An Attempt at Economically Rational Pricing: Time Warner Trial

Tue Jan 22 13:33:26 UTC 2008

Consumers have been conditioned through advertising that 'bigger is 
better' so bigger numbers imply a better service in their minds.  Look 
at the current flat panel TV size madness
there is a formula for calculating the size of a display based on 
distance to the viewer I live in a older house so based on that I have a 
relatively small display but going to the stores all they want to push 
is 42" and up.    My needs for net service are modest and would be best 
served by a 256k link with low latency and jitter so that SSH and NMS 
applications would run reasonably well over the VPN but I cannot buy 
this from my telcom/isp instead I was forced to buy the "business" 
service tier which does nothing (same speed same 'excessive usage cap') 
for me except not block IPSec and oh by the way costs 2x the $59 dollars 
the 768/384 by DSL line runs monthly (I am served by a rural telcom so 
no options here) .   

But since most ISP's are telecoms these days all they think of is 
selling circuits with as little support as possible.

On the last point this would involve actually providing a SERVICE 
something that US businesses do not do anymore since businesses these 
days are run by the finance department and providing  services requires 
investing in plant/equipment/people rather than writing a check to a 
investment fund who 'guarantees 20% ROI (think sub-prime).   We in the 
US have forgotten
Edward Deming's key dictum i.e. 'managing for the bottom line ensures 
that you will soon NOT HAVE a bottom line'.

The industry will return to profitablity once companies wake up to the 
fact that profits are dependent on having products and services which 
people want to buy,   rather than the current model where the company 
wants to push its product/service to the CONSUMER who MUST buy their 
product rather than offering a competitive product/service to a CUSTOMER 
who has options on what they spend their hard earned money on.   Words 
have meaning and many companies have fallen into the trap that people 
will buy anything offered.

Sorry for the rant

michael.dillon at bt.com wrote:
>> There are symmetric versions for all of those.  But ever 
>> since the dialup days (e.g. 56Kbps modems had slower reverse 
>> direction) consumers have shown a preference for a bigger 
>> number on the box, even if it meant giving up bandwidth in 
>> the one direction.
>>
>> For example, how many people want SDSL at 1.5Mbps symmetric 
>> versus ADSL at 6Mbps/768Kbps. The advertisment with the 
>> bigger number wins the consumer.
>>     
>
> Seems to me that Internet SERVICE Providers have all turned
> into telecom companies and the only thing that matters now
> is providing IP circuits.
>
> If P2P is such a problem for providers who supply IP circuits
> over wireless and cable, why don't they try going up a level
> and provide Internet SERVICE instead? For instance, every
> customer could get a virtual server that they can access via
> VNC with some popular P2P packages preinstalled. The P2P software
> could recognize when it's talking over "preferred" circuits
> such as local virtual servers or over peering connections that
> aren't too expensive, and prefer those. If the virtual servers
> are implemented on Linux, there is a technology called FUSE
> that could be used to greatly increase the capacity of the
> disk farm by not storing multiple copies of the same file.
>
> Rather than moaning about the problems of being a telecom
> provider, people could apply some creative technology to get
> out of the telecom ghetto.
>
> --Michael Dillon
>   