Yipeeeeeee!!!!
Iain Ogilvie
>On 29 Sep 1998 17:26:50 GMT, in a discussion on freeserve.discuss
>about the possibility of members of the public ascertaining accurate
>Freeserve signup figures, Nigel.Met...@Pla.Net.Uk (Nigel
>Metheringham) wrote:
>
>>At Tue, 29 Sep 1998 14:10:34 +0100, Mr Smith said:-
>>>What about those who get the data simply by calling Mastercare staff
rather
>>>than using their connections via Planet or DSG ;-)
>>
>>Garry,
>>
>>Those people are working on second hand unreliable data, then.
>>
>> Nigel.
>>--
>>[ Nigel.Met...@pla.net.uk - Core Systems Zookeeper ]
>>[ Planet Online, Leeds, UK ]
>>[ Living on the cutting edge of stability ]
>
>
>Which just goes to prove my point about Freeserve actually being an
>Energis operation and the Dixons connection being a scam, does it not?
>
>Have you wised up yet, ISPs? Freeserve *is* Energis! Cancel your
>existing business arrangments with them now!
Anthony,
This is getting tedious in the extreme.
ISPs are well aware of Freeserve. It is not some conspiracy, just a new
business model for this market.
Experienced Internet users will probably stay clear, wary of poor
performance. Freeserve will mainly attract domestic users who are entirely
new to the Internet. These new users will gradually learn more and more
about the net and realise that to get better performance and service, they
may need to pay and will start looking around at other services. In the long
term, they will help expand the Internet market within the UK, which is good
for all ISPs. I wonder if they realise just how much potential long term
marketing they are doing for their competitors?
The Internet market has been in a process of continual change ever since it
began. Those companies able to adapt to, and take advantage of, new
developments in the industry will continue to thrive.
There may well be casualties along the way, but they will probably be
companies that wouldn't have survived anyway.
Iain Ogilvie
Marketing Manager
Nildram Limited
www.nildram.net
Steve Manners
Good to see someone representing an ISP writing here. Some thoughts on what
you said:
>ISPs are well aware of Freeserve. It is not some conspiracy, just a new
>business model for this market.
I agree it is just a new business model. One I think most ISPs will copy in
one way or another.
>Experienced Internet users will probably stay clear, wary of poor
>performance. Freeserve will mainly attract domestic users who are entirely
>new to the Internet.
Ouch, not for a moment in my view. Almost every single user here is very
experienced I think you'll find. I personally am dropping BT to be here,
others quote the systems they are dropping. Some have mentioned your
company.
In my view those offering plain ISP access will lose out greatly if they
don't go to free access. Those offering content that people really want can
charge something for access to that still. That would be AOL/CompuServe
and so on perhaps.
>These new users will gradually learn more and more
>about the net and realise that to get better performance and service
So you feel Energis is poor at performance and so on? I doubt that, and
they are in the background for a lot of folks online already. Freeserve
does appear to have major service problems, and for some weird reason not to
have setup its support or modems etc properly and with a lot of thought, but
I guess we all hope that will be resolved quickly - even if nobody from
Freeserve is in here telling us it will be.
>may need to pay and will start looking around at other services. In the
long
>term, they will help expand the Internet market within the UK, which is
good
>for all ISPs. I wonder if they realise just how much potential long term
>marketing they are doing for their competitors?
That has always worked in the ISP business I know, AOL advertises and
everyone gains etc. I think the advent of free services on one national
number in the UK is different, and almost everyone here talks of droppinbg
their existing ISP and simply using Freeserve and saving hundreds of pounds
per year.
>The Internet market has been in a process of continual change ever since it
>began. Those companies able to adapt to, and take advantage of, new
>developments in the industry will continue to thrive.
I agree, and if for instance your company drops all charges I am sure it
will have many more customers. If it competes on a charged v non charged
basis I suspect it won't make it long term, the UK market is not the US
market etc and there probably won't be much room left once we get several
more major free services as is said to be likely real soon now.
Steve Manners
Colin Swan
<st...@manners.freeserve.co.uk> wrote:
>>Experienced Internet users will probably stay clear, wary of poor
>>performance. Freeserve will mainly attract domestic users who are entirely
>>new to the Internet.
>
>Ouch, not for a moment in my view. Almost every single user here is very
>experienced I think you'll find. I personally am dropping BT to be here,
>others quote the systems they are dropping. Some have mentioned your
>company.
