"Broadband" Internet Comparison
Prepared at council request by Mike Ainsworth 4/22/2005

Preface:

This comparison attempts to compare "apples to apples" services; however that is not necessarily how customers will pick their broadband internet service. In our experience customers generally fall into three categories:

Price point: This customer will pick a service based upon price alone. The thought process is, anything that's faster than dialup is great, and I don't want to spend any more money that I have to. 50%

Technology: This customer will pick a product based upon the price/performance ratio of the product. 35%

Customer service: This customer is mostly concerned about customer service and local support, and will spend slightly more money than they must to get what they perceive to be a value added service. 15%

As you can see, an apples to apples comparison will not necessarily win either the price or customer service groups for us. We can easily compete on a technology product comparison, and can do pretty well on the value added customer. However we will always struggle to acquire the price based customer.

	AFN (Averages)*	CHARTER**	QWEST** DSL	AFN ISP** DSL
Installation Fee	$30.00		$49.99	$45.00
Monthly Fee	$37.00	$35.95	$44.99	$42.95
Modem Purchase	$60.00	$70.95	$59.99	$89.95
Special Promotion offer value		$124.71	$40.00
First Yearly cost of Service:	$534.00	$377.64	$609.86	$650.35
Following Years:	$444.00	$431.40	$539.88	$515.40
Download Speed (Advertised Max)	5Mbps	3Mbps	1.5Mbs	1.5Mbs
Upload Speed (Advertised Max)	256Kbs	256Kbs	896Kbps	896Kbps

*Since AFN does not set it's retail prices, these are average of our 2 highest volume ISP's pricing.
**These prices are taken from the listed service providers websites as of 4/20/05.

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