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AT&T Cuts DSL Prices to $12.99

By Ed Oswald, BetaNews

February 3, 2006, 2:24 PM

AT&T has lowered the cost of its entry-level DSL service to $12.99 USD per month, the lowest price for high-speed Internet offered by any carrier. Speeds of up to 1.5 megabits per second would be standard, but for an additional $5 per month users can upgrade to a speed of 3 Mbps.

There are some catches, however, as customers must sign up for the service online, and the pricing only lasts one year. After the year is up, the monthly pricing jumps to $29.99 and $34.99 USD, respectively. Additionally, new subscribers must also be local phone service customers of AT&T.

The move follows a previous price cut last June by the company while it was still known as SBC Communications to $14.99 USD per month, which was a 25 percent drop from its earlier rate.

Then SBC CEO Ed Whitacre said at the time that the price drop was aimed at attracting as large of a piece of the broadband market as possible before cable companies begin offering similar services that could draw customers away.

The continued price cuts also put pressure on cable operators to follow suit. So far, they have resisted doing so, pointing to the fact that the speed of their connections is far higher than competing DSL services. Consumers are seeing it a different way, opting in increasing numbers to choose cost over speed when selecting a broadband provider.

However, with Verizon FiOS on the horizon in many communities, cable's speed advantage will soon be erased. FiOS promises speeds of up to four times as fast as cable at the same monthly rates currently offered.

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By AugAceP

edited Feb 16, 2006 - 1:04 PM

They should specify that this offer of 12.99 is only available in states where SBC provides service. I just finished calling AT&T and the customer service rep told me this himself. So, everybody here on the East Coast is fresh out of luck.

Score: 0

By nicobarengo

posted Feb 6, 2006 - 5:35 PM

Here in Argentina, we pay $125 pesos (45 U$D) for 1.2 Mbps/256kb.

Score: 0

By mjm01010101

posted Feb 6, 2006 - 2:02 PM

Other countries should not compare their prices. For one you don't have the square miles, population, tax structures, tariffs, and history of regulation that the U.S. does. An example I see quoted is S Korea having bigger net penetration than the U.S. That is all well and good but S Korea is much much smaller than the U.S. and it's cities don't begin to have the sprawl that the U.S. does.
The closest comparison would be Canada, but even then you can't, because a lot of Canada's population is near the border of U.S.'s and the majority of Canada's square mileage can't get broadband. Canada's broadband IS cheap and it IS readily available otherwise, so I do give them credit there.

Score: 0

By leojei

posted Feb 6, 2006 - 11:54 AM

I wish other AT&T carriers will lower their price as well.

Score: 0

By sdmunoz

posted Feb 6, 2006 - 10:51 AM

Here in dominican republic, u can get 768 kbps dwn / 512 up at 1395 pesos (23 dollars) per month. We hope get some more speed by better prices next year (Verizon Dominicana is the most largest internet provider in this country)

Score: 0

By citizen420

posted Feb 5, 2006 - 4:13 PM

here in sweden 8Mbps dwn & 1Mbps up @ 340SEK, (43USD). how mutch is a similar connection in the US?

Score: 0

By paulsmith

edited Feb 6, 2006 - 2:01 PM

Here in USA, South East side. We have Charter as our carrier. 786-1.5mb $29.99
and 3mb is $49.99. They usually go up in price a couple of time a year. The have no real competition is DSL, is has only 1.5mb, Bell South is the carrier. Price I think is $29.99

Score: 0

By Kramy

posted Feb 5, 2006 - 6:00 PM

Depends on the area. You can get FiOS 15/2mbit for $60USD in some areas, but most people are probably stuck at 4mbit/512kbit or less for $50.

Score: 0

By mjalhassan

edited Feb 3, 2006 - 5:05 PM

Here in Saudi Arabia, we pay $105/month for 256 Kb, and the service is so bad, that we can not serve the net 4 days out of 7, every week.

Lucky You.

