The new pricing is a straightforward menu of prices as follows:
- There are three broadband products: 100 Mbps for $40, 300 Mbps for $60 and 1 gigabit for $80. The first two products charge $15 monthly for a router – a router is included in the gigabit product price.
- There are new, and lower-priced cable TV options. Your FiOS TV is $50 (plus $12 for a settop box). A customer chooses 5 channels and Verizon provides 120 other channels based upon that choice. More FiOS TV provides 300 channels for $70 and includes one free settop box. The Most FiOS TV is $90 and comes with 425 channels, one free settop box and some use of a DVR. Verizon is also now reselling YouTube TV for $50.
- A basic voice line is $20 and comes with caller ID. I assume voice mail is extra. They didn’t include it in the announcement, but there must be a higher-priced product that includes unlimited long distance.
- Customers must use autopay and paperless billing to get any of these products.
There are some definite positives from the new pricing:
- Verizon says they have eliminated hidden fees.
- Verizon has eliminated term contracts for these products. It’s not clear in the announcement, but customers under current contracts are likely going to have to finish those contracts before moving to the new prices.
- This eliminates the games that Verizon and other big ISPs have played with bundling discounts. With bundle discounts, customers got some nice price breaks for buying multiple products. However, the discounts were never associated with any product, and customers found that when they tried to drop any one product that they lost the bundling discount. This new pricing is a menu and customers can pick what they want to buy, and due to monthly billing can add or subtract products later with no penalty.
- Along those same lines, Verizon will have finally taken out all of the hassles of trying to negotiate for standalone products. Customers can pick any products from this new menu of services, including standalone broadband.
Of course, there are also negatives:
- The settop box and router fees at $12 and $15 are outrageous considering that in both cases the box that Verizon is providing likely costs around $100. These add-ons costs are still going to be mentioned only in the small print in advertising, which still smacks of hidden fees.
- Verizon is also including a $15 per month product they call TechSure Plus that provides for 24/7 technical support. Reading between the lines, this product means customers will have to pay Verizon $180 per year to avoid the long phone waits for customer service. The unspoken threat is that customers without this service will go to the end of the customer service queue. It’s a ballsy product statement by Verizon – pay extra if you ever want to talk to us.
- All of this is only available where Verizon has fiber – and there is still a lot of their market that is not wired with fiber.
The new pricing is a definite challenge to the big cable companies that Verizon competes with. The $55 price for 100 Mbps broadband ($40 for the broadband and $15 for the router) sets a market bottom price and is a definite challenge to the cable companies. It’s likely that a big majority of Verizon customers will choose this product because of the low price and because most homes today are going to be happy with 100 Mbps service on fiber. This product will make the big cable companies sharpen their pencils for their base broadband product and also might make them hesitate from the annual broadband rate increases they’ve now built into their planning.
It’s going to be interesting to see how Comcast and the other big cable companies react to these new prices. They can advertise promotional pricing that can beat the Verizon rates, but those specials will likely still include hidden fees, and the rates will spring back to full price at the end of the promotional period. The big cable companies also need to be careful about offering lower prices only where there is FiOS – this will annoy the hell out of customers in other markets who will understand they are subsidizing lower rates in Verizon markets.
It’s not going to be surprising to see Verizon take away customers from the cable companies with these prices. The prices are not particularly low, but for the most part, they are honest and transparent – a refreshing change from a big ISP.