigabit product and a 100 Mbps product, the percentage buying the slower product is likely to be a lot higher.

The issue that small ISPs face when recalibrating their speeds is that they end up increasing speeds for most existing customers. If they migrate from a scale today where 50 Mbps or 100 Mbps is the fastest product up to a new scale topped by a gigabit, then they have to increase speeds across the board to accommodate the new gigabit product.

This is a hard mental block to get over for many small ISPs. If a company offers a range today of products from 6 Mbps to 75 Mbps it’s mentally a challenge to reset their slowest speed to 50 Mbps or faster. They often tell me that in doing so they feels like they are giving away something for free. If a company has been an ISP since the dial-up days they often have a number of customers that have been grandfathered with slow, but inexpensive broadband. It’s a real dilemma when rebalancing speeds and rates to know what to do with households that are happy with a very cheap connection at 1 Mbps or 2 Mbps product.

For the last ten years I have advised clients to raise speeds. ISPs that have raised speeds tell me that they generally only see a tiny bump in extra traffic volume after doing so. And I’ve always seen that customers appreciate getting faster speeds for the same price. Since it doesn’t cost much to raise speeds it’s one of the cheapest forms of marketing you can do, and it’s something positive that customers will remember.

I think most ISPs realize that the kick-up to gigabit speeds is going to be a change that lasts for a long time. There are not many customers in a residential market that need or can use gigabit speeds. What Google did was to leap many times over the natural evolution of speeds in the market, and I think this is what makes my clients uneasy. They were on a path to have a structure more like Verizon with a dozen products between slow and fast. But the market push for gigabit speeds has reduced the number of options they are able to offer.