That number is way off unless you live in a desert / have the tower next door / get hardware for free.
Rural environment = lots of trees = 900mhz on big towers is often required. A Cambium 900mhz 450I AP and sector is $2K USD, and tower climbers, pulling cable up a big tower, driving to a far-away location = around $3K total. And sometimes there isn't even 900mhz spectrum to add that AP to the tower, or the tower owner started charging high fees for changes / per antenna. And sometimes that brings you just over the bandwidth limit of your unlicensed backhaul, so you need to upgrade that link to licensed gear, which is a few $K in equipment and (in Canada) $300-500/month in government licensing fees depending on bandwidth required. This amounts to many thousands of dollars over the lifetime of a customer. If another tower on the path requires the same upgrade, add a few more thousand dollars. We've done calculations where keeping a few bandwidth hogs on 900mhz on a far-away tower would cost $10K in hardware upgrades across multiple towers and add $1000/month goverment licensing fees. Yes the increased bandwidth would allow more customers, and upgrades will always need to be done as usage naturally grows, but that's a massive immediate cost for a few customers that don't like paying more than $100/mo, much of which is already going to pay off existing infrastructure and other company costs. On Sun, Nov 17, 2019, 7:43 AM Matt Hoppes <mattli...@rivervalleyinternet.net> wrote: > I get that. But my point is - if this is truly a rural environment it > costs maybe $300 to add another access point for capacity. > > I just don’t see the point in penalizing customers when the cost to add > capacity is so low. > > On Nov 17, 2019, at 8:55 AM, Adam Moffett <dmmoff...@gmail.com> wrote: > > I would say it more nicely, but IMO there's a very valid point here. > Having been at both a 100% rural WISP and an urban WISP running side by > side with cable I can say that it's less stressful for you if the > unsatisfied customers have a real option to leave. It forces you to stay > on top of your game, but also allows a pressure valve to release the > customers you can never satisfy. And wouldn't we all like to have only the > low to median usage and non-complaining customers? I don't see anything > wrong with trying to strategically dis-incentivize the ones you don't want. > > In Darin's shoes the thing I'd try to remember is that the GB values are > going to be a moving target trending ever upwards. You'll have to evaluate > and probably raise those GB allowances every year to keep the median > customers satisfied and maintain that balance. > > -Adam > > > On 11/16/2019 3:07 PM, Darin Steffl wrote: > > Matt, > > You can simply go away. We have competitor wisp's and many have poor > reviews. We simply do it best and have the highest Facebook ratings of any > ISP. > > We simply want to make heavy users pay more. Why should we raise prices > for all customers when only a small percentage are the ones driving us to > upgrade things? I'll take 5 average customers at 200gb per month over one > customer using 1TB. > > You may be a tech guy but not understand business very well. The point of > this is to drive away bad customers and keep good ones. Good customers will > not be penalized with these plans. Fewer customers with the same amount of > revenue means higher profit, plain and simple. > > > > > On Sat, Nov 16, 2019, 1:52 PM Matt Hoppes < > mattli...@rivervalleyinternet.net> wrote: > >> Wow. Yikes. If I was in your area you’d be driving me to start a >> competing ISP with you. >> >> You’ll drive your users away. >> >> Seriously. It doesn’t cost that much to upgrade a tower or backhaul to >> support more capacity. >> >> On Nov 16, 2019, at 2:18 PM, Darin Steffl <darin.ste...@mnwifi.com> >> wrote: >> >> We're moving away from "truly unlimited" plans and going to unlimited >> with X amount of high-speed data between noon and midnight. >> >> For example, we'll have plans with high-speed data amounts of 65, 300, >> 600, 900, 1200, 1800GB a month with that data only being counted 12 hours >> each day. Outside noon to midnight, the data will not count to encourage >> them to shift large downloads to our off peak times. If they insist on >> streaming on 4 devices during peak and using 100GB per day like some homes, >> their bill will be well over $250 a month. Here is our rural pricing for >> these proposed plans. Once they hit their threshold, they slow down to 1 >> mbps. We will never have overage charges so they're in full control of >> their cost. Either they lower their usage or pay more to continue the high >> usage. >> >> What I call abusive usage continues to increase and I feel we need to >> have plans like these to make heavy users pay for the cost of us upgrading >> our gear earlier than planned for. These plans are also still way better >> than any satellite plan in terms of caps and latency. >> >> >> 35 Meg/65GB - $65 >> >> 25 Meg/300GB - $90 35 Meg/600GB - $110 >> >> 45 Meg/900GB - $130 >> >> 55 Meg/1,200GB - $150 >> >> 55-100 Meg/1,800GB - $200 >> >> >> On Sat, Nov 16, 2019, 11:50 AM Nate Burke <n...@blastcomm.com> wrote: >> >>> Give them what you sell them. If they call in more than 3 times >>> complaining then say 'you obviously can't provide them the experience >>> they're expecting, and that you'll be out in a few days to remove the >>> equipment.' That should either silence them, or push them to hughesnet and >>> they can see what being rural really means. >>> >>> On 11/16/2019 11:31 AM, Ken Hohhof wrote: >>> >>> Anybody else losing their patience with streamers? >>> >>> >>> >>> The people who just moved from somewhere they had gigabit fiber to the >>> middle of nowhere in a low spot surrounded by tons of trees, and say they >>> stream all their TV on 3-4 screens at the same time. >>> >>> >>> >>> I want to yell at them, if you had affordable blazing fast Internet, and >>> it’s that important to you, why did you move? And if you had to move, why >>> didn’t you move to a nice suburb with fiber or at least cable? And why do >>> you have to stream everything? You could get satellite TV. Yes, it’s >>> expensive, get over it. You could put up a TV antenna. You could get DVDs >>> by mail. Or if moving to the country was so important, you could go out on >>> the ATV or horse or snowmobile, or go hunting, or feed the chickens and >>> mini goats. If they’re streaming all the time, I have to suspect the >>> reason for moving to Green Acres was to save on property taxes, and the >>> reason for streaming is to avoid paying $200/month to DirecTV or DISH. >>> >>> >>> >>> It’s gotten so bad, a significant number of prospective customers say >>> they only want Internet to stream, anything else they can do on their >>> phone. And when a streaming subscription is sub $10 (or free with Amazon >>> Prime), they’re thinking Internet is like shipping, it shouldn’t cost more >>> than the item being delivered. >>> >>> >>> >>> I know, “OK boomer”. >>> >>> >>> -- >>> AF mailing list >>> AF@af.afmug.com >>> http://af.afmug.com/mailman/listinfo/af_af.afmug.com >>> >> -- >> AF mailing list >> AF@af.afmug.com >> http://af.afmug.com/mailman/listinfo/af_af.afmug.com >> >> -- >> AF mailing list >> AF@af.afmug.com >> http://af.afmug.com/mailman/listinfo/af_af.afmug.com >> > > -- > AF mailing list > AF@af.afmug.com > http://af.afmug.com/mailman/listinfo/af_af.afmug.com > > -- > AF mailing list > AF@af.afmug.com > http://af.afmug.com/mailman/listinfo/af_af.afmug.com >
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