I think you'll find a lot of people are trying freeserve, after all
they have nothing to lose. I doubt if many are immediately abandoning
their ISPs in favour of it.
>So you feel Energis is poor at performance and so on? I doubt that, and
>they are in the background for a lot of folks online already. Freeserve
>does appear to have major service problems, and for some weird reason not to
>have setup its support or modems etc properly and with a lot of thought, but
>I guess we all hope that will be resolved quickly - even if nobody from
>Freeserve is in here telling us it will be.
No, Energis are not poor performing, but allowing free access to a
provider, no matter how good they are is a surefire recipe for engaged
tones, slow connects and poor network performance. OK, so it may be
useable now, although I have heard reports of busy tones, but just
wait until more people start using it. You yourself say that they have
major service problems, so I don't understand why you have been so
quick to drop your current provider...
>>may need to pay and will start looking around at other services. In the
>long
>>term, they will help expand the Internet market within the UK, which is
>good
>>for all ISPs. I wonder if they realise just how much potential long term
>>marketing they are doing for their competitors?
>
>
>That has always worked in the ISP business I know, AOL advertises and
>everyone gains etc. I think the advent of free services on one national
>number in the UK is different, and almost everyone here talks of droppinbg
>their existing ISP and simply using Freeserve and saving hundreds of pounds
>per year.
So, they will save between 100 - 120 pounds per year by not having to
pay a subscription, but you take a chance that you will not be
spending extra on your phone bills due to the overall service being
slow. I suspect that the real saving will be much less than you say
and will not be worth it for most people in view of the extra
frustration that I am sure will arise. Then there's the cost of
support - you could easily blow any saving on that :-)
>I agree, and if for instance your company drops all charges I am sure it
>will have many more customers. If it competes on a charged v non charged
>basis I suspect it won't make it long term, the UK market is not the US
>market etc and there probably won't be much room left once we get several
>more major free services as is said to be likely real soon now.
The market is big enough to allow for both free services and fast,
high quality subscription services. There are other countries who
have major free services and it seems to be the case that everyone has
a free account, as well as one they pay a subscription for. This is
simply due to the free services not being very good and them not being
able to rely on it for their connectivity.
I think that there is a general romantic notion that the Internet
should be free, and people are seeing that Freeserve is realising this
dream. The reality is that Internet connectivity costs money,
especially in the UK, and this money has to come from somewhere. Add
to that the fact that all ISPs are businesses and need to make some
profit somewhere along the line, and you will see that there really is
no free Internet. All Freeserve are doing is using a different way of
getting their money, but in the grand scheme of things, it is the user
who still pays...
These views are entirely my own and do not represent the views of my
employers.
Regards,
Colin Swan
Nildram Technical Support
Adrian Mardlin
<st...@manners.freeserve.co.uk> wrote:
>>Experienced Internet users will probably stay clear, wary of poor
>>performance. Freeserve will mainly attract domestic users who are entirely
>>new to the Internet.
>
>Ouch, not for a moment in my view. Almost every single user here is very
>experienced I think you'll find. I personally am dropping BT to be here,
>others quote the systems they are dropping. Some have mentioned your
>company.
>
>In my view those offering plain ISP access will lose out greatly if they
>don't go to free access. Those offering content that people really want can
>charge something for access to that still. That would be AOL/CompuServe
>and so on perhaps.
>
>>These new users will gradually learn more and more
>>about the net and realise that to get better performance and service
>
>So you feel Energis is poor at performance and so on? I doubt that, and
>they are in the background for a lot of folks online already. Freeserve
>does appear to have major service problems, and for some weird reason not to
>have setup its support or modems etc properly and with a lot of thought, but
>I guess we all hope that will be resolved quickly - even if nobody from
>Freeserve is in here telling us it will be.
At the risk of flooding this thread with posts from Nildram staff, I'd
like to just raise a few thought points.
1) It is in Nildram's financial interest to keep support calls to a
minimum. It is in Freeserve's financial interest to have as many
support calls as possible.
2) It is in Nildram's financial interest to provide fast, high
performance connection to the Internet to allow people to stay on-line
for less time to do what they have to do, and keep them as subscribers
who are paying for and expect a certain quality of service. It is in
Freeserve's financial interest to buy as little internet bandwidth as
they can get away with as that will mean people spend longer on-line
(more call revenue), and quality Internet bandwidth costs money.
3) Wise ISPs understand issue such as bandwidth, contention ratios
etc. Telcos in general understand switch minutes and very little else.
