Well, maybe not really… in some ways Wisconsin is a strange state – I will never forget driving through Wisconsin several years ago and seeing dead deer lying alongside the freeway, which had been spray-painted with bright fluorescent orange paint- yes, you read that right, they spray-painted the dead deer, and we saw quite a few of them that had been marked in such a manner. I somehow doubt it was rural gangs marking their turf, so I don’t understand who was spray-painting the deer, or why – very strange!
But still, I have to compare the announcement that AT&T made today…
Detroit is the first area in the nation where AT&T U-verse Voice is available. AT&T U-verse Voice is a digital voice service delivered over the AT&T U-verse Internet Protocol network. The company began a controlled launch in late December and has since expanded the service’s availability. The service will continue to expand to more local customers and additional markets in 2008.
…..
U-verse TV customers can choose from two flexible U-verse Voice calling plans:
- U-verse Voice Unlimited, which includes unlimited local and nationwide minutes to any location in the U.S., Canada or U.S. territories for $40 a month.
- U-verse Voice 1000, which includes 1,000 Call Anywhere minutes to any location in the U.S. or U.S. territories for $30 a month.
(The above excerpted from: AT&T U-verse Voice Launches in Detroit – VoIP Monitor)
… to this announcement made by TDS Telecom:
Today, TDS turns on the WiMAX signal in Madison, Wis. TDS is the first communications provider in Wisconsin to offer true WiMAX — a revolutionary, wireless high-speed Internet and phone service. The new WiMAX technology will provide digital phone and broadband service to nearly 65,000 customers in the Madison area during the first stages of the product rollout.
…..
Depending on the service a customer selects, TDS will be delivering up to 6Mb Internet speeds in combination with the fastest upload speed available. “TDS WiMAX is the fastest upload speed currently available for consumers at 6Mb / 3Mb in Madison,” adds Cvengros. Business customers will have access to near symmetric download and upload speeds.
(The above is from a TDS Telecom press release – note that it’s in .doc file format)
And BroadbandReports.com fills in some specifics about the TDS offering:
….. TDS is offering three residential tiers: 2Mbps/1Mbps for $45, 4Mbps/2Mbps for $50, and 6Mbps/3Mbps for $55.
…..
Customers can add VoIP service with 30 minutes of long distance per month and unlimited local calls for another $5. VoIP with 300 minutes of long distance is another $10 on top of the price of just Internet, and VoIP with unlimited long distance is another $15 on top of the price of Internet.
Now let’s see… AT&T is charging $40 per month for their VoIP (excuse me, digital voice service) and that’s only if you bundle with another AT&T service – BroadbandReports.com notes that…
While the company keeps talking about how lame forced bundling is, the press release notes that U-Verse Voice is available only with purchase of AT&T U-verse TV service or AT&T Yahoo! broadband (depending on the market). The new U-Verse Voice website lists the two packages as $5 more expensive than listed above, due to the various fine print bundling discounts — which are broken down in more detail here.
I guess it depends on your needs, but note that under the TDS plan you can get 6Mbps/3Mbps broadband plus VoIP with unlimited long distance for $70 per month. I’m not sure what AT&T Yahoo! broadband costs these days (nor what kind of speed you get), but I’d be willing to bet that an equivalent bundle from AT&T would be significantly more expensive.
What strikes me as stupid about AT&T’s pricing is that VoIP is a competitive service. If I lived in Madison, there would (in most cases) be no good reason I should go to an independent VoIP provider for my phone service, assuming of course that the TDS service is reliable (it should be – TDS is, after all, a telephone company). I’d be hard pressed to find reliable unlimited VoIP service from an independent provider for 15 bucks a month. It seems to me that TDS has read the tea leaves correctly, and realizes that from now on the money will be made from offering broadband service, but that voice is now a commodity.
Whereas, AT&T just can’t seem to stop themselves from thinking like an old dinosaur of a phone company. In today’s environment, $40 is an absolutely ridiculous price to charge for an unlimited VoIP (or “digital voice” or whatever you want to call it) offering, considering that people can buy it from an independent provider for half that price and probably get more features, plus they’ll be able to have a number in whichever ratecenter they want (out of a large selection), instead of being bound by the imaginary and generally arbitrary geographic lines drawn by the telephone company.
(No, I don’t know if TDS would allow their Madison customers to have, for example, a Milwaukee telephone number. If not, that might be a valid reason for some customers to obtain service from another provider.)
I do have one question about the TDS offering, however. The ILEC (wireline telephone company) in Madison is AT&T, so TDS is a competitor there. However, TDS is the ILEC in a number of rural areas in both Wisconsin and Michigan (and in many other states). I wonder if they have any plans to offer WiMAX in their own areas – on the one hand, it would make a great deal of sense to do so, since it would dramatically cut the cost of their “outside plant”, but on the other hand, making that move would probably cut into their federal subsidies from the much-hated (except by those who feed at that trough) Universal Service Fund. I hope that if the Madison system proves viable, TDS will do the right thing and deploy the system throughout both its own footprint, and in the areas where it is a CLEC (and those areas combined would include a large portion of lower Michigan).
