[2146] in Commercialization & Privatization of the Internet
Re: low-end users
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Richard Mandelbaum)
Tue Jan 28 14:47:52 1992
To: bjp@sura.net
Cc: com-priv@psi.com, rtennant@library.berkeley.edu
In-Reply-To: Your message of Tue, 28 Jan 92 13:10:11 -0500.
Date: Tue, 28 Jan 92 14:45:25 -0500
From: Richard Mandelbaum <rma@tsar.cc.rochester.edu>
I am very gratified to learn about how easy it is to service the
"low end User" and all the wonderful things so many groups are doing
on a shoestring.
On a cautionary note I'd like to point out that the marginal costs of
servicing a few incremental users when one is running a large network
are indeed quite low. Close to zero in fact. As the number of such users
increase and one has to charge them true average costs and one really must
add staff to service their needs the picture changes entirely. The user's
you thought you could charge $25/month for do wind up costing you about
$250/month. The fully allocated cost of having a trained network guru
available for consulting and technical support , counting all of his/her
salary,benefits,equipment,space,travel,training, expenses and dividing
by the likely number of "billable hours" available comes out at $40-70
dollars/hour. Before I get shot for coming up with such an outrageous
figure let's do the calculation.
Salary (depending on rank,time in service,position etc.etc.) 25000-50000
Benefits (including Social Security ,Medical etc.) 6000-15000
Space & Equipment (amortization on Office Furniture
Supplies,work station etc etc.+ cost of space) 2000- 6000
Travel (1-2 Conferences/Year) 1000- 4000
Phone,Fax, etc. 1000- 1000
Internal Overhead (i.e. Cost of Supervision,non-allocated
Space Executive Staff,PR,research,
,marketing,IETF meetings,etc etc. 15000-40000
Total 50000-116000
If you don't believe those figures , speak to anyone who runs a
technical business. Most of these costs are frequently masked because
of such facts as "The University doesn't charge Rent" or
"Teh equipment is there anyway or some such reason"
The fact is taht somebody does pay and if the servicing of all
these small users becomes 10 or 25 or 50% of the total workload
of the provider it must be charged in an equitable fashion.
The other part of the equation is how to pay for these costs.
As best as I can determine the maximum number of "billable" hours
of a consultant,network guru is probably in the 1200-1600 hour /year
Range. This is based on subtracting trips,training,meetings,vacations
sick days etc. etc. from the total feasible hour level of 2080/year.
Assuming that one can actually bill for 80% of the total available
time, one gets 1000-1200 billable hours/ consultant.
Of course one can try using undergraduates at $5/hour or volubteer
sysops to run the network and then can come up with a rate of 0$/hour
or $5/hour or $10/hour.
However,although those methods work at the margins, or even as a way to
handle fellow students they don't scale to helping 60-70000 schools
and about 40,000,000 kids in K-12 let alone all the users of our
public libraries and our small businesses etc.
My conclusion is that rates of $0/month or $5/month or $10/month
or even $25/month assume that absolutely no people support (on average)
is being extended to support the user or the technology .
These rates can be justified in either a marginal fashion or
if someone is subsidizing things, but don't represent the real costs of
providing a true unlimited dial-up access TCP/IP internet service.
Of course, if all you want to do is send about 15K of E-mail/month
you shouldn't be looking at full interactive dial-up access.
Compuserve or some other E-mail solution probably can fit the Bill
at a $10/month rate.But that isn't 24 hr. TCP/IP.
Basically you get what you or your benefactor pay for!
____________________
> All this complaining about the costs of providing service to low-end
> users is getting to me. There are obviously ways to do it -- and
> at a reasonable cost -- because it is being done. CERFNet offers tru
e
> low-end service (and NOT at the ridiculous price of $250/month!)
> in many areas of California -- including the very region that BARRNe
t
> serves.
>
Please define *WHAT* service(s) CERFnet provides and what the price
is. Is it the dialup service for the travel pc/mac user ie
dialin whereever you are, or is it connect local lans through dialup
links or connect fixed machines through dialup OR of course all of the
above. What is the solution for mail or DNS - do those solutions
require the link to be up all/most of the time to work right. How
easy is it for the *user* to use and maintain... How much time/money
did they invest to build the solution.
> While most of us are sitting around on our hands, crying into our be
er,
> folks like Susan Estrada are working to link up public schools, publ
ic
> libraries, small businesses, and other "small fry" at a cost they ca
n
> afford. Now if that is not true networking, I don't know what is. Pe
rhaps
> those of you who are having such difficulty figuring out how it can
be done
> should ask someone who is doing it.
I have talked to a number of people at various conferences, no one see
ms
to be sitting around on their hands, they do seem worried about provid
ing
a solution that solves more headaches than it creates. The goal is
to provide a useful connection to the internet for the average person,
a bad experiance here could do far more damage then no experiance (IMH
O).
This doesn't mean that no one who is doing dialup is doing it right, s
ome
people seem to be making it work quite well and I would love to benefi
t
from their experiance. If cerfnet or anyone else wants to make their
software
or papers on their dialup solution available I'd love to look at them.
In
fact I could probably make any that I get available to the community
as a whole through ftp.
Please keep in mind that all the groups have different goals and purpo
ses,
one thing thats has to be asked is how much does getting dialup workin
g serve
our constituentcy. IE on the list of things we should be doing where
does this rate and how much of our resources should we devote to it.
Can we add 100-500 dialup sites and still provide an adequate level of
services to all of our clients, given the amount of money we generate
from dialup clients.
Brad Passwaters (301)(982-3214)
SURAnet Operations bjp@sura.net