4) Nildram is growing at a steady, sustainable rate. As we grow, some
systems get overloaded and break. We are able to plan for this and
(usually) take preventative maintenance. Freeserve don't stand a
chance, no matter how good their engineers are. Then again, they quite
possibly don't care.
Please take this stuff as IMO. Also, if it makes you feel better,
please substitute Nildram with your favourite ISP (with the proviso
that your favourite ISP isn't a telco trying to cash in on the
Internet).
Regards,
Adrian Mardlin
Managing Director
Nildram Ltd
Bargain Bin
Adrian Mardlin wrote in message
<36121b89....@goodnews.nildram.co.uk>...
>At the risk of flooding this thread with posts from Nildram staff, I'd
>like to just raise a few thought points.
>
>1) It is in Nildram's financial interest to keep support calls to a
>minimum. It is in Freeserve's financial interest to have as many
>support calls as possible.
Accepted.
>2) It is in Nildram's financial interest to provide fast, high
>performance connection to the Internet to allow people to stay on-line
>for less time to do what they have to do, and keep them as subscribers
>who are paying for and expect a certain quality of service. It is in
>Freeserve's financial interest to buy as little internet bandwidth as
>they can get away with as that will mean people spend longer on-line
>(more call revenue), and quality Internet bandwidth costs money.
To a point, Freeserve, if they wish to play that game, have to be very
careful as to where they draw the line.
Too fast and revenue drops, too slow - revenue *will* drop.
Remember it is a free service people will stop using it if it gets too slow,
thus Freeserve make no money.
They don't have the luxury of a monthly fee to fall back on.
>4) Nildram is growing at a steady, sustainable rate. As we grow, some
>systems get overloaded and break. We are able to plan for this and
>(usually) take preventative maintenance. Freeserve don't stand a
>chance, no matter how good their engineers are. Then again, they quite
>possibly don't care.
So you believe Freeserve will not be able to cope in the long-term?
Would would have thought in the short term maybe, long term the future looks
very good.
Other Free ISP's as resellers can get kick backs of up to 0.5p per min
(volume based) now what does a Telco make when they deal direct, almost
cutting out the middle man.
I would have the revenue more than adequate to fund the company.
Also are you saying that Freeserve have less caring or competent staff?
I can list many an ISP you pay ( Global Internet being the obvious choice
from experience) that have been well below the relatively poor existing
industry standard.
>Please take this stuff as IMO. Also, if it makes you feel better,
>please substitute Nildram with your favourite ISP (with the proviso
>that your favourite ISP isn't a telco trying to cash in on the
>Internet).
How do you explain Pipex?
They are part of UUNET - a wholly owned subsidiary of Worldcom, their
service and quality are probably amongst the few at the top of the industry.
Now surely by your logic, them being Telco owned, they are not playing by
the rules.
I am not being personal here but how big is Nildram, I have heard of them
but never considered using them.
I would have thought that unless you are one of the top 5 ISP's then these
free services are a serious threat.
You talk of bandwidth problems and poor support, as more of these services
enter the market, the strain on bandwidth will be eased through distribution
of users, Freenet is faster than it has been for a long time, probably
partly due to Freeserve and swarms of people moving over to try it.
Also they will need to compete with each other, services are always going to
be similar, there is no price to undercut so speed will be important, as
will support.
These services have their own battle to fight with each other, as a
consequence smaller ISP's and resellers will suffer - and eventually fail.
Now I believe that one day, all ISP's will be owned by Telcos, and fee based
subscriptions just won't exist for the home user.
I hope you consider moving into telephone market, as Easynet have, I fear
that it may be the only way your company will survive.
--
Marcus
Just a man who has used most of the biggest ISP's in the last year and would
rate Pipex as the *only* worthwhile UK ISP, but for free, Freeserve is more
than tolerable :-)
Adrian Mardlin
<nos...@no.spam.please> wrote:
>>2) It is in Nildram's financial interest to provide fast, high
>>performance connection to the Internet to allow people to stay on-line
>>for less time to do what they have to do, and keep them as subscribers
>>who are paying for and expect a certain quality of service. It is in
>>Freeserve's financial interest to buy as little internet bandwidth as
>>they can get away with as that will mean people spend longer on-line
>>(more call revenue), and quality Internet bandwidth costs money.
>
>
>To a point, Freeserve, if they wish to play that game, have to be very
>careful as to where