On Fri, May 29, 1998 at 04:55:49PM -0400, Doug Humphrey wrote:
Charging reasonable costs (ie: the kind of fee that the Driver License bureau charges, ergo, $10 or so) for the first ASN is reasonable.
The drivers license world defrays their fixed overhead costs across millions of drivers a year who get renewals done - there are not that many ASNs and other things done a day. Again, as a businessman Karl, you should understand that already.
The Federal Government has set up a corporation for "E-Rate" connections. These are the "libraries and schools" program you keep hearing about. To bid on these, you must have a SPIN, or service provider ID number. To get one of THOSE, you make one call to an 800 number, they assign the number, send you a packet of info, you fill it out, and send it back. That's it. I know this, because MCSNet has one of these things since we've had a bunch of schools and libraries call us requesting Erate quotes over the last couple of months. Total cost to the ISP to get a SPIN: $0.00 Now, let's look at the parallels: 1. Both are required to "do business" in a given sector (ie: announce routes, sell to the Erate customer base) 2. Both are simple *technical* providers (assignment of a number, with the important being that it is unique in both cases). 3. One is free to the ISP. 4. The other costs $500.00
You are either charging a price to defray costs, or you are changing a price to encourage/discourage behaviour. In the two cases, the answers to "what is the correct price" are radically different, so we need to decide what the goal is before determining if the current price is good or bad.
Doug
What is going on here? ASNs didn't used to cost money until ARIN got its claws into them. -- -- Karl Denninger (karl@MCS.Net)| MCSNet - Serving Chicagoland and Wisconsin http://www.mcs.net/ | T1's from $600 monthly / All Lines K56Flex/DOV | NEW! Corporate ISDN Prices dropped by up to 50%! Voice: [+1 312 803-MCS1 x219]| EXCLUSIVE NEW FEATURE ON ALL PERSONAL ACCOUNTS Fax: [+1 312 803-4929] | *SPAMBLOCK* Technology now included at no cost