I think we need to be careful of letting government regulations and subsidies determine what services we offer and how we price them, as long as we are playing by the rules.
If you think the government knows what consumers want, I invite you to come use my newly remodeled bathroom with the low flush toilet and the low flow showerhead. So I get to flush twice, and take twice as long in the shower rinsing off the soap. Kind of ironic since the FCC wants everyone to have the broadband equivalent of high flush toilets and high flow showerheads. If the FCC were regulating water use, we would all have fire hydrants in our bathrooms. Also, my impression is the FCC cares a lot more about “transparency” and paperwork than the actual speeds delivered. So they are OK with AT&T transparently explaining that “unlimited” means 22 GB. They also seem to accept “congestion” as a normal occurrence that explains not getting the speed you were promised. It sounds better than “oversubscription” or “lying”. Congestion is like the mud weasels in Elbonia, you can blame anything on congestion. Or mud weasels. http://dilbert.com/strip/1998-03-11 So Frontier can market “up to 6 Mbps” and it’s OK if you get <1 Mbps because they said “up to”, plus they are just engaging in reasonable network management due to mud weasels network congestion. From: That One Guy /sarcasm Sent: Saturday, August 06, 2016 4:01 PM To: af@afmug.com Subject: Re: [AFMUG] is....the price right? font size mostly, not fine print by any means, but our rates are capacity based like cellular, only we keep substantially raising each rate plans transition consumption (see how we dont say cap?) so the majority dont see overages. You actually have to ASK to be put on a rate that will incur overages once you quit talking about speeds, youd be amazed how little the bulk of the customers actually care about them. even on the lowest tier, the majority of the "slowness" complaints that arent related to a poor wifi connection are rate plan related, they hit their transition (see how we didnt say cap?" and 90 percent of the time for that issue theyre fine with just moving up to the next rate plan, 5 percent are cost conscious and deal with basic web/email only til the end of the month. the other 5 percent are the regular dicks who take up the bulk of your support time anyway (always on the cheapest plan, call in for dropped ping, expecting same day service call when they cut their wires at 4:53 pm, etc) We do have a mechanism that made the transition to this model work really well though, so that helps alot. you have to understand one thing though, that 3/1 thing isnt saying we stop trying above that, we want everybody to get the most they can get, but not at the expense of the overall network I bitch about the boss about alot of decisions, but this rate migration took a long time to come up with and he actually listened regarding how to implement it effectively and efficiently (he set the criteria, I told him what it would take to happen and defined the real and theoretical limitations, and overall impacts, any negative impacts we worked to find sustainable solutions) it took a shit ton of back end leg works, we had to touch every customer account, build out methods that didnt allow customer service staff to have the option to muck it up and roll trucks to address outliers, we even have processes in place now to migrate customers out of our base when we cant deliver a satisfactory service. He hit the nail square on the head as ass backward as our structure sounds. On Sat, Aug 6, 2016 at 9:33 AM, Adam Moffett <dmmoff...@gmail.com> wrote: If I understand correctly, you limit the customer's speed based on the quality of their connection. Is that right? That mitigates the impact of weak connections on the system....I just don't know how I would explain it to consumers. ------ Original Message ------ From: "That One Guy /sarcasm" <thatoneguyst...@gmail.com> To: "af@afmug.com" <af@afmug.com> Sent: 8/5/2016 5:16:31 PM Subject: Re: [AFMUG] is....the price right? we technically meet the "requirements" because of what is advertised and our actual deployment per our 477. (our 477 are probably some of the most accurate deployment numbers the FCC gets from this industry) I can hop on powercode and change every rate to 73 gigabit and the FCC will accept that data, we prefer to use our management system to manage our network more than we prefer to manipulate our numbers to facilitate better acces to our neighbors taxes. we even had to go back and alter our data set to lower numbers because the way powercode calculates speeds is in 1024 not 1000k per mb like the fcc wants to see so our system is set that every mb is 1024k so speedtests answer in full mbps rather than partial ones. we however dont have any intention to suckle the government teat so we dont jump through hoops to go after the money ourselves what we do ensures that a customer installed marginally, and accepts the marginal installation isnt able to come back after the fact and say theyre not getting the speed theyre paying for, since theyre not paying for speed. if theyre installed at a tier 1 installation, the radios wont fight to try to deliver tier 3 speeds, which they cannot do (how are you going to deliver "broadband" with 900mhz fsk?) the only thing theyre "guaranteed" from us is 3/1 but they get the maximum tier their installation would allow, whether they want it or not at the same price. honesty is the black sheep in this industry On Fri, Aug 5, 2016 at 3:57 PM, Josh Reynolds <j...@kyneticwifi.com> wrote: So basically what you're telling the list is that the company you work for doesn't meet the definition of broadband, any anybody and their brother can come in and get federal subsidies to overbuild you... is that correct? :P On Fri, Aug 5, 2016 at 2:42 PM, That One Guy /sarcasm <thatoneguyst...@gmail.com> wrote: > 100/50 is really limiting the oversub option, unless youre strictly > enforcing the business (actual business, as in letterhead or tax id, > something identifiable as a business) > > in illinois, if we go above 25mb right now we move to symmetric DIA for > businesses that are rural. If youre competing in town with cable or fios, > then thats what youd probably be best served to pricepoint near without any > other value adds, just my two cents as the guy who doesnt own a company. > > We went slick, every plan we sell is 3/1, we have three speed tiers based on > your performance that open you up to the next potential speed, same price. > but we only guarantee(ish) the 3/1. this keeps customers limited by > powercode to the best case their installation will support, that way the > radios arent doing the work of trying to deliver more than the link will > support. We want as many customers on the 3rd tier as possible. once per > year an account can go through an audit to see if they can tier up. > > we also dont sell speed at all anymore, strictly consumption. > > On Fri, Aug 5, 2016 at 1:35 PM, CBB - Jay Fuller <par...@cyberbroadband.net> > wrote: >> >> >> We're starting to deploy much higher speeds in areas with line of sight >> (business areas) than we ever have before in our residential areas. I am >> thinking the pricing we are thinking of is way too low. I'm interested in >> what you'd charge for these plans and what part of the country you are in. >> Thanks! >> >> 30 down / 15 up >> 60 down / 30 up >> 100 down / 50 up >> >> What do you charge per phone line? >> >> >> If you didn't do say 100/50, what do you do? >> >> Thanks everyone! >> >> IN YOUR RESPONSE - PLEASE INCLUDE WHAT STATE YOU'RE IN >> >> >> > > > > > -- > If you only see yourself as part of the team but you don't see your team as > part of yourself you have already failed as part of the team. -- If you only see yourself as part of the team but you don't see your team as part of yourself you have already failed as part of the team. -- If you only see yourself as part of the team but you don't see your team as part of yourself you have already failed as part of the team.
