what will all you who work for private isp's be doing in a few years?
why in the world would anyone want to purchase dsl from a private reseller when i can get 4mb down 384 up from comcast for $25? think you dsl resellers out there are doomed. in fact, just a matter of time before most of you isps are down the toilet. im reminded of the mom and pop grocery store phenomenon that has now been replaced by the kohls, a&p, whole foods etc. of course there will always be niche markets but this is less applicable for a pure commodity like bandwidth. yeah, i suppose you'll say something about value added services and such and you may have a point but i doubt that will keep the ship afloat for long.
It's simple, A DSL provider like speakeasy offers much more to a technical user like myself than Comcast does, plus they have an incentive to keep me happy, if i'm not i can leave and go with a competitor, comcast does, and has on many occasions, simply told me to go f*ck myself when i have service issues. (Sorry your modem died sir, the next we can get a tech out to your place is 2 weeks, when i don't need a tech I know what it means when a modem has a failure code). The fact is, DSL is a competitive market, Cable is not, competitive markets keep customers happy, monopolies anger people. Adam On May 11, 2005, at 2:08 PM, Matt Bazan wrote:
why in the world would anyone want to purchase dsl from a private reseller when i can get 4mb down 384 up from comcast for $25? think you dsl resellers out there are doomed. in fact, just a matter of time before most of you isps are down the toilet. im reminded of the mom and pop grocery store phenomenon that has now been replaced by the kohls, a&p, whole foods etc. of course there will always be niche markets but this is less applicable for a pure commodity like bandwidth. yeah, i suppose you'll say something about value added services and such and you may have a point but i doubt that will keep the ship afloat for long.
!DSPAM:42824b1926542573616784!
I spent many happy years on Comcast, during which time they offered $25 dollar specials every so often, but it always creeped back up to $40. Bellsouth adsl seems to be no different in quality and service. I think they are all quite aware of the 'going price', and do not intend to kill that goose, at least not down here. Thanks, Harold -----Original Message----- From: owner-nanog@merit.edu [mailto:owner-nanog@merit.edu] On Behalf Of Adam Jacob Muller Sent: Wednesday, May 11, 2005 2:33 PM To: Matt Bazan Cc: nanog@nanog.org Subject: Re: what will all you who work for private isp's be doing in a few years? It's simple, A DSL provider like speakeasy offers much more to a technical user like myself than Comcast does, plus they have an incentive to keep me happy, if i'm not i can leave and go with a competitor, comcast does, and has on many occasions, simply told me to go f*ck myself when i have service issues. (Sorry your modem died sir, the next we can get a tech out to your place is 2 weeks, when i don't need a tech I know what it means when a modem has a failure code). The fact is, DSL is a competitive market, Cable is not, competitive markets keep customers happy, monopolies anger people. Adam On May 11, 2005, at 2:08 PM, Matt Bazan wrote:
why in the world would anyone want to purchase dsl from a private reseller when i can get 4mb down 384 up from comcast for $25? think you dsl resellers out there are doomed. in fact, just a matter of time before most of you isps are down the toilet. im reminded of the mom and pop grocery store phenomenon that has now been replaced by the kohls, a&p, whole foods etc. of course there will always be niche markets but this is less applicable for a pure commodity like bandwidth. yeah, i suppose you'll say something about value added services and such and you may have a point but i doubt that will keep the ship afloat for long.
!DSPAM:42824b1926542573616784!
On Wed, May 11, 2005 at 02:49:50PM -0400, Harold A. Mackey wrote:
I spent many happy years on Comcast, during which time they offered $25 dollar specials every so often, but it always creeped back up to $40. Bellsouth adsl seems to be no different in quality and service. I think they are all quite aware of the 'going price', and do not intend to kill that goose, at least not down here.
