SureWest Communications has expanded television, Internet and telephone service to some 3,500 Kansas City area homes and remains on track to reach 10,000 by the end of the year.
In the broadband services area, SureWest customers and prospects have something like an embarassment of riches, though some will argue the prices are too high.
Customers can buy 20-megabits-per-second connections for about $92 when purchased as part of a bundle, and can get 50 Mbps service for about $192 when when bundled with one other service.
Business customers can buy 100 Mbps service. So the issue, at least where SureWest operates, is demand, not supply.
The argument can, and probably will be made, that prices for the higher bandwidths are too high. Observers should keep in mind that commercial prices for T1 lines offering 1.544 Mbps service cost as much as the 50 Mbps service, if not more. Perhaps that will not be enough to sway some opinion on the pricing front.
But in this case, at least, broadband supply is not a problem. Demand is the issue. One can argue that prices should be lower. It is harder to argue that SureWest's ability to remain in business requires that level of prices at its forecast penetration levels. If SureWest does a lot better than it now forecasts, lower prices are possible. But this now is a demand generation exercise.
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