(1) There will be a market for independent ISPs as long CLECs
continue to let their customers enjoy poor service and unnecessary
restrictions. Bandwidth is a "commodity" and scales appropriately;
service is "service" and does not scale without a great deal
of management commitment, resources, money, attention
and abandonment of the cut-costs/low-bid mentality.
(2) This discussion is more appropriate to the ISP-CLEC list.
Wish I could be with you all in Seattle next week but work is
piling up so . . . back to work/lurk mode . . .
phred
------ mail forwarded, original message follows ------
Fred Heutte wrote:
(1) There will be a market for independent ISPs as long CLECs
I think a more appropriate term would be ALEC
(anti-competitive local exchange carrier)
...That having been said, the problem with the small guys providing access is they can't generally achieve the economies of scale that allow them to compete with the big guys.
I'm on a Charter cablemodem, 3mbps down x 256kbps up, $39.95/month. Verizon is building out FTTH in this area and they're going to be offering 5x2 for $39.95 or 10x5 for $49.95, IIRC. Those are all residential prices, but Charter's actually pretty competitive on business rates too.
And yes, there are people who value service over price, but the price differential is only going to get worse.