Peter Galbavy wrote:
Er, isn't that the fundamental difference between IP and fixed-bandwidth voice ? I have spent any number of years trying to 'educate' old guard telco management and planners that one of the key economic benefits of the Internet over old fashioned private networks is that the sharing of capacity actully works 99.99% of the time...
Yes, this is the fundamental difference, and it isn't a bad thing. However, the theory of oversell is dependant on the type of customer. In production, businesses actually oversell better than other customer type. ISP transit customers oversell next. Then there is the home user who can be oversold the least amount. Granted, 99% of the oversell problem with home users has now become piracy. It's no longer the one or two power users, but everyone and their dog that is computer illiterate but can still install p2p software or at least use it if their friend installs it for them.
To many telcos came into this market and sold 'no overbooking' QOS and then wondered why so few bought their overpriced services compared to the new (also going bust now) network operators ?
Yeah. Give things away for free and you go bust. In Oklahoma, the telco price for DSL is around $35. SWBell was doing a plan for the longest time (may still be doing it) of allowing ISPs to use their DSL, but the problem with the deal is that the ISP only got $10 out of it. $10/mo for 1.5Mb bandwidth? ha! If I'm nice, I might give you 64k for $10/mo. Modems have the luxury of working well on oversell because we 1) oversell the lines going into the modems at anywhere from 4:1 to 10:1 depending on the town and 2) oversell the bandwidth because p2p is too slow and takes too long, so many modem users don't use it. Take this to DSL speeds and then it's suddenly attractive and they'll suck a 1.5Mb/s worth in nothing flat. Let's see. It costs me a minimum of $1000/mo for a T1 (loop charge, not port) to some of these DSL supporting towns. The home user isn't going to pay $1000/mo for their 24/7 p2p. I can't afford to support it at $50/mo either. Even cranking up to DS3, I don't save much on the oversell. 30 customers doing p2p will do well on saturation of a DS3 and even if I have 180 customers with only 30 doing p2p, $9,000/mo (50/per) is hardly going to pay for the DS3. Much less the SWBell "you get $10" plan. Thus I charge more than $50/mo and you can forget getting 1.5Mb at that price. Unfortunately, there are ISPs out there who are trying to compete against people in Chapter 11 or people who are subsidizing DSL costs with other costs (ie, SWBell does 1.5Mb/s for $49.95/mo which they are subsidizing with the telco and business customers but still lose money on the home user). -Jack