[2133] in Commercialization & Privatization of the Internet
Trickle Down? How About Bubble Up?
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Brian Lloyd)
Tue Jan 28 01:32:31 1992
Date: Mon, 27 Jan 92 21:49:20 PST
From: brian@lloyd.com (Brian Lloyd)
To: bzs@world.std.com
Cc: vaf@Valinor.Stanford.EDU, emv@msen.com, stef@nma.com, com-priv@uu.psi.com
In-Reply-To: Barry Shein's message of Mon, 27 Jan 92 20:58:36 -0500 <9201280158.AA16677@world.std.com>
Reply-To: brian@lloyd.com
Date: Mon, 27 Jan 92 20:58:36 -0500
From: bzs@world.std.com (Barry Shein)
>Note that BARRNet is a non-profit organization, so it's not like we're
>trying to gouge the market, either.
Not to be contentious, but that's a non-sequitar. Non-profit just
means you don't distribute profits to shareholders. It doesn't mean
you are constrained to charge less for goods and services somehow
(ever comparison shop coffee mugs from NPR or your local museum versus
Woolworth's?)
Your aforementioned examples are fine but you neglect to mention that
NPR or your local museum are selling the coffee mugs to support
something else and that the overall profit of the organization may be
zero. BARRNet is not trying to support anything but the service that
is being provided. I can attest to the fact that BARRNet makes no
money providing dial-up and dedicated 9.6Kbps service.
I also agree that people do not understand how labor-intensive it is
to support many "little" customers and why that makes exactly what
they want so difficult to deliver. 500 customers at $100/month
represent the same revenue as 50 customers at $1000/month. But the
overheads are dramatically different.
In fact, the 500 customers usually require more per-connection
hand-holding than each of the 50 customers do (mostly due to the
nature of low-ball equipment and software, and its tendency to be not
quite to spec.)
Ain't it the truth! I suspect that we spend as much effort on a
9.6Kbps connection as we do on a T1 connection. On the other hand, it
has gotten much easier/better now that I can point to MorningStar,
Telebit, or Livingston and tell the new members that they will be much
better off if they buy one of the commercial packages and take
advantage of their customer support.
Brian Lloyd, WB6RQN Lloyd & Associates
Principal and Network Architect 3420 Sudbury Road
brian@lloyd.com Cameron Park, CA 95682
voice (916) 676-1147 -or- (415) 725-1392