Comcast is hit or miss. My experience with them in Fremont CA was good, but Union City was a nightmare, the service was down all the time. Their support is among the worst I've ever experienced. I switched to a regional DSL provider (Sonic.net) and have never looked back. --Adam
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 Adam Jacob Muller wrote: | | It's simple, | A DSL provider like speakeasy offers much more to a technical user like | myself than Comcast does, plus they have an incentive to keep me happy, | if i'm not i can leave and go with a competitor, comcast does, and has | on many occasions, simply told me to go f*ck myself when i have service | issues. (Sorry your modem died sir, the next we can get a tech out to | your place is 2 weeks, when i don't need a tech I know what it means | when a modem has a failure code). | | The fact is, DSL is a competitive market, Cable is not, competitive | markets keep customers happy, monopolies anger people. | And more than the technical user is the benefit to corporations and businesses that DSL providers offer. We see many companies using DSL as a cost effective replacement for backup services formerly run over dialup, ISDN, and other on-demand technologies. The AUPs, filtering policies, routing policies, etc of cable operators are simply not geared to meet the needs of even the most simplistic of corporate requirements. - -- ========= bep -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.4.0 (MingW32) iD8DBQFCgl0nE1XcgMgrtyYRAnKBAJ9kPK2/CQ9A+bqMIe4S/9oEZOEFjwCgw/bY k1AnnyyKLRIsNMZby0KBa/8= =dsjN -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----
On Wed, May 11, 2005 at 12:29:43PM -0700, Bruce Pinsky wrote:
ISDN, and other on-demand technologies. The AUPs, filtering policies, routing policies, etc of cable operators are simply not geared to meet the needs of even the most simplistic of corporate requirements.
FSVO "* policies". Bright Hose Tampa Bay's business account policies are certainly loose enough for all of my clients, at least, as well as my own server garden. [0] Cheers, -- jra [0] if I called 4 servers a "farm", someone would laugh at me[1]. [1] more than they already do. -- Jay R. Ashworth jra@baylink.com Designer Baylink RFC 2100 Ashworth & Associates The Things I Think '87 e24 St Petersburg FL USA http://baylink.pitas.com +1 727 647 1274 If you can read this... thank a system administrator. Or two. --me
The fact is, DSL is a competitive market, Cable is not, competitive markets keep customers happy, monopolies anger people.
How are they different? With DSL, you are usually using the ILECs copper to provide service and paying them. With cable, there are some places that offer a choice in provider on the same coax. You are always free to obtain a franchise and run your own coax. Just because the incumbent cable company does not allow every tom dick and harry ISP to use their copper doesn't mean you can't provide the same service. sam
Wow! You can buy groceries at Kohls now? :-) -Jim P. On Wed, 2005-05-11 at 11:08 -0700, Matt Bazan wrote:
why in the world would anyone want to purchase dsl from a private reseller when i can get 4mb down 384 up from comcast for $25? think you dsl resellers out there are doomed. in fact, just a matter of time before most of you isps are down the toilet. im reminded of the mom and pop grocery store phenomenon that has now been replaced by the kohls, a&p, whole foods etc. of course there will always be niche markets but this is less applicable for a pure commodity like bandwidth. yeah, i suppose you'll say something about value added services and such and you may have a point but i doubt that will keep the ship afloat for long.
Jim Popovitch wrote:
Wow! You can buy groceries at Kohls now? :-)
(1) Kohls is/was a regional (Wisconsin) grocery store chain[0]. (2) Please do not feed the trolls.
On Wed, 2005-05-11 at 11:08 -0700, Matt Bazan wrote:
why in the world would anyone want to purchase dsl from a private reseller when i can get 4mb down 384 up from comcast for $25? think you dsl resellers out there are doomed. in fact, just a matter of time before most of you isps are down the toilet. im reminded of the mom and pop grocery store phenomenon that has now been replaced by the kohls, a&p, whole foods etc. of course there will always be niche markets but this is less applicable for a pure commodity like bandwidth. yeah, i suppose you'll say something about value added services and such and you may have a point but i doubt that will keep the ship afloat for long.
