Harvard Study: Community-Owned ISPs Offer Lower, Clearer Prices An interesting new study out of Harvard took a look at 40 community-owned municipal broadband providers offering fiber to the home broadband, then compared it to comperable offerings from the private sector in these markets. Their findings? The offerings from community broadband ISPs were traditionally less expensive than their private-sector counterparts. Of course that's a major reason why ISPs have literally bought and/or written laws in more than 20 states banning your town or city from exploring such options.

"We were able to make comparisons in 27 communities and found that in 23 cases, the community-owned FTTH providers’ pricing was lower when the service costs and fees were averaged over four years," state the study authors, who add that using a three year-average changed this fraction to 22 out of 27. "In the other 13 communities, comparisons were not possible, either because the private providers’ website terms of service deterred or prohibited data collection or because no competitor offered service that qualified as broadband," the authors added. The study also found that pricing among these community-run ISPs tended to be clearer thanks to fewer misleading fees and other pricing caveats. You'll recall that several ISPs (from CenturyLink to Comcast) are facing ongoing lawsuits for jacking up their advertised rates post sale using all manner of misleading fees. The study also noted how promotions were short-lived among most ISPs and inevitably resulted in much higher rates. "We also found that almost all community-owned FTTH networks offered prices that were clear and unchanging, whereas private ISPs typically charged initial low promotional or “teaser” rates that later sharply rose, usually after 12 months," they noted. The study also found, unsurprisingly to DSLReports.com readers, that ISPs like Comcast dramatically change their pricing from region to region based entirely upon how much competition they see in any particular market. That impacted everything from promotional rates, to how much you'll save for paperless billing. "Comcast sometimes defined a monthly price as a range (between $2 and nearly $15 monthly), leaving it unclear what consumers would be paying," the study noted. "Comcast (also) employed different teaser rate progressions, including a price increase after 12 months and two price increases over a period of three years." The full study can be downloaded The full study can be downloaded here for those interested.







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Most recommended from 90 comments

elefante72

join:2010-12-03

East Amherst, NY 40 recommendations elefante72 Member Is this surprising? Community means the people who operate live in the community and give a crap. You can see the white of their eyes.



Comcast et al lives in some posh Phil boardroom chomping cigars and can only think about how to make extra millions in bonuses, ship paintings to tax-free NH, and get out of paying taxes.



This is how large corporations work. They behave in a predatory manner, use the government as a shield, hire gobs of lawyers and accounts to lobby and squirm out of taxes, and abuse the customer base to within an inch of the current regulator's threshold for action. It seems the Pai and Trump admin have no threshold, so the next few years are going to be great for Comcast stock so buy in...



They don't care about the community, only the bottom line and the SHE (shareholders equity).

cb14

join:2013-02-04

Miami Beach, FL ·Localphone

·Zadarma

·Verizon Wireless

·callwithus

·T-Mobile

·AT&T U-Verse

·Callcentric

35 recommendations cb14 Member Wow, what a surprise. The birds in the trees talk about how obscenely overpriced internet in the U.S. is compared to most other western countries. The birds in the trees talk about the gazillions of $ incumbent ISPs spend on bribing politicians.Because they are so concerned about the well being of the people I assume.

And someone, except hard core wing nuts , is surprised? They are not surprised either, for them it's "fake news".



Time to treat fixed internet as an essential utility.

ham3843

join:2015-01-15

USA 12 recommendations ham3843 Member Incontrovertible evidence! quote: There’s a reason that every single time Google Fiber or one of these community BROADBAND initiatives rolls into town, the incumbent providers drastically lower prices, almost every single time. This shows how insanely high their profit margin is with little competition… It shows you that if they can exploit they do exploit almost every single time.



nishiko7 stated it perfectly!

It proves beyond a shadow of a doubt that these virtual monopolies are price gouging, and

abusive to their customers. Not only is the product of these big corporations most often sub par,

but the prices are outrageous, and the customer service ABYSMAL in the most heinous way. nishiko7 stated it perfectly!It proves beyond a shadow of a doubt that these virtual monopolies are price gouging, andabusive to their customers. Not only is the product of these big corporations most often sub par,but the prices are outrageous, and the customer service ABYSMAL in the most heinous way.