While tier-one telcos and their incumbent cable competition have long been pitching triple play bundles at $99 per month for a year, smaller operators have undercut them on threesome pricing, and often value.
In the Northeast, Comcast Corp. (CMCSA) and Verizon Communications Inc. (VZ) have competing triple plays at $99 per month for a year, and sometimes longer, commitment. Both have offered promotions beyond price, such as free content and consumer electronics devices.
That’s emblematic of the typical price competition among the largest and most deep-pocketed operators. But, it doesn’t speak to more aggressive pricing offered by smaller, and often more aggressive, telcos.
Consumers in markets with more than one telco TV provider obviously have greater choice and, hence, more alluring triple play pricing.
Consider IP service pioneer SureWest Communications Inc. (SURW), which only operates in the Sacramento, Calif. and Kansas City metro markets.
With competition from telcos, cable operators and satellite-based TV providers, SureWest has still been able to advance and thrive through a combination of aggressive pricing and service innovation.
SureWest is offering a triple play offer at only $67 a month for a one year term for new customers that sign up by yearend. That’s almost one-third less than the threesome deals from the big boys.
That price covers the IPTV pioneer’s voice offering – Digital Phone 300 – Digital Basic TV, which sports 78 channels, and high-speed Internet supporting connection speeds of up to 1 mbps, according to a spokesperson for the company.
And given that the operator’s network is fiber-fueled, akin in ways to that of much larger telcos, customers aren’t sacrificing anything to choose SureWest over its rivals.
In fact, if they look beyond those three core services, they’ll find innovative offerings that most of their rivals lack, such as a remote video home surveillance service, symmetric, high-speed Internet access (downlink and uplink speeds are the same) and advanced home networking options.
Availability of these extra services allays the fears of some consumers that once they commit to a triple play, operators move on and spend little or no time with service enhancements and new service innovations.
The moral of the story for consumers: If you’re fortunate enough to have multiple telco TV providers in your market, pay as much attention to the non-household names (and their offerings) as the tier-1s.
You may be very surprised with what you find.