[0] That's kind of a funny reference when you know what happened to Kohls Foods. They were bought by A&P who subsequently closed or sold off the individual stores. Kohls Foods suffered the "ma and pa"-like fate described above. -- Crist J. Clark crist.clark@globalstar.com Globalstar Communications (408) 933-4387
It won't be long before the telco's respond by offering DSL at the same speed/price. I've heard (but don't *know*) that SBC is selling 6 down and 1 up in Houston and Dallas for $35. We're doing a fair business selling accelerated dial up for $15. Its surprising how many folks don't want broadband. You don't need 4mb down to read your email. And once you get outside of the city limits there's a good sized market that can't get any type of broadband, especially cable. We may decline some, but I don't think that ISP's are going away anytime soon. Bob Martin Matt Bazan wrote:
why in the world would anyone want to purchase dsl from a private reseller when i can get 4mb down 384 up from comcast for $25? think you dsl resellers out there are doomed. in fact, just a matter of time before most of you isps are down the toilet. im reminded of the mom and pop grocery store phenomenon that has now been replaced by the kohls, a&p, whole foods etc. of course there will always be niche markets but this is less applicable for a pure commodity like bandwidth. yeah, i suppose you'll say something about value added services and such and you may have a point but i doubt that will keep the ship afloat for long.
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 Yo Bob! On Wed, 11 May 2005, Bob Martin wrote:
It won't be long before the telco's respond by offering DSL at the same speed/price. I've heard (but don't *know*) that SBC is selling 6 down and 1 up in Houston and Dallas for $35.
BendTel here is offering ADSL2 3up/8 down for $35. That sure beats cable! RGDS GARY - --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Gary E. Miller Rellim 20340 Empire Blvd, Suite E-3, Bend, OR 97701 gem@rellim.com Tel:+1(541)382-8588 Fax: +1(541)382-8676 -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.2.3 (GNU/Linux) iD8DBQFCgl/08KZibdeR3qURAsBsAJ9/Cxej+4avZdLsc45kEiz40PXsrwCghKcw /qEPzI+83MtCBYL8c+sDb9Q= =efV+ -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----
On this I am wondering what the user market would chose with an offer from a DSL provider of a guaranteed bandwidth purchase with a contention based cap on max speed. For example DSL sold with a guaranteed bandwidth availability of 256K (or 512K, 768K etc based on 256K increments) with a "up to" maximum of 7-10Mbps. Would the typical user understand the difference between this the standard Comcast marketing of "up to" speeds without any service guarantee? Shane
It won't be long before the telco's respond by offering DSL at the same speed/price. I've heard (but don't *know*) that SBC is selling 6 down and 1 up in >Houston and Dallas for $35.
We're doing a fair business selling accelerated dial up for $15. Its surprising how many folks don't want broadband. You don't need 4mb down to read your email. And once you get outside of the city limits there's a good sized market that can't get any type of broadband, especially cable.
We may decline some, but I don't think that ISP's are going away anytime soon.
Bob Martin
As an economist I know likes to say: "It depends". To a varying extent (in some markets more than others), the massive oversubscription of cable that meant poor bandwidth/latency at peak times has declined to the point where the older arguments of "committed versus max" is less meaningful. Of course in some places it's still terrible, but not everywhere. Besides, distance and crappy phone lines can make a chump out of DSL as well. Also, let's be careful when we talk about the "typical user" and whether they "understand the difference". The "typical user" may simply not even care, even IF they know the difference. In fact, many that do know the difference may prefer (for whatever reason), to take the higher max of cable, especially if in their neighbourhood that max is achieved quite frequently. Further, who's to say that at some point the cable companies won't start offering minimum guaranteed bandwidth? I doubt they will, but if they were to, then a big advantage of DSL falls apart. Let's also not forget that many of us (myself included), choose not to procure landlines. This can be an extra $10-$30/month on top of the ISP charges. That's a big part of why I have cable at home, and I know others in the same situation. Sure, Oceanic/Earthlink here is worthless - took me 2 weeks to get an install time, and then the lead time on that is 3 weeks (1 week from this Saturday at this point..). But who cares? I'm using someone's open wifi. - bri Shane Owens wrote:
On this I am wondering what the user market would chose with an offer from a DSL provider of a guaranteed bandwidth purchase with a contention based cap on max speed. For example DSL sold with a guaranteed bandwidth availability of 256K (or 512K, 768K etc based on 256K increments) with a "up to" maximum of 7-10Mbps. Would the typical user understand the difference between this the standard Comcast marketing of "up to" speeds without any service guarantee?
