Changes in the market and technology
We have decided to (mostly) stop providing residential DSL services in the Centurylink service area. DSL internet has been a shrinking part of our business for some time, and now represents less than 4% of our services revenue. Independent ISP’s like SpireTech have faced increasing competitive pressures from larger companies that want to own the connection to your home. A few key contributing factors to our decision are as follows:
- In August 2015, Centurylink stopped allowing third party Internet Service Providers (ISP’s) to easily sign up new DSL customers via a website. The new process requires calling in with the customer on hold for 30 minutes or more, which isn’t fun for anyone.
- Centurylink and Frontier do not provide 3rd party ISP’s access to their faster fiber network. Our customers are limited to copper circuits, which max out at 7mb/sec. Furthermore, “spectral interference” from the Centurylink fiber network often interferes with copper DSL loops which has forced some affected clients to leave.
- The underlying technologies used to connect to Centurylink’s ATM network is slated for retirement at some unknown point in the future due to aging equipment and newer technology being available.
- Residential DSL Customers remaining on our CenturyLink circuit cost us more to service than we earn, which means we are losing money on these specific customers.
It should be noted that customers from the PCEZ and XPRT acquisitions are not affected by this change.
SpireTech continues to thrive with a diversified base of service offerings and customers. SpireTech has survived many changes in technology and market since our founding in 1993, and although we are widely known as a local DSL ISP it is a very small part (less than 4% gross revenues) of what we have evolved into over time. SpireTech IT Support, Cloud, Colocation, Web hosting, Email, and Metro Ethernet will continue to be a growing part of our services.
Customers who wish to keep their SpireTech email can do so, by switching to an “email only” account for $19.95/year (includes our anti-spam “junk mail” filter).
Affected customers will be contacted via telephone and email and provided additional information. The last day for residential DSL service over our existing Centurylink circuit will be Feb 29th, 2016.