I keep seeing complaints from operators talking about the woes of Netflix breaking business models etc.
>From certain comments I've seen, many of you seem to be looking at this wrong. No-one should ever have sold unlimited data. Unlimited data pricing is like T1 or T3 pricing. You can't get unlimited broadband for $50/mo. This was destined to fail from the beginning. Anyone who couldn't see TV ever going over Internet lines was blind. And we're only seeing the early beginnings of it. There's going to be more and more HD stuff. Netflix hasn't broken anything. People's service plans were already broken. You were selling stuff you couldn't provide. You were effectively selling T1 lines for $50/mo. Bandwidth usage was always going to go up. Weather it's Netflix or something else. It was only time before your business model would fail. We have had bandwidth limits posted on our website since 2007. http://g5i.net/internet.php People are now starting to hit them. The limits are fairly high. We have about 5 or 6 people out of 300 who are hitting them each month now. We're going to start throttling to 256k when the cap is met. That way they can still do general Internet stuff, without being able to watch video. And they can call up and pay extra in 10Gb increments to get their high speed back. At the end of the day people, you are paid to provide an Internet connection. Be that to Netflix or Hulu or be that just for email. Sell something that you are able to provide. Take advantage of the situation. I'm getting more and more people signing up for my $80/mo package. That means more revenue so I can buy more bandwidth. We're trying to accommodate online video as best we can. Don't get me wrong, the sudden leap in bandwidth usage has caught me without enough bandwidth. But it hasn't broken my business model... yet. I have seen people talking about triple play. I don't think that's the way forward. I think the cell companies are eventually going to have to become dumb pipes, and sell just mobile broadband. People will use VoIP instead of voice minutes. Be a dumb pipe, and offer VoIP, also. Let people get their video content from online providers. I think this is the way forward. Thanks, Roger -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- WISPA Wants You! Join today! http://signup.wispa.org/ -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- WISPA Wireless List: [email protected] Subscribe/Unsubscribe: http://lists.wispa.org/mailman/listinfo/wireless Archives: http://lists.wispa.org/pipermail/wireless/