Shane
It won't be long before the telco's respond by offering DSL at the same speed/price. I've heard (but don't *know*) that SBC is
selling 6 down and 1 up in >Houston and Dallas for $35.
We're doing a fair business selling accelerated dial up for $15. Its surprising how many folks don't want broadband. You don't need
4mb down to read
your email. And once you get outside of the city limits there's a good sized market that can't get any type of broadband,
especially cable.
We may decline some, but I don't think that ISP's are going away anytime soon.
Bob Martin
-- Brian Russo <brian@entropy.net> (808) 277 8623
Matt Bazan wrote:
why in the world would anyone want to purchase dsl from a private reseller when i can get 4mb down 384 up from comcast for $25? think you dsl resellers out there are doomed. in fact, just a matter of time before most of you isps are down the toilet. im reminded of the mom and pop grocery store phenomenon that has now been replaced by the kohls, a&p, whole foods etc. of course there will always be niche markets but this is less applicable for a pure commodity like bandwidth. yeah, i suppose you'll say something about value added services and such and you may have a point but i doubt that will keep the ship afloat for long.
If/When the internet splits into the bad neighborhood/good neighborhood and-never-the-twain-shall-meet, there are strong odds that the comcasts,sbc, and all mass providers to clueless users will not be on the clean side of the breakup. Either that or their costs will go up. Or everyone elses will go down. How about refer to the constant threads which always touch upon the differentation to be made for these market model targets. pure transit managed transit pur access managed access residential <---- comcast is here. managed residential There are hundereds of things you can call up small dsl providers and ask for. Assuming clue and enable, they can generally give you if not what you want, then what you need. For example: Try calling up sbc and getting urpf turned off for a specific prefix and having them do IGP default announcements so that when their dsl goes down you will prefer a different link automatically. How many large market pppoe providers support ppp multilink? Its hardly a foregone conclusion. As it stands, the largest cause of broadband market aggregation is the erosion of "fair access" provisions and a sleeping(drunk?)-at-the-wheel FCC. Joe
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 You mean those of us who ARE private isps? Probably doing what we are doing today, reacting to the enviroment. -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.4.0 (GNU/Linux) iD8DBQFCgl5b0STXFHxUucwRAjlIAJ4wxqmzrBbV8tqemqPwyQsqHnhY2wCgpbX4 JkKOd8KXsXzEYtNcXCcswO4= =1NC0 -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----
You mean those of us who ARE private isps?
Probably doing what we are doing today, reacting to the enviroment.
Amen. And, might I add, doing it faster and more efficiently (although on a smaller scale) than any BigCo can. (I feel like troll bait... but will elaborate sense others have taken up this thread.) In the world of slow moving BigCo dinosaurs, I'm just a little quickly adapting rodent looking for scraps. Right now, the efficiencies of big business leave plenty of scraps for the taking. If the getting gets to difficult, there are plenty of other things that I'm over qualified to do. Some days, I think those "other things" would pay better, and be more satisfying. But alas, I knew that when I decided to start up this little ISP in '96, with 8 modems, a couple of Macs, and a 2511. I knew that if the internet ever got popular and main stream enough, Big Co would jump in, and make it impossible to compete. I figured "Oh, what the heck, I might as well give it a go." And yes, that's happened on several fronts, but at each turn, I find new and different things that I can do, and do better, and cheaper than BigCo. If I'm forced all the way out of the market, fine... I'll adapt. If my company goes away because it can't offer what people want, so be it. I'll find something else to do. So will my employees....they're all smart enough to do different things, and knowing them all well, I know they'd eventually welcome the change of scenery. Any company that doesn't adapt, will go extinct. ANY company. (Unless it's a monopoly) Capitalism, and free markets dictate this. Living in a small town that recently had a major highway bypass it, I've lost some popularity points for stating that. Just because some main street business has been there for 40 years, always doing it the same way from when they started, they think they have some God-given-right to be in business. In reality, it's quite the opposite. Every day a business does the exact same thing that it did the day before, is one less day that company will be in business. That should be the tag line of every small business. -Jerry
On Wed, 11 May 2005 11:08:41 PDT, Matt Bazan said:
why in the world would anyone want to purchase dsl from a private reseller when i can get 4mb down 384 up from comcast for $25?
