Verizon to cut prices for bundled services
Just as federal regulators again hammer cable companies over fast-rising prices in pay television, Verizon Communications Inc. plans to reduce its bundled charges for Internet, phone and TV services.
The nation’s second-largest phone company, which controls home phone lines throughout Southern California’s affluent beach communities, said it was cutting prices to keep customers from fleeing to cable firms such as Time Warner Cable Inc., the largest provider in the Los Angeles region.
Verizon is offering a choice of “triple-play” bundles ranging from $79.99 to $119.99 a month, down from a low of $95 previously, spokesman Jonathan Davies said. Verizon also is introducing pared-down bundles of voice and Internet or TV at lower prices.
The cuts may make Verizon more attractive than Time Warner and Cox Communications Inc., which cover some of the same SoCal beach communities that Verizon does.
Time Warner’s triple-play package starts at $89.85 a month for the first year before going to the standard price of $114.95.
But price is only one factor. The Verizon deals affect only those customers who still use limited-capacity copper phone lines and get DirecTV Group Inc.’s digital TV service. Verizon has about 4 million land lines operating in the state, mostly in Southern California.
Its much superior fiber-optic network, called FiOS, is expected to reach about 1 million California homes by the end of the year, Davies said. Time Warner, which has 1.9 million customers in the five-county Southland, and Cox have boosted their coaxial-fiber networks to better compete with FiOS.
Nevertheless, price still matters to consumers, and the continuing loss of land-line customers still matters to the phone companies.
It has been easier for cable companies to offer phone service than for phone companies to offer pay TV, and that has helped cable take a big chunk of phone carriers’ clientele.
Verizon lost nearly 1.2 million home-phone customers nationwide in the third quarter, while Comcast Corp., the nation’s largest cable firm, gained 483,000 phone customers.
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