Back in the day, we used to pay $10000-12000 for VCR sized rackmount boxes to handle dialup users at $20/month. At $5/month, the economics are great for backup infrastructure, assuming a $1000 box of computer parts and hard drives can handle the same quantity of customers.
It's the tech support that is tough. I can't see how to make money providing customer support from helpful and smart humans for $5/month, and backup is easily as confusing as dialup if not more so. The customer must understand concepts instead of memorizing the steps needed to get connected. We offer backup, but not that cheap. Most of our business comes from a computer shop we work with who chooses online backup for customers when appropriate. If you have a computer shop along with your WISP, you could probably do well with it. Otherwise, it's a hard sell to make people worry about their data until they lose it, especially for residential use. On Thu, Aug 13, 2009 at 09:22:24PM -0700, John Thomas wrote: > Are you willing to setup a server for their backups? > For home users, Mozy charges $4.95 per month. If you setup your own > backup server, you would have the initial expense of a server with big > drive space, but you could charge $4.95 and at least save money on your > upstream bandwidth. > > John > > Mike wrote: > > In my heart, I know you are right. The nature of our business is we > > buy bandwidth wholesale, and then resell it to others who can't > > afford to buy dedicated bandwidth. We factor an oversubscription > > rate, and count on bursty, short lived traffic from users that share > > the bandwidth. > > > > If I could afford to add bandwidth so everybody could maintain a 500 > > kbps connection for days on end, then I would. But the economics are > > I pay $350.00 for my first MB and $250.00 for each additional. So a > > person using the system for backup is utilizing a $175.00 resource > > for $42.40 a month; IF the back-up software only uses 500 kbps, and > > I've seen them surge way over that. > > > > So, two people running Mosy hog a Meg or more of a precious > > resource. Four of them, and they've used a couple MB or more. I'm > > sure you get the point. > > > > I do have a Netequalizer in place with fairness rules that will > > penalize those packets, because they are long duration IF and when > > the network gets near capacity. So, they get penalized, and grandma > > downloading pictures from her grand kids also gets penalized, even > > though her use is bursty and infrequent, just because there is not > > enough overhead on the pipe BECAUSE of the long duration back-up users. > > > > Without the Netequalizer, just a few of these users would bring my > > network to its knees. > > > > I am beginning to think Mosy and their ilk belong in the same camp as > > Netflix and the P2Pers. > > > > Mike > > > > At 05:51 AM 8/13/2009, you wrote: > > > >> Mike wrote: > >> > >>> Seems wrong too that a company can make money off using MY bandwidth > >>> for hours on end with no compensation. > >>> > >> You are getting compensated, by your customer, so now it isn't really > >> your bandwidth, but theirs. The customer is paying you to transport > >> data, be it pictures of kittens, a HDD backup, or something else. If the > >> terms of your contract are such that you can't support this usage, then > >> you should probably look at changing the terms of the contract. > >> > >> However, I would think that it would be pretty easy to look at the flows > >> and put throttling rules in place that limit Carbonite/Mozy/xyz traffic > >> when there is congestion. > >> > >> Josh > >> > >> > >> -- > >> Josh Cheney > >> josh.che...@gmail.com > >> http://www.joshcheney.com > >> > >> > >> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- > >> WISPA Wants You! 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