What date does Comcast project the *reliable* availability of that service at that price point in *my* area? Make note - I'm at the end of Virginia that's closer to the coal mines than to civilization - there is a county adjacent to this one that has one (singular, less than 2, etc) traffic light in the entire county. Although people in the 3 major towns right in this area have connectivity, there's *large* geographic areas in the vicinity that are well over 20K cable-feet from the local telco CO, and a similar distance from a cable head end. Yes, both the cable and DSL providers have major infrastructure challenges for entire counties around here. There's a lot of people around here who are lucky to get 19.2 dialup over the existing copper, and a number of small ISPs operating in the area. I have a friend who is making money by selling the entire range from "150 hours/ mo of dialup for $8.95/mo" to co-lo of servers to web/mail hosting to providing dedicated leased lines - and one of his big selling points is that if you get service from netZero or AOL or other big providers, "the CTO will stop by your office in 20 mins and help you fix it" isn't an available service, nor can you say "this isn't *quite* the combo I wanted, can we negotiate?". And I'm sure that he has a good long-term market niche selling personal-service DSL to all the customers that are outside the cable plant's reach, but have good enough telco copper. And even when there's fiber to everybody in *this* area, he's *still* going to be able to make a living reselling the concept of "value-added personal local human support". (Yes, anybody who tries to take on Comcast's "4M/384k/$25" deal head-on in a major metro area is going to have a hard time - however, Comcast probably can't *sustain* that price point and at the same time provide any other services. There's plenty of niche markets on every side of that pipe-size/custom-service/ price-point/location combo).
On Wed, 11 May 2005, Matt Bazan wrote:
why in the world would anyone want to purchase dsl from a private reseller when i can get 4mb down 384 up from comcast for $25? think you dsl resellers out there are doomed. in fact, just a matter of time before most of you isps are down the toilet. im reminded of the mom and pop grocery store phenomenon that has now been replaced by the kohls, a&p, whole foods etc. of course there will always be niche markets but this is less applicable for a pure commodity like bandwidth. yeah, i suppose you'll say something about value added services and such and you may have a point but i doubt that will keep the ship afloat for long.
Matt, first whats your affiliation and experience in this arena? That these markets exist and more profitably so than the large carriers suggest the problems you are raising dont exist. What is your theory based on, you only cite your personal preference to buy from Comcast which cannot be said to be indicative of the market. Grocery stores are not comparable, this is a different industry and different market. Also bandwidth is not a pure commodity, and DSL is not pure bandwidth. I think your argument is at best uninformed, at worst non-existent.. you need to provide some references, examples, figures, whatever.. else this is little more than trolling. Steve
Stephen J. Wilcox wrote:
I think your argument is at best uninformed, at worst non-existent.. you need to provide some references, examples, figures, whatever.. else this is little more than trolling.
