The last I counted, there were well over 20 WISPs that I touch, you being one of them. Can one of the rest of us see them? ;-)
----- Mike Hammett Intelligent Computing Solutions Midwest Internet Exchange The Brothers WISP ----- Original Message ----- From: "Ken Hohhof" <af...@kwisp.com> To: "AnimalFarm Microwave Users Group" <af@af.afmug.com> Sent: Sunday, November 17, 2019 9:25:46 AM Subject: Re: [AFMUG] tired of entitled streamers If that’s all it costs you, kudos. But we’re running out of spectrum at many towers (there are other WISPs throughout our service area), plus we also have to add backhaul capacity, and all that uses power so we need more batteries. We’re having to run backhauls in licensed spectrum, even to micropops. And we’re having to add “small cells” to get closer to customers. Because with all the streaming we can’t have customers at low modulations, and to reach those customers who move to a low spot surrounded by trees, and to deal with spectrum exhaustion. All this costs a lot more than $300. We have 3.65GHz sites fed via 11 GHz with 10 subscribers. The only way that makes money is averaging over all our sites. And still we can’t build enough micropops to get LOS to everyone who chooses to live down by a creek surrounded by trees. Yesterday I checked photos from 3 of our towers to a prospective customer and the only thing we could see was a little of the peak of a 40 ft barn with big gaping holes in the roof that would be unsafe to walk on, and that was on an old micropop where we’re out of backhaul capacity to sell 20+ Mbps speeds (it’s actually fed via an SM from another tower, something we don’t do anymore). They apparently bought the house from an elderly couple, at their previous house they had gigabit Metronet fiber. Well, that was pretty sweet, maybe you shouldn’t have moved. Honestly, I think the only real, long-term solution to rural broadband is FTTH. The problem of course is money. And with several companies launching thousands of LEO satellites promising broadband for everyone, I think that will suppress even further any large investments in rural broadband. Investors would also have to weigh how serious the mobile carriers are about rural fixed wireless, is it just marketing hype and lobbying to regulators as it has been in the past? I do find it ironic that we have low flush toilets, energy efficient appliances, LED light bulbs, alternate day lawn watering, and mandated fuel efficiency for vehicles, yet conspicuous consumption of Internet bandwidth seems to be our patriotic duty. With all the content moving to streaming services like Disney+ and content being priced high to cable companies but disruptively low for streaming, it’s clear there won’t be a choice, traditional broadcast and cable TV is dying and everyone will have to get their TV via the Internet. It’s like having to get a cellphone because there aren’t any payphones anymore, the train is leaving and you either buy a ticket or get left behind. For awhile though, people do have a choice, you can still put up a TV antenna or get satellite TV. It’s becoming 500 channels of crap though. Still, if you have gigabit fiber where you live now, maybe don’t move to Green Acres unless you really like doing country stuff. Or at least cut down some of the damn trees. Sheesh, miles and miles of open fields, and then 75 foot trees all around your house. From: AF <af-boun...@af.afmug.com> On Behalf Of Matt Hoppes Sent: Sunday, November 17, 2019 8:43 AM To: AnimalFarm Microwave Users Group <af@af.afmug.com> Subject: Re: [AFMUG] tired of entitled streamers 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: <blockquote> 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: <blockquote> 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: <blockquote> 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: <blockquote> 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: <blockquote> 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 </blockquote> </blockquote> <blockquote> -- AF mailing list AF@af.afmug.com http://af.afmug.com/mailman/listinfo/af_af.afmug.com </blockquote> -- AF mailing list AF@af.afmug.com http://af.afmug.com/mailman/listinfo/af_af.afmug.com </blockquote> </blockquote> </blockquote> <blockquote> -- AF mailing list AF@af.afmug.com http://af.afmug.com/mailman/listinfo/af_af.afmug.com </blockquote> -- 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
