Thanks Cameron,
Back in 1999 when I first designed my billing plan I was literally laughed at.
Everyone knew that you sold speed, not capacity.
But tell me where else, anywhere, we pay for all you can eat, all of the time?
You don't buy your electricity by the voltage, you buy it by the current used.
Water doesn't come in pounds per square inch, it's gallons used. Gas isn't in
miles per hour etc. etc. etc.
Why do we think we can sell internet by the speed and charge less than a
dedicated pipe costs? Times, they are a changin'....
We figure $x.00 per month in costs per customer per gigabit used. In my case
the cost per gig is about $.50 to $1.00 per unit depending on my costs and how
you run the numbers.
You must also figure in the amount of capacity you need each AP to transfer
during peak hours. No sense selling what you can't deliver. We use the bit
caps as a way to encourage the bandwidth hogs to mess up someone else's service
and keep my system running at peak capabilities, not beyond them.
Our customers get 10 to 15 gigs per month with their accounts. That's enough
to do pretty much anything anyone wants to do except movies and 24/7 internet
radio (my parents have this problem :-).
For movies, the average movie is 1 to 3 gigs. An HD movie is 8 to 10. Netflix
will simply figure out how much speed the customer has available and send more
data to suck it all up. It can use a little or a lot. Usually a lot.
We also put a cap on our fiber customers. That's costing us users these days.
But I don't know what else to do, there is no money in fiber anyway, then the
customer wants to use $20 per month in upstream fees on his $5.00 net account.
It's hard to figure out how to set all of this so that the average customer can
do what he needs to do, but you can afford to stay in business.
We are certainly loosing some customers to the ones that don't have caps. But
those guys are going to go down in flames in the next couple of years. They
will HAVE to move to bit caps or raise their rates. Even higher prices isn't
going to help when there isn't enough spectrum available to service the
customers.
How many movies can you support at once across the average AP? 5? 10 at the
most? I don't know about you guys but my break even point is 10 subs per tower.
Does that help at all? If not, give me a call and I'll answer any questions I
can. 509.988.0260
marlon
----- Original Message -----
From: Cameron Crum
To: WISPA General List
Sent: Thursday, April 21, 2011 9:30 PM
Subject: Re: [WISPA] Bandwidth Usage Caps Examples?
Talk with Marlon at Odessa Office Equipment. He's been doing bandwidth caps
for years.
Cameron
On Thu, Apr 21, 2011 at 5:33 PM, Jason Novinger <jnovin...@gmail.com> wrote:
They WISP that I work with actually implements no bandiwdth caps and
uses it as a marketing strategy against the local cable company. The
cable company uses the model of guaranteeing speeds, but charging $x
for y GB over some arbitrary cap. They also provide a package geared
for video that has no bandwidth caps, but also does not guarantee any
speed.
Also, given AT&T's, the other local competitor, decision to implement
caps, this WISP is the _only_ local provider that does have any sort
of caps.
Holler off-list if you would like more specifics.
Jason
On Thu, Apr 21, 2011 at 2:04 PM, Dan <deathandta...@caglan.net> wrote:
> We operate a small WISP plant that is becoming outmoded and is scheduled
> to be replaced. Previously we have had a tiered pricing scheme but the
> video explosion has had a severe impact on our existing plant. We are
> looking at better future-proofing our next deployment with the right
> model, which we believe to be either the billed-for-heavy-usage model or
> block pricing.
>
> Without getting into discussion about the evils of bandwidth caps too
> much, are there any examples of how WISP's are managing this? Can
> anyone provide examples of end-user agreement language pertaining to
> this, the simpler the better?
>
> Also, what software or management platform are people using to monitor
> and automate billing of overages, etc?
>
> Feel free to reply to me off-list if needed.
>
> --Dan P.
>
>
>
>
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