Not only that... since there isn't anything operational in nature about the question or discussion, it's off-topic trolling. OTOH, this is a perfectly valid topic for a list like inet-access. <http://inet-access.net/mailman/listinfo/list> jc
Matt, your questions seem extremely prejudiced to a determined outcome. In my opinion resellers are in the long run going to lose because of lack of tangible assets (there is my Bias, on the table. I have my own facilities, and equipment). However because pure resellers lack the facilities they can be resellers(and often are) of whatever the technology of the day is. Strangely, many resellers, grow into facilities based carriers, but if they do not, then they can always move to the next thing. If you sold ISDN, in the 90's, and you knew how to walk someone through configuring their pipeline, you were better than Bell (read PSI Net). If you could accurately test, and deliver DSL, to a client 3-5 years ago, (read COVAD) you were better than Bell. In the future, who knows what it will be, (my bet is wireless, and we all cook like chickens in a Showtime rotisserie) the prevailing trait of those that have been in this for a long time is adaptation. There was a day when selling access off an ISDN connection was doable. I got out of the straight access market in the late 90's. I provide, and resell connectivity, with static routes to applications I host, or maintain. Hopefully the straight resellers of today will be selling microwave, or implant connectivity, or whatever in a few years. Bottom-line public or not, Mom, and Pop, or not no matter what you do in this business you have to be ready to adapt. If you are huge and don't catch the next wave you could be just as dead as the smaller guys that don't catch that next wave. Mark D. Bodley President Cyrix Systems m@cyrixsys.com www.cyrixsys.com -----Original Message----- From: owner-nanog@merit.edu [mailto:owner-nanog@merit.edu] On Behalf Of Stephen J. Wilcox Sent: Wednesday, May 11, 2005 4:12 PM To: Matt Bazan Cc: nanog@nanog.org Subject: Re: what will all you who work for private isp's be doing in a few years? On Wed, 11 May 2005, Matt Bazan wrote:
why in the world would anyone want to purchase dsl from a private reseller when i can get 4mb down 384 up from comcast for $25? think you dsl resellers out there are doomed. in fact, just a matter of time before most of you isps are down the toilet. im reminded of the mom and pop grocery store phenomenon that has now been replaced by the kohls, a&p, whole foods etc. of course there will always be niche markets but this is less applicable for a pure commodity like bandwidth. yeah, i suppose you'll say something about value added services and such and you may have a point but i doubt that will keep the ship afloat for long.
Matt, first whats your affiliation and experience in this arena? That these markets exist and more profitably so than the large carriers suggest the problems you are raising dont exist. What is your theory based on, you only cite your personal preference to buy from Comcast which cannot be said to be indicative of the market. Grocery stores are not comparable, this is a different industry and different market. Also bandwidth is not a pure commodity, and DSL is not pure bandwidth. I think your argument is at best uninformed, at worst non-existent.. you need to provide some references, examples, figures, whatever.. else this is little more than trolling. Steve
On Wed, 2005-05-11 at 11:08 -0700, Matt Bazan wrote:
why in the world would anyone want to purchase dsl from a private reseller when i can get 4mb down 384 up from comcast for $25?
Broadband access may become limited to the cable provider and the phone company, once access to the CO becomes impractical, while cable remains closed. High rates by wireless is for a reason. Networking positions will remain with private ISPs. Don't expect prices to remain "competitive" after a shake-out either. Things are seldom better with fewer choices, either for labor or the consumer. So what will you be doing? -Doug
At a guess supplying services the Comcasts and Verizons of this world haven't managed to provide well, like DNS, Email, Webservices, and feeding trolls. ADSL is virtualised here anyway, as it is almost all from the national telecomms carrier. Some of my best friends own virtual ISPs, they aren't starving.
participants (23)
-
Adam Jacob Muller -
Adam McKenna -
Bob Martin -
Brian Russo -
Bruce Pinsky -
Chip Mefford -
Crist Clark -
Douglas Otis -
Gary E. Miller -
Harold A. Mackey -
Jay R. Ashworth -
JC Dill -
Jerry Pasker -
Jim Popovitch -
Joe Maimon -
Mark D. Bodley -
Matt Bazan -
Randy Bush -
Sam Hayes Merritt, III -
Shane Owens -
Simon Waters -
Stephen J. Wilcox -
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