How to sell broadband?

How to sell broadband?

At the beginning, Internet access was narrowband or dial-up, then gradually, with the help of technological advances, people have migrated to broadband. Speed was relatively low (starting at 128- 256kbit/s), then incrementally increased to reach current 4-8Mbit/s and more (up to 24 Mbit/s). Of course, users are demanding newer and faster applications, but we are not exactly in a chicken and egg dilemma. There is an established factor in broadband offerings everywhere in the world: tiered pricing. A low appealing starting price to encourage new customers to go on your network, you just provide an incremental increase in speed or a new level of comfort (i.e. from dial-up to ADSL). When they get in, the tactic is to help them to migrate to more expensive offers, and it is included in the profitability of the process. It can be offering new applications, new bundled services, or using a CPE modem change (adequately scheduled) to push (more or less aggressively) the upwards move. The process has several advantages: first you gain new customers (from competition) with appealing, low-margin offers, then for a while you increase your margin in focusing on intermediate, middle-range margin offers to finally migrate to a high-margin offer (a cash cow). When the infrastructure is existing, there is no significant difference between the cost of the various offers, so the incremental shift in speed is immediately translated in margin. Be it in the US (i.e. ATT or Verizon with their $15 ADSL fee per month to start), or in Europe (i.e. most incumbents, but also competitive access providers), or probably the same in APAC, it is a universal tactic run at the expense of users.