> Bottom line is that providers stupidly want to protect themselves at > the expense of customers. They bank on thinking that the majority of > their customers are regular old dumb residential types that won't > know the difference, and unfortunately they are right. But, legit > businesses are treated the same way unless they generate enough > revenue that the ISP will make exceptions for them.
The conventional wisdom is that, whether or not a business is "legit"--there are plenty of one-person shops that are well-run, ethical, etc.--a business that wants to communicate reliably from multiple locations must pay for "corporate" service levels from an appropriate provider, despite common price-gouging for the services that are actually in use (which in many cases are actually fewer in number than the services used by individual customers: a corporate user likely wouldn't use their @earthlink.net accout, their www.earthlink.net/username web page builder, etc.). The alternative to seeking out a provider that explicitly uses the "corporate" or "business" buzzword is to find one that offers unrestricted access to all subscribers, more in tune with the old Utopian model. I prefer to use one of these full-service providers whenever possible, since I generally find that model more ethical. Yet you often end up paying more for more honest service, and can't always find it. In both cases, it's *you*, the informed consultant, providing value-added IT services by finding an appropriate provider for your customer. The problem is when you're not even given a *chance* to do this because ELN or AOL has blitzed the lemmings with marketing, and you're left fumfering, "You should have let me tell you so...." That always sucks. Maybe someone should syndicate a few different "white papers" (rather than the usual greenscreen techie rants, and ones that definitely don't use the word "lemmings") so businesses of all kinds can see how wrong these providers are for them, and make sure they're linked to by lots of independent consultants, rather than directly by ISPs, whose motives would be suspicious. -Sandy ------------------------------------ Sanford Whiteman, Chief Technologist Broadleaf Systems, a division of Cypress Integrated Systems, Inc. e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] ------------------------------------ To Unsubscribe: http://www.ipswitch.com/support/mailing-lists.html List Archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/imail_forum%40list.ipswitch.com/ Knowledge Base/FAQ: http://www.ipswitch.com/support/IMail/
