Marlon K. Schafer (509) 982-2181 wrote:
Wrong answer, It should be the other way around. Because we don't bit
charge, we manage our network to accomadate our users needs.
I would imagine that if you were here telling your subs that they had
to pay more, they would be coming this way.
Yeppers. They can and they will. But not all of them. Only the
bandwidth hogs.
Look at it like this, choke a customer to 512k instead of 2000k. Is
that customer going to do any less on the network? Nope. He's gonna do
what he wanted to do all alone. It'll just take him longer.
I've got almost 400 broadband users on my network. At 512k that means
I'd need 200ish mbps to take care of them if they all used it all the
time. Instead, we're actually averaging about 1.5 in, .5 out on the main
site. .8 in and .2 out here in Odessa. So my 400 broadband users are
averaging 2.5 megs in and 1 out. That's a LOT better than even the 10
megs you'll need if my top ten users move to your service.....
AND when selling speed, you are in direct competion with the companies
that own the bulk of the network. Who wants to try to compete agains
the telco or the cable co? Yikes.
Just for kicks, lets look at the last 7 days here on my network:
Odessa:
Max In: 3.18 Mb Average In: 1.22 Mb Current In: 1.02 Mb
Max Out: 737.05 Kb Average Out: 275.54 Kb Current Out: 172.59 Kb
Ephrata:
Max In: 6.53 Mb Average In: 1.69 Mb Current In: 2.04 Mb
Max Out: 2.35 Mb Average Out: 479.40 Kb Current Out: 823.21 Kb
So, even at this rate, I'm still on track for a max usage of 400 users
vs. your 20 users at 512k.
AND I don't HAVE to try to provide that 512k for all of my users. Sure
they expect that today, heck, many get mad when they don't see the 2000k
they usually do. I can honestly tell them that I'm not selling speed.
I'm selling capacity. For me, adding speed is fairly cheap. Adding
capacity costs too much.
I'm not scared of my subs usage, I've been building out specifically
for their future high usage needs.
You should be scared of this. At some point you'll have to put a limit
on them. Ever figured out how many 128k users it takes to tie up a $500
per month t-1??? At $30 to $40 per month the numbers just don't work.
Now, don't go telling me about your amazing $20 per mbps bandwith deal.
Cause we BOTH know that it's not really costing you that. There are
also transport fees etc. that have to be figured in to get an apples to
apples comparison. Sure I pay $200 per meg of usage here in Odessa.
But I also pay $800 per month for the circuit that'll carry those megs!
Nah, I've been running wide open full bore as fast as the ap will let
the subs go since the very beginning.
And I have yet to have anyone take advantage of or break the system.
Of course, the person that does p2p does have to be attended to from
time to time, we just slow their upload speeds and that usually solves
the issue. Most of those people can't find enough stuff to download and
those that do usually run out of disk space pretty quick. It's the
upload that can be problematic.
With almost 700 users, I've hardly ever seen my 15 meg pipe get 50%
saturated.
If I had to start telling my subs that they reached their bit usage
limit, there would be one more thing that my competition cold use
against me.
In a market that has Qwest heavily pushing DSL and Charter with their
cable modems package deal promotions, I think it's hard to try to exert
limitations, especially the ones that make the subs pay more, without
some negativity.
George
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