BellSouth cuts DSL discount; Verizon adds packages

(Telephony) On the heels of AT&T Broadband’s decision to raise its fees for high-speed Internet access by $6 per month, BellSouth this week announced that it was cutting the discount it offers to DSL customers who also purchase its Complete Choice telephony offering by $5.

Meanwhile, Verizon announced that it was reducing prices on some of its DSL products, while adding four new packages that will raise monthly fees by as much as $10, but at the same time provide customers with faster speeds and a variety of added-value services.

BellSouth customers who purchase the Fast Access DSL offering pay $49.95 per month, and that pricing will remain the same. However, Fast Access customers who also purchase Complete Choice—which offers customers local service, caller ID, call waiting, call return and three-way calling—had been paying $39.95 per month for the DSL service. Now they will pay $45 per month.

BellSouth decided to cut the discount to help pay for significant investments it needs to make in its system to meet customer expectations, said a company spokesman.

“We have a lot of plans to improve the customer experience,” he explained. “We’re improving customer support, we just signed an agreement a month ago with Broadjump for downloadable software to improve the customer experience, we’re upgrading our newsgroup service and our e-mail platform, and we’re developing new products. So we can continue to do that, we made an evaluation that this was the right pricing structure for us.”

For its part, Verizon will continue to offer its basic DSL package, with all the same features, for $39.95 per month, but has added the new packages in response to emerging trends, according to a company spokeswoman.

“What we’ve been seeing is that customers are downloading more video games and streaming media.” She said. “People require more bandwidth. So we’re now increasing the variety of what consumers can purchase. We do think that the $49.95 [package] is the most value-added package, and will probably be the most popular one because you do get more storage, more Web space, and the speed is much faster then the $39.95 package.”

This package is designed for customers who want better performance when surfing the Web and downloading e-mail, and offers 10 Mb of storage space, four e-mail boxes and a PC camera.

Another package, priced at $69.95 per month, is designed for customers who need to upload and download large files, as it provides speeds of 384 kb/s in both directions. Other packages are available for $59.95 and $79.95 per month.

The Verizon spokeswoman added that the company has been able to reduce prices on some of its DSL packages because it has unified its offering nationwide, which has resulted in greater efficiencies and economies of scale.