[8294] in Commercialization & Privatization of the Internet
Net Access/Service Providers
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (sharilee@aol.com)
Fri Nov 12 21:38:45 1993
Errors-To: <sharilee@aol.com>
Errors-To: <sharilee@aol.com>
From: sharilee@aol.com
Errors-To: <sharilee@aol.com>
Reply-To: <sharilee@aol.com>
To: com-priv@psi.com
Date: Fri, 12 Nov 93 21:26:23 EST
According to Carl Helmers on 11-12-93...
>When barriers are low, and apparent profits are high,
>people flock to a field.
Agreed. As you stated, it's basic economic life. The primary question is...
what leads people to believe the apparent profits are high? It's a booming
field, but the cost to support a user on TCP/IP is not trivial. Does anyone
know the cost per user? Didn't someone mention that the $20/month for 20
hours doesn't cover support?
An interesting side-question here is, based on the above, can the current
crew of access providers survive? Especially given that many of the major
ones (major by today's standards) have been used to government funding. Can
these regional providers figure out how to compete without the public funding
they've grown used to?
Not to pick on anyone in particular, but when Barry and Doug and Bill
Washburn start driving Porsches, then I'll be convinced Internet access might
be an attractive market ;-)
The bottom line is, where does the competitive advantage lie in being an
access provider? The only value-added I can see is doing a good job of
supporting TCP/IP for the non-network-saavy. Phone lines are phone lines and
eventually they'll become commodities like most hardware. The secret must be
in the service/content side. If that's the case, AOL (and whoever's providing
them with their lines) has a pretty good shot at being a big winner.
Shari
=====================================================
sharilee@aol.com
President.........................Cirrus Technology
Executive Director.......MacSciTech Users Association
Past President...............Industrial Computing Society
... and other miscellaneous, but fun, endeavors that still haven't made me a
millionaire!!!
=====================================================
