Consumers can be quite price sensitive, especially for products that do not have high emotional resonance (sports gear, autos, clothing, fragrances, jewelry, sports teams, hobbies). In that regard, fixed wireless provides a good example.
The tech geek in me loves symmetrical fiber to the home. It was my most-recent form of home broadband. But I’ve moved to a place that doesn’t have it. Sure, I’d rather have it. But I’ve also discovered that using a Wi-Fi connection (Comcast’s Xfinity) does a decent job for most of what I need.
I’m not saying it is a permanent solution. But I am quite surprised that going from symmetrical gig to what seems to be no more than 100 Mbps downstream and a single-digit to low-double digits upstream actually works pretty well, to my shock.
I wouldn’t have expected I’d be fairly satisfied with the vastly-different value prop. And the price-performance proposition is what strikes me as quite unexpected.
The point is that lots of consumers who aren’t actually emotionally attached in any way to their home broadband connection probably will find that fixed wireless is a rational alternative to hybrid fiber coax or fiber to the home connections.
Up to this point, I’d have argued that is the case for users who don’t spend lots of time on their connections (lighter or moderate users) or who don’t work from home. But I’m a heavy user and I do work from home.
The caveats are that I wouldn’t be willing to make the same choice if there were multiple users on the same account, or if my children were still living with me.
But for a single user, I am actually quite surprised that less than 100 Mbps downstream actually works. I wouldn’t have believed it.
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