The majority of our customers are still on Brocade MLXs. We're in the process of upgrading all our equipment to Arista switches to accommodate the increased demand for 40G and 100G ports as well as implement 400G ports. Aaron On 12/29/2020 3:33 AM, Jonathon Exley wrote:
Hi Aaron,
Just out of interest, what switch gear are you using? You must have a pretty good cost per port.
Jonathon.
On 29/12/2020 9:38 AM, Aaron Wendel <aaron@wholesaleinternet.net> wrote: We prioritize calls based on severity. If both Google and Grandma call and say they have a cut then we have people to service both at the same time. If Google, Century Link, Verizon, AT&T and Grandma all call then Grandma gets to wait a day. That being the case, it's not dependent on revenue. Emergency Services (911 and Police radio feeds) gets #1 priority even though they're non-paying.
But yes, in extreme situations the residential customers would be delayed to service the paying customers. We do have people cross trained from other parts of our businesses so we can allocate internally in emergencies. In almost a decade though I can't think of a situation where someone had to wait for service because we didn't have the resources to service them.
Aaron
On 12/28/2020 2:02 PM, Mel Beckman wrote:
Darin,
Surely you at least give the paying customers priority over the non-paying? It’s one thing to say “I have to write paychecks no matter what”. It’s another to say “I’ll give away my support to free customers AND degrade support for paying customers as a result.” Your tech support guy “walking Grandma through getting her email” is necessarily not accessible for the duration to paying customers.
This means your staffing must be large enough to never have any queuing, or you’re giving away your paying customers' time to non-paying customers. Neither approach is scalable in a competitive business environment, because SOMEBODY is paying for all those resources, and if it’s your customers, they will buy elsewhere. Your approach only work until you run out of other people’s money.
-mel
On Dec 28, 2020, at 11:50 AM, Baldur Norddahl <baldur.norddahl@gmail.com <mailto:baldur.norddahl@gmail.com>> wrote:
I applaud your commitment to helping your local community. Just want to point out that this is a charity because it does not scale. Nobody could build out a FTTH network and make it free as a business case. But there are plenty of people that made a network for their neighbors and provided that for free. Maybe a person had a commercial fiber to his home and thought he could just as well share it. This might be on a bigger scale but it is the same.
Regards,
Baldur
On Mon, Dec 28, 2020 at 8:27 PM Aaron Wendel <aaron@wholesaleinternet.net <mailto:aaron@wholesaleinternet.net>> wrote:
Darin,
Our business support and residential support is the same department. I have to pay those people to be in the office either way so it doesn't cost me any "more" to provide support for the residences. Yes, walking Grandma through getting her email can sometimes be a chore but that person is on the payroll whether he/she is helping Grandma or sitting there chatting with his/her co-worker. If we dumped all the residential customers we would still have the same cost structure we do now.
Again, it's been free for the last 7 years at this point. I've never been one to really do what I "should" anyway.
Aaron
Aaron,
The "Free" service doesn't cover your cost of support which is much higher for residential than any business customer. Our residential customers call at least 15x more often compared to business customers compared on a 1:1 ratio.
I honestly can't fathom providing free residential service because we make enough money on the business side of things. You should be charging something, at least $20-30 per month.
On Mon, Dec 28, 2020 at 11:15 AM Aaron Wendel <aaron@wholesaleinternet.net <mailto:aaron@wholesaleinternet.net> <mailto:aaron@wholesaleinternet.net <mailto:aaron@wholesaleinternet.net>>> wrote:
The $300 covers the equipment and the time to send someone out to a house to install it. If $300 is too much you can pay in 12 installments of $25.
The TIK alone costs us about $250.
Aaron
On 12/27/2020 5:04 AM, Mark Tinka wrote: > > > On 12/26/20 20:48, Darin Steffl wrote: > >> Aaron, >> >> One simple question. Why on earth would you offer free internet >> service? How and why? Your site show 1 Gig symmetrical for free when >> you should be a minimum of $65 per month to be competitive. > > They also ask for no monthly fee after a single payment of US$300. > > Considering the 2Gbps package costs US$49.95, you'd guess
On 12/28/2020 11:48 AM, Darin Steffl wrote: they'd
value > the 1Gbps service at, say US$27/month, give or take. > > So that US$300 provides a bit of coverage, perhaps 1 year, in which > time they'd have likely upgraded the customer. > > Mark.
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On 12/29/20 18:50, Aaron Wendel wrote:
The majority of our customers are still on Brocade MLXs. We're in the process of upgrading all our equipment to Arista switches to accommodate the increased demand for 40G and 100G ports as well as implement 400G ports.
Unfortunately, switch pricing hasn't kept up with trends in the FTTx space. You'd think major switch vendors would want to corner this market, but it seems the data centre business is just too sweet. Mark.
participants (2)
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Aaron Wendel -
Mark Tinka