From: I Am Not An Isp <patrick@ianai.net>
Naturally - they make a lot more money lying to you and then paying the
penalty when they get caught. Like 100% SLAs - a provider who offers a
100% SLA *knows* they can't actually meet their guarantee, so they budget
in $X for payment of the penalties. And sometimes they even make the
process ridiculous to get your refund.
If they get caught, the penalty can be pretty high.
When you sell a service that you don't actually provide, you can be
changed with fraud and treble damages.
Under the uniform commercial code, selling a product that works half as
well as specified, you still have to refund the entire price, no half
discount.
As I understand it, after the Milan Michigan cut a few years ago, MCI
had to refund (to a major auto company) the _entire_ amount of the
contract from its beginning, as they had never provided the physically
redundant circuits specified in the contract. No matter that they
provided _some_ service that worked up until the cut -- they didn't
provide the service specified in the contract.
And to retain the rest of the contract, MCI had to put in a redundant
fiber -- right down the center of Ann Arbor, at huge expense, including
millions resurfacing some roads that had just been resurfaced a couple
of years before, and (I've heard) paying 40 dollars per foot per year
for the easements.
NB: Too bad Merit doesn't have as good lawyers.... They were hit by the
same cut, and I'm not sure they even got a refund.
I guess the moral is, the contract is only as good as the amount of
money that you are willing to spend on lawyers.
WSimpson@UMich.edu
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