Score: 0

By surfbum4fun

posted Feb 6, 2006 - 9:52 PM

yes - but how much do you buy for a gallon of gas??

Score: 0

By JoshvanHulst

posted Feb 5, 2006 - 12:20 AM

I am very happy with SBC/AT&T.. I think this price cut is awesome

Score: 0

By vik_za

edited Feb 4, 2006 - 11:14 AM

count your lucky stars! in south africa, dsl is ONLY available from telkom and costs about $120.00 a month for a 600k odd connection! PLUS you have to sign a 2year contract to qualify AND you have to purchase your own modem (+- $200) AND STILL pay for a line rental every month (+- $40). telkom also caps dsl to 3gigabytes and then ALL online activity stops until top-ups are purchased. we are the LUCKY if we connect at speeds greater than 20k p/second for any extended lengths of time.

screwed by the monopoly here. geeez. beam me there scotty!

Score: 0

By tthomps

posted Feb 4, 2006 - 8:25 AM

DSL would be nice if I could get it. I am 4 miles from downtown (city of 100K) with a major university (38K students) and I cannot get the ATT/SBC DSL. For 3 years I have been told that they are adding to their system that would provide access to my home. It never happens. I even had a SBC DSL rep tell me to stop filling in the online form for DSL.

Score: 0

By ladylust

edited Feb 4, 2006 - 1:53 AM

DSL is horrid. DSL could cost $5.00 a month, wouldnt matter. I used both cable (optimum online) and DSL (Verizon) at one point. I had DSL going as a backup. If you go from cable to DSL its like going from DSL to dialup. DSL I was getting 700k download 90k upload. With cable im getting 3000-3500k download and over 900 upload. DSL is nothing more then poor mans cable.

Score: 0

By VikingBlade

posted Feb 5, 2006 - 9:29 AM

Eh? My DSL is 7MB down, and 896k upload. And no bandwidth caps or traffic shaping like cable.

Score: 0

By bourgeoisdude

posted Feb 6, 2006 - 6:51 PM

"Eh? My DSL is 7MB down, and 896k upload. And no bandwidth caps or traffic shaping like cable."

Wrong. First of all DSL uses existing phone lines so unless you are in Alaska 7MBps down is impossible. Even 7Mbps is impossible (little indicates "bits" while big B indicates "bytes") with DSL. If you download a file and it says it is that fast it can only be due to compression algorithms and such. The "KB/sec" in the web browser's downloading window is not the least bit accurate as it indicates speed with compression which can vary depending on the content you download. Download the file "hcl.txt" from Microsoft that's over 26MB for example and you can download an average of 80KBps with a 56kbps modem...I know, I did that.

Phone lines cannot exceed 3.0mbps in theory, and in reality they never exceed 1.5mbps.

Score: 0

By dvferret

posted Feb 5, 2006 - 9:45 AM

What service do you have because I have bellsouth's most expensive service and its slower than a snail usually.

Score: 0

By AntiochMedia

posted Feb 4, 2006 - 2:20 PM

I've had a wonderful experience with DSL. I was previously on Comcast Cable which required a $49.99/mo TV package to be purchased and was spending close to $100 a month.

I switched to SBC DSL and have never had a moment of downtime, my upstream is 3x the speed that I had with cable, and my cost per month is $19.95.

There are always many factors -- for me, I do not want cable TV, I do want a home telephone line, and I happy to be lucky enough to live in an area where SBC DSL's service is spot on, lightning fast, and I couldn't ask for more.

I think that due to the fact that distance from the telephone service provider makes a difference with DSL - some DSL users aren't too impressed with their speeds while the # of people sharing a cable connection effects people's perception of cable internet in areas.

I have a client whose Cox Cable Internet connection is barely better than dial-up. I've told them that there is something wrong and since they don't know any better, they haven't done anything. In that scenario, it's most likely a problem between the box and the house.

At any rate - there are many factors. Both services are pretty even with give and take in different circumstances.

Score: 0

By OCedHrt

posted Feb 5, 2006 - 12:24 AM

You can tell Comcast you want only basic cable tv, which is only $12.95/month. Digital cable isn't needed for HSI. Also, I get 6000/384kbps. The upload side does need some work, but downloading at 700kb/sec far exceeds the 50-70kbps I've seen on dsl.

Score: 0

By Kramy

posted Feb 5, 2006 - 1:00 AM

DSL must suck where you are. I'm hoping my ISP(Telus) will boost my upload speed to 768kbit or 1mbit in the next year, as apparently their download speed may be going up soon.

Score: 0

By robsshadow

edited Feb 4, 2006 - 5:09 AM

I switched from cable to verizon dsl my download speed was the same 2700k my upload speed increased from 200k to 700k I love my dsl halve the price of cable

Score: 0

By klingon379

posted Feb 4, 2006 - 2:26 AM

If DSL providers in the USA would use ADSL 2 technology then DSL speed would be much closer to that of cable. ADSL 2 is used in many parts of Europe currently but for some reason USA DSL providers refuse to use the much faster technology.

Fiberoptic is going to eventually replace coaxial cable anyways. Verizon is already planning to offer TV over fiberoptic in addition to their FIOS internet service. Besides, if you have cable internet you already have fiberoptic cable installed at your curb. Then the cable company runs coaxial cable from the curb into your home.

Score: 0

By Kramy

edited Feb 4, 2006 - 3:09 AM

Telus(in Canada) is testing Telus TV right now, which goes through your ADSL. Apparently they have just over a thousand in their testing group, but they're adding dozens every day. Although there's no speed boost mentioned at the current time, you can get it on a 1.5mbit connection, indicating they thought ahead and designed their system for 8mbit.

Edit: Oh, and they are "internally testing ADSL2", whatever that means.

Score: 0

By Luke115

posted Feb 3, 2006 - 6:56 PM

This seams like a great deal to me. I just got a friend who has been on dail up to get the 12.99 deal today. I think he will be realy happy and in a year I will move him on to somthing new. Use love it then dump it when it gose up in price.

Score: 0

By DeadFly

posted Feb 3, 2006 - 4:07 PM

Both DSL and cable services vary A LOT from one area to another. DSL speed is all about distance from your central office and quality of the copper wires in between. With cable providers the issue is how many customers are sharing a segment of their network. There are certain times of the day when my "3Mbps" cable connection can only get 300Kbps sustained (although they are improving). When I've run speed tests at home I've never gotten a sustained rate (5M+ transfer) of more than 1.6Mbps. Latency is another issue where your situation will vary. Traffic like video conferencing can be made unusable by high latency no matter what your bandwidth is. So it's really not a straight comparison between the two.

Score: 0

By GeorgeSantayana

posted Feb 3, 2006 - 3:35 PM

I can't wait until they get in our neighborhood if only for the competition. Comcast is extorting us to the tune of almost $50/month.

Score: 0

By zee7

posted Feb 3, 2006 - 4:12 PM

We gave Comcast the boot last year and haven't looked back. Amazingly, we don't miss the speed as much as we thought we would. And saving $50.00 per month just makes it a no brainer.

Score: 0

By DeadFly

posted Feb 3, 2006 - 4:10 PM

Switch to Wide Open West if you can. I got it initally for 6 months at $24 (I think) then when it came time for the rate to increase I called them up to cancel because I was going to switch to DSL and they matched the price.

Score: 0

By zee7

posted Feb 3, 2006 - 3:18 PM

Come on, Fios! I eagerly await your pipe busting technicians in my neighborhood!

Score: 0

By dferman

posted Feb 3, 2006 - 3:03 PM

oooo that is fast, but in many places dsl already is faster than cable...come on guys, don't post misleading crap (again).

Score: 0

By dvferret

posted Feb 5, 2006 - 9:46 AM

not in orlando, fl. DSL here is the craps. cable (RoadRunner from brighthouse) is so much better than dsl(atleast from bellsouth)

Score: 0

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