On Mon, 18 Nov 2002, Jere Retzer wrote:
Maybe it is a function of the origin and destination location + network. Since Portland is not a top 25 market our service has never been very good that's why we started an exchange
Yep, Intenet service quality is very uneven; and it does not seem to be an easily quantifiable factor allowing consumers and businesses to select a provider. So, all providers looking the same, they choose the lowest-priced ones, thus forcing providers to go air transport way (i.e. untimately destructive price wars). With full understanding of political infeasibility of proposed, I think that the best thing ISPs could do is to fund some independent company dedicated to publishing comprehensive regional ISP quality information - in a format allowing apple-to-apple comparison. Then they could justify price spread by having facts to back them up. --vadim