Re: [Nolug] Cox: grrrr.... BIG GRRR...

I am probably a little biased because:

1) Having been in the access business for 5 years, I know how much it
costs to deliver good quality Internet access.
2) I've watched most access companies if not melt down, take a beating due
to the price wars for customers.

I'm also no apologist for monopoly companies of any sort. But I think the
current trend in flat rate access isn't really practical. Why should the
ISP be cahrging the same price to a "geek" who's running a server in her
house as they are charging grandpa who sends the occasional e-mail? I know
it's unpopular to say in our circle, but it's true. It just doesn't make
sense. Line "squatters" realy hit the small ISPs hardest back in the old
school modem days. An industry standard used to be 10 users per
modem/phone line. "Squatters" caused most of the busy signals that people
were so concerned with (except of course, AOL's obtuse marketing . Big boy
ISP would just fire the guy who felt it was his right to camp on the line
all day (or use a personal account for business purposes). Maybe the guy
wuld call and complain, make a (insert ISP name here)sucks.com page,
whatever. Doesn't matter to the big company. However, the small ISP who
did that risked tremndous loss when the guy does the same thing to the
locally owned and operated company, which gets smeared as "greedy."

So all that to say, those of us with flat rate, "always on" accounts are
getting a sweet deal. Especially those of us who bang the bejeesus out of
"consumer" accounts. Remember how much a dialup account cost, say 3-4
years ago? Let's enjoy it while it lasts, or even think about how we could
form our own access buying group.

Thanks for reading.

Edward Melendez
http://www.melendez.org

At 10:25 AM 1/30/2002 -0500, Mikey wrote:

<crystal_ball time="near future">
>I see a bunch of geeks going DSL if $DSL_COMPANY keeps rates < US$100 a
>month for service with a static IP.
></crystal_ball>
>
>--
>Since-beer-leekz, |Give a man a fish, and you feed him for a day.
>Mikey |Give a man a fully charged electric eel and
>http://dev/null |he'll never bother you for anything ever again.
>
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Received on 01/30/02