Over the past couple weeks, Qwest has dropped pricing for practically all of their DSL tiers. We all know that DSL has had a terrible year for net new adds, at least from the big three “bells.” Cable cleaned their clock in 2008. Lowering prices, even promotional ones, appears to be Qwest’s (and other bell’s) strategy of choice to stop the bleeding. Their most basic tier of 1.5 Mbps is now promotionally priced at $14.99/month. Qwest first started these price reductions with their premium tier of 20 Mbps, which went from $99/month to a new “price for life” charge of $59.99/month. BroadbandReports.com has more details. Cable is responding to telco competition, particularly FiOS, by increasing speeds, but not proportionately increasing pricing, putting even more pressure on DSL offers.
