dslwanter It took me a long time to find that buried in the fine print. I feel like they may scoop up a few customers with that offer, especially if they’re more loyal to Armstrong over AT&T/Verizon/T-Mobile. Personally speaking, my thought process around it is that that promo is probably going to be better than FWA with variable speeds, higher latency, and behind a CG-NAT. But I wouldn’t be their average customer either, so…
@kirk1233 While Armstrong may be taking a loss to offer that, it might be closer to or at break-even since the investment in the plant is already done. At that point, it’s just eating the cost of an ONT and router rental, both of which they surely have ample inventory. Most speed tiers have high margins and the base cost per passing/customer is basically the same. For every customer taking a temporary promo, they make it up with somebody else paying $80/mo or $90/mo for 500 Mbps, plus the $10.95/mo “whole home Wi-Fi,” or who knows what for that “virus and threat protection software,” and so on. That’s why those add-on offerings are typically already included in the 1-2 Gbps tiers with most ISPs – the margin’s already sufficient to cover it and the customers paying for all the bells and whistles subsidize the customers who only pay for base tier service or constantly promo shop.
You’d think that’s not sustainable, but there are a shocking number of people who set all their bills to autopay and don’t even look at them until their checking account overdrafts or service gets shut off due to some change in service or billing error. It really may be a long term play, hoping that somebody signs up for the deal, forgets about the promo price, and just keeps it for some additional months at whatever surely crazy rack rate they have for 50 Mbps.
Also notice how the speed tiers are typically structured: it’s designed for the upsell. There’s one super cheap discount tier (with promo) that most people will find inadequate, then something like 500-600 Mbps, and then the family/“power user” tiers at 1-2 Gbps. Most people probably need more than 50 Mbps, but less than 300 Mbps or so. But since you can’t choose anything in between, a lot of people might get pulled in by the appeal of the promo and then realize they need to upgrade to actually get the bandwidth they need.
