There are two issues with the new SBC contract that are of concern to me. One is that the new contract allows SBC to provide us (the ISP) with a single PPPoE stream with which to provide DSL Internet service, while allowing SBC to sell any number of other services over the same DSL circuit. This wouldn't be a huge problem, except for two things: we are not given the opportunity to also sell other services over that DSL circuit, and we are also made responsible for billing the DSL circuit to the customer. So in effect, SBC is reserving the right to market their own private services over a DSL circuit that we, in fact, own. The other issue is actually of greater concern to me. They are planning to force me to convert all of my existing DSL customers to PPPoE. They are all currently configured with bridging, using Cisco RBE. It would not only be hopelessly disruptive to convert all of those customers to PPPoE, it is physically impossible in some cases. So the upshot is that I won't sign a contract that forces me to do something impossible, and certainly against by business interests.
http://sanfrancisco.bcentral.com/sanfrancisco/stories/2001/06/18/story3.html
If I'm reading this correctly, SBC is forcing ISPs that resell SBC's DSL access to go with PPPoE over ATM, thus potentially forcing businesses to buy DSL net access from SBC directly.
Am I way off base? Anyone know more about this situation who can comment?
-C
--------------------------- Christopher A. Woodfield rekoil@semihuman.com
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