----- Original Message -----
From: "George Rogato" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: "WISPA General List" <wireless@wispa.org>
Sent: Tuesday, December 26, 2006 11:44 AM
Subject: Re: [WISPA] bits per mbps
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
I have some new data. Let me first say that I agree with you. There
probably would be some uproar in your customer base. However, have you read
the TOS for Charter? They have a bit limit last I knew. And quest OWNS the
backhaul etc. Trying to compete with them on speed and capacity issues will
get harder and harder as time goes on.
Now, for at least one of my heavy users. He subscribed to a service that
automatically sent 2 to 4 movies per day to his kids. That explained his
high usage right nicely. Davinci Code was almost 8 gigs.
What are YOU gonna do when your users start to use this service? They are
gonna say the same thing *I'd* say. I understand George, but I'm paying for
512k so you need to deliver 512k. It doesn't matter if I use it 24/7,
that's the deal we made when I hired you to provide my internet.
I've always know that usage was going to keep going up. As long as costs go
down at the same rate as the usage goes up, we'll be ok. But what's a guy
gonna do if the usage goes up faster than the rates go down?
IPTV is coming guys. Your usage today is NOTHING compared to what it'll be
in a few years. Our radio capacities are growing at a rate that I think
might be able to handle it. But what about our upstreams? I can remember
thinking how amazing it was to finally get that t-1 (we started with a 56k
frame relay link!). I remember thinking that it'll be a very long time till
I need more than that. Now, I can't imagine dropping back down to a t-1 at
home let alone with my entire customer base! If we get people downloading
movies like they did music though....... Not gonna be a pretty picture.
Not pretty at all.
Unless we get much better compression technologies.
marlon
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