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posted by
mattie_p
on Thursday February 20 2014, @09:36PM
from the but-think-of-the-stockholders dept.
from the but-think-of-the-stockholders dept.
siliconwafer writes:
"Competition among wireless providers could hurt profits in the wireless industry, according to a report by Reuters. T-Mobile's aggressive price structure, abandonment of contracts, and termination-fee payments have put downward pressure on mobile costs for consumers, and Wall Street analysts are forecasting a reduction in profits in the wireless sector as a result. AT&T in particular is showing signs of stress. While this may be bad news for the wireless industry, it's good news for consumers."
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Wireless Providers Competing More Than Ever
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(Score: 2, Insightful) by hash14 on Thursday February 20 2014, @11:10PM
But it hasn't been working that way in the communications industries. Yes, the price of physical goods have been going down (phones are becoming cheaper or more powerful, as are computers and other hardware equipment), but the prices of the services almost never fall. Cable TV prices never go down. ISPs never upgrade their infrastructure, they just raise the price on existing speeds, and institute stupid services which bundle TV and phone or antivirus, or best of all, data caps. Wireless phone service hasn't really been moving anywhere in the US either as far as I can tell. Though I would certainly admit I'm wrong if someone can present numbers demonstrating otherwise.
(Score: 1) by jonh on Friday February 21 2014, @12:18AM
Competition is a lot stronger with hardware and physical goods than with communication services. For a new company to start selling new hardware, it's "just" a case of paying for the design, manufacture and distribution of said goods, and there's lots of incentive to lower your margins or pass efficiencies on to the consumer as a means of underselling your competitors. To enter the communciations market -- well, assuming you even could get permission to build out the infrastructure required, it's going to be expensive, and you'd need to get access to some reasonable percentage of the population before your new network is seen as attractive to consumers.
Simply put, your ISP or cable company is a lot less worried about some upstart appearing out of nowhere and taking their customers away, so their primary concern is retaining the customers they currently have.