I have an account with a provider that is a 'pure' ISP that I've had pretty much since they formed back in the early eighties. The only thing they have in place is that they have blocked access to newgroups that promote child pornography, you must authenticate to access newsgroups, and you must authenticate to relay mail if you are not connected via their circuits.
Now in the last few years, they felt a responsibility to try to curtail some of the spam their users were receiving and to also provide virus scanning for their subscribers that use email accounts hosted by them. From the start they provided the anti-spam service for free. The AV was an additional 2 bucks a month for about a year and now they are providing that free also. The cool thing is the subscriber has total control over their anti-spam and anti-virus. If they don't want it they are not required to use it. If they do want it, they control the level they want. The ISP does not dictate what the customer can do, nor do they impose restrictions based on what THEY feel a customer needs. They have dial-up in major cities, which works for most travelers. But, for some reason I cannot get business customers to switch to them for dial-up use by traveling employees. It is not an issue of the ISP not having local dial-up numbers where these people spend most of their time. I sense it is more a matter of this ISP not having a certain 'branding' and they are looked upon as a mom & pop operation, which they really are, but you wouldn't know it based on the level of service they provide. It's is funny how this ISP can operate they way they do and not have to impose the unjustifiably draconian measures of other major providers. They may lose some 'lemmings' to the major providers because you need to know how to use a browser with ISP's such as this, but they probably gain a few customers that have risen from lemmingville and have actually decided to learn how to really use the resources of the Internet instead of letting a bunch of empty suits lead by the nose with butterflys and little yellow guys. ----- Original Message ----- From: "Sanford Whiteman" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: "Jeffery Rehm" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Sent: Wednesday, December 03, 2003 20:24 Subject: Re[2]: [IMail Forum] Sending Through Gateway Host > > 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/ > 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/
