Radio Daze
I just agreed to pay an extra $2.95/month to have my Sirius Satellite Radio (Nasdaq: SIRI) online streaming subscription bumped from the free 39-kbit/s stream to a much more CD-like 128 kbit/s.
I know I can listen to PlayRadioUK at 128 kbit/s for free. I know some terrestrial radio stations have free streams, but most of them sound awful. Plus they have commercials. Annoying.
What I'm really wondering is this: Is Sirius smart for getting me hooked on something, then offering a quality boost for a trivial amount of money? Or should I feel ripped off since I already pay about $13 a month for a Sirius subscription (which comes with the free 33-kbit/s Internet radio account)?
Here's a better question if you work in telecom: Isn't it funny that the commodity broadband providers could offer entertainment services, like the stuff referenced above, bundled with their connections -- but, for whatever reason, they don't?
It's amazing how much stuff we consume in digital form for which the big carriers -- the guys who own the tubes that make up the Internet -- won't see a penny.
More trivia: Did you know the average age of the top five execs at AT&T Inc. (NYSE: T) is 55.8? This is what computers looked like when those execs were 21. I'm just sayin'…
— Phil Harvey, Free Radio Editor, Light Reading
Of course, it's brilliant marketing. That's how Gillette began, by first giving away the razor and then selling the blades.
After an hour DSL outage this morning -- courtesy of AT&T -- I realized yet again how AT&T has the power to decide whether or not I work at all. I nearly had heart failure when the customer service rep in Bangalore said the estimated fix time was 5 p.m. Forget entertainment services, I would pay extra for a service level agreement for my home office.