what will all you who work for private isp's be doing in a few years?

Thu May 12 09:29:51 UTC 2005

As an economist I know likes to say: "It depends".

To a varying extent (in some markets more than others), the massive 
oversubscription of cable that meant poor bandwidth/latency at peak 
times has declined to the point where the older arguments of "committed 
versus max" is less meaningful. Of course in some places it's still 
terrible, but not everywhere. Besides, distance and crappy phone lines 
can make a chump out of DSL as well.

Also, let's be careful when we talk about the "typical user" and whether 
they "understand the difference". The "typical user" may simply not even 
care, even IF they know the difference. In fact, many that do know the 
difference may prefer (for whatever reason), to take the higher max of 
cable, especially if in their neighbourhood that max is achieved quite 
frequently.

Further, who's to say that at some point the cable companies won't start 
offering minimum guaranteed bandwidth? I doubt they will, but if they 
were to, then a big advantage of DSL falls apart.

Let's also not forget that many of us (myself included), choose not to 
procure landlines. This can be an extra $10-$30/month on top of the ISP 
charges. That's a big part of why I have cable at home, and I know 
others in the same situation. Sure, Oceanic/Earthlink here is worthless 
- took me 2 weeks to get an install time, and then the lead time on that 
is 3 weeks (1 week from this Saturday at this point..).

But who cares? I'm using someone's open wifi.

 - bri

Shane Owens wrote:

> On this I am wondering what the user market would chose with an offer from a DSL provider of a guaranteed bandwidth purchase with a
>contention based cap on max speed.  For example DSL sold with a guaranteed bandwidth availability of 256K (or 512K, 768K etc based
>on 256K increments) with a "up to" maximum of 7-10Mbps.  Would the typical user understand the difference between this the standard
>Comcast marketing of "up to" speeds without any service guarantee?
>
>Shane
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>>It won't be long before the telco's respond by offering DSL at the same speed/price. I've heard (but don't *know*) that SBC is
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>selling 6 down and 1 up in >Houston and Dallas for $35.
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>>We're doing a fair business selling accelerated dial up for $15. Its surprising how many folks don't want broadband. You don't need
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>4mb down to read 
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>>your email. And once you get outside of the city limits there's a good sized market that can't get any type of broadband,
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>especially cable.
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>>We may decline some, but I don't think that ISP's are going away anytime soon.
>>
>>Bob Martin
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-- 
Brian Russo <brian at entropy.net>
(808) 277 8623