Wow... Verizon is screwing you... my family has 5 lines, 1200 minutes
shared (national with carryover), unlimited text mesages and pics and I
pay $165 per month total (including all taxes, surcharges, etc.).
That's with AT&T even.
Travis
Microserv
Mike wrote:
There are those (the 5%?) who will just try to max out the pipe all
the time if that's what they perceive they are paying for.
This thread is making me think through some of the cob webs which are
rising uses on ALL of our networks. Christmas is coming, so are new
game consoles.
I constantly look at my Verizon bill and try to figure out how to
trim it; I can't. Four phones, national plan, unlimited
texting/pictures, 1200 shared minutes; we pay about $240.00 per
month, or about $60.00 per phone. I view that as obscene, but also
feel somewhat trapped. Verizon, ex-Alltel, ex-GTE, has the best
network between Iowa and Florida where my phones reside.
We've weaned ourselves away from the local rapacious monopolist --
Iowa Telecom -- but still throw money at Verizon and Dish network
every month. If I wasn't a Hawkeye fan, I'd toss Dish out too, but I
can't get the Big 10 network over-the-air.
My point is, as far as communications costs go, Internet, if we were
a customer instead of the vendor, would be a small portion of total
monthly costs. Maybe it is time to rethink the whole
paradigm. Except, if I make a bold move, competition would have to
do the same thing, or I'd lose customers.
I tried a tiered service once. My basic contract says 512 kbps. I
let them burst to 2 or 4 M, whatever the pipe will let them do at the
moment. If they have a persistent connection, and the pipe gets
congested, I throttle them back by delaying packets. When I tried to
sell tiered service with escalating minimum guarantees, I had few takers.
Most of my customers are rural, unsophisticated, and bursty
users. The business customers pay more and expect that to be the
case. There seems to be a pain threshold of $45.00 for rural
residential users.
Mike
At 08:45 AM 11/8/2009, you wrote:
Not everyone uses 6Mbps all day long.
On Sat, Nov 7, 2009 at 7:52 PM, RickG <[email protected]> wrote:
Thats one way to utilize bandwidth shaping but how do you " guaranteed
minimum of 1.5Mbps, 4Mbps and
6Mbps" at those low rates to every use and make money? Maybe I'm wrong but
the problem I see is that you will end up having unhappy subscribers when
their expectations are not met. Thats where the premium rates can come in.
I
find people all the time who would pay more for committed speeds if it can
be delivered.
BTW: Cricket Communications, subsidiary of Leap Wireless has lost money
since its inception and continues to do so. Give me an example of an
non-subsidized "all you can eat service" company in a competitive market
that actually makes money (bottom line).
On Sat, Nov 7, 2009 at 4:55 PM, Jayson Baker <[email protected]>
wrote:
Ya know, we've looked at this many times over the past couple years, and
even tested it for a bit.
Fact is, people like unlimited, and not having to guess. I, myself,
being
a
fairly lite user of the Internet, would still always opt for an unlimited
plan--even if I knew my bill may be lower on a pay-per-use plan. I have
unlimited cell phone minutes, txt messages, etc. If I could pay for
unlimited utilites, I'd certainly do that too!
We've got the infrastructure in place for a pay-per-use, and could
activate
it at anytime. We tried selling it about a year ago, and people just
didn't
understand the concept. People aren't used to it--most people got online
when Internet was $19.95/mo for dialup (or, $22.95 for AOL!), and don't
remember the 10 for $10 dial-up packages. Nobody knows what ISDN with
300
hours is.
We currently offer 12Mbps service for $24.95/mo. This makes us the
fastest
in the area, and the cheapest. We have local sales, support and
installations. We decided the way to win is to shape traffic--we offer
three 12Mbps packages; one with a guaranteed minimum of 1.5Mbps, 4Mbps
and
6Mbps. If you do nothing than browse, share pictures, etc. (i.e. "normal
use") you'll always see the 12Mbps. But once you fire up a torrent or
Netflix, you only get that speed for 10 minutes--after that, you get your
guaranteed minimum. Prices double from 1.5 to 4, and double again going
to
6Mbps. We have never had a complaint about speed or price with this
structure.
I'm hoping that the "big guys" do go to pay-per-use plans. Just one more
way we can advertise and win against them. "Tired of counting your bits
and
bytes? We're unlimited" Look at Cricket wireless--they've just exploded
with customers on their unlimited-everything service.
Just my 2 cents
Jayson
On Sat, Nov 7, 2009 at 2:24 PM, Travis Johnson <[email protected]> wrote:
The cellular guys don't charge by the minute... I have an unlimited
plan
on my cell phone. I can also get unlimited text and internet access for
$9.95/mo extra.
People don't want to guess what their internet bills are going to be
from
month to month. Would you want that at your own home?
Travis
Microserv
Gary Garrett wrote:
You sound like the cell phone company.
I am convinced the big failure in my business model is I charge by the
month while the cellular guys charge by the minute.
Travis Johnson wrote:
Hi,
You are talking about having to add additional resources (radius, etc.)
to track it. Then you have to bill it. Then you get to deal with the
phone calls from users that say "My computer wasn't even turned on
during those times. Remove the charge or I will go elsewhere." So,
even
that one extra phone call costs you money (because you have to think
about scaling). Imagine if you have 100x the number of customers you
have now... does the same solution work? Probably not.
The easier solution would be to call that customer and get them to
upgrade to the next plan up (which would provide higher speed as well).
This works very well for us... and then I have that guaranteed extra
income each month, even if they don't use it.
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