SBC forcing new contract on ISPs

Mon Jun 25 18:52:48 UTC 2001

On Mon, 25 Jun 2001, Chris Adams wrote:

> Once upon a time, Christopher A. Woodfield <rekoil at semihuman.com> said:
> > If I'm reading this correctly, SBC is forcing ISPs that resell SBC's DSL
> > access to go with PPPoE over ATM, thus potentially forcing businesses to
> > buy DSL net access from SBC directly.
>
> Maybe I'm missing something, but I don't see how PPPoA forces businesses
> to buy DSL elsewhere.

If you've currently got a pvc mapped to each customer, and then that
capability is taken away, you will have problems if your "enhanced"
offering doesn't play well with PPPoE.  There's a number of negatives for
the ISP, and few positives:

-Billing for the DSL pipe (not IP) is moved from the customer's phone bill
to the ISP.  Have to rework your billing system, assume collections, etc.

-PPPoE is not inherently evil, but some solutions work better without it.
Perhaps some people are selling an ADSL 'small business package' and
they've placed a small ethernet-ethernet router and/or firewall between
the ADSL bridge and the customer's LAN.  The ISP then needs to ditch that
(possibly pricey) equipment and put something in that support PPPoE.
Multiply by the number of customers...  $$$$

-SBC controls the Redback or whatever they are using for PPPoE
aggregation.  That means that if SBC does not manage it well (too many
people, bad sw load, frequent 'maintenance'), you lose any
performance/reliability advantage you had.  I put more trust in the ATM
switches 'just working' than I put in the PPPoE aggregator 'just working'.
This advantage may be how you cost-justify your services to your
customers.  Lose the advantage, lose the customer.

-SBC may choose to offer features on the PPPoE aggregator to themselves
before they let you have it.  They may impose limits on what you can do as
far as number of simultaneous connections/pcs that again clash with your
current offering.

The list goes on...

Charles

> --
> Chris Adams <cmadams at hiwaay.net>
> Systems and Network Administrator - HiWAAY Internet Services
> I don't speak for anybody but myself - that's enough trouble.
>