Sounds way too complicated.
This should be like going to Wendy’s. Single, double, triple. Small fries, large fries. Pull forward to the first window. If that’s still too complicated, do like Frontier, everything’s “up to 6 Mbps”. In other words, best effort, it is what it is. If you as the customer choose to ignore the “up to”, too bad for you. From: Af [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of That One Guy /sarcasm Sent: Friday, February 3, 2017 10:16 AM To: [email protected] Subject: Re: [AFMUG] Providing Service at Different Rates / in Different Markets once we edit out the multiples of 1024 to be multiples of 1000 to appease fcc they accept them without issue, whether the data is copacetic isnt a big concern to me as we way underreport what we actually deliver and advertise I guess alot of it depends on your company mission with FCC. If its funding based, or competitor lockout based, then better looking numbers is probably more important. Our pprimary purpose is just to get it accepted so theyll quit bothering us, so we do accuracy and under reporting. Compared to the numbers alot of folks present to the fcc, if there were somebody looking at it, they would be like "how the hell are these guys even competing" these arent our rates, but this is an example: Tier 1 tier 2 tier 3 Tiers are the speeds, the customers arent sold a tier rate 1 (10gb) rate 2 (20gb) rate 3 (30gb/overage) rates are what the customers are sold (our actual capacities are much much higher) the top rate has the overage, and there is an un advertised rate we put heavy users on if theyre continually generating high overages to bring their costs down if they pay promptly on a historical basis so we create t01-r01 t02-r01 t03-r01 t01-r02 t02-r02 t03-r02 t01-r03 t02-r03 t03-r03 9 plans on the back end the customers are place into groups in powercode based on their tier, so customer service can only select the rate correlated to the tier, in this example there are only three options we have more than 3 tiers, more than 3 rates, and because powercode is awful, we have to duplicate everything for our annual discount. Our back end, needless to say has a huge number of plans, very few of which are selectable on any given account the tier (speed) is easy and has a set of criteria based on the site installed to and its capabilities, the access point installed to and its capabilities, and the final factor being actual performance. so if we have a 12mb tier and a 6mb tier, if the customer can only achieve 10mb, they go on the 6 mb tier. aside from the fsk 900, nobody goes on a tier they cant fully achieve consistently, and we can drop tiers if there is degradation. Network preservation takes priority over end user preference.....so much less headaches. and all our reporting is accurate, if we had an fcc audit, we wouldnt get nailed for overreporting like many others would On Fri, Feb 3, 2017 at 9:12 AM, Kurt Fankhauser <[email protected] <mailto:[email protected]> > wrote: I thought Powercode FCC 477 export was broken and full of erros as another recent thread indicated? Also Powercode needs to have two sets of speeds in each plan, one being FCC export reported speed, and the other being the actual rate limited speed. Then I wouldn't have to tweak the export since I like to rate limit at 110% of their plan speed. On Thu, Feb 2, 2017 at 9:49 AM, Cameron Crum <[email protected] <mailto:[email protected]> > wrote: Christopher, FCC basically wants advertised plan rates which makes the whole thing BS, but what else are you going to do? I guess they assume you aren't advertising more than you can actually deliver. Taking the speed at each customer location is somewhat impractical for such purposes unless you just do a one time test and call it that forever. The FCC doesn't really have a way to report a "variable" rate plan. I have a customer who goes through this every year. He runs everything wide open and has data caps. So he lets you get as much "speed" as your radio can handle but bills for overages every month. He ends up doing a speed test on install and putting that into the "baseline" info for the customer and we use those numbers for the 477 grouping them together into as few "buckets" as possible. So it can be done, but it takes more effort and is certainly not "traditional". Cameron On Wed, Feb 1, 2017 at 7:01 PM, Christopher Gray <[email protected] <mailto:[email protected]> > wrote: An exported form is only as good as the data entered. I export from Sonar with no problem, but I go through a decent amount of effort to define a long list of services to match each speed available, and it is getting a little out of hand. When selling capacity, not speed, how do you rate your speed for your 477? The max it could be? The lowest you'd ever expect? How do you define a speed in your billing system for the 477 if the speed is variable? I see now that my biggest problem seems to be having 2 variables with each product (price and speed... my "standard" product has speeds ranging from 1.5 to 10 and prices ranging from $50 to $73). I think I just need to simplify the product offering by fixing one of the variables, and possibly have a zip code entry to view the available products. Half of my network is 50% more expensive to operate than the other half, so there are significant price differences between some areas. _____ On Wed, Feb 1, 2017 at 7:36 PM, That One Guy /sarcasm <[email protected] <mailto:[email protected]> > wrote: EXPORT-FORM 477 LITERALLY THAT SIMPLE On Wed, Feb 1, 2017 at 5:33 PM, Christopher Gray <[email protected] <mailto:[email protected]> > wrote: How do you keep track of speeds for your 477? On Wed, Feb 1, 2017 at 5:50 PM, Mathew Howard <[email protected] <mailto:[email protected]> > wrote: We just have the same set of plans (with names, rather than speeds) with the same prices everywhere, and the speeds set differently depending on the area - so if you're in an area where we can cover you with ePMP 5ghz half a mile from our office, you'll get a vastly different speed than if you're out in the middle of nowhere where we can only cover you with 900mhz FSK from a tower with a grand total of 5 customers on it, but for billing purposes the plan is the same. The only way to find out what the actual speed is going to be in any given area is to ask us. On Wed, Feb 1, 2017 at 12:47 PM, Adam Moffett <[email protected] <mailto:[email protected]> > wrote: The other way is to define different service options and say that not all options are available in all areas. If there's an option that's more money for less speed nobody will intentionally choose it, but you can tell them that's the option available in their area. This way happens to also work seamlessly with billing systems since you have to differentiate the rate options in the system that way anyhow. One problem you will not avoid no matter how you spell it out is that some people will draw their own conclusions about why you're charging them more than people in another area. I.E.: They'll say you're a greedy, evil person with selfish and petty reasons for discriminating against them. I don't have any faith in my fellow humans, so take that with a grain of salt. ------ Original Message ------ From: "Sterling Jacobson" <[email protected] <mailto:[email protected]> > To: "[email protected] <mailto:[email protected]> " <[email protected] <mailto:[email protected]> > Sent: 2/1/2017 1:37:38 PM Subject: Re: [AFMUG] Providing Service at Different Rates / in Different Markets Ugh, that is difficult. If it were me, at the very least I would just make a pricing page online and spell it all out for each ‘area’. If you want to be more discreet you could just advertise the lowest priced rate/plan and say there are higher speed options to contact you. The fancy way would be for them to fill out a form and get an immediate response via email or online as to their rate plans per the area. From: Af [mailto:[email protected] <mailto:[email protected]> ] On Behalf Of Christopher Gray Sent: Wednesday, February 1, 2017 11:28 AM To: [email protected] <mailto:[email protected]> Subject: [AFMUG] Providing Service at Different Rates / in Different Markets How do others handle providing service in different markets at different rates? As I've expanded into different areas, I've found I need to charge significantly different rates and have to provide different speeds. I adjusted my website to say things like: "...up to" and "...starting at $...". It feels a bit misleading. I want to be clear without publishing every single service option. I'd like some suggestions for more appropriately treating the different areas. Perhaps entering a zipcode or town to see price options? Thank you - Chris -- If you only see yourself as part of the team but you don't see your team as part of yourself you have already failed as part of the team. -- If you only see yourself as part of the team but you don't see your team as part of yourself you have already failed as part of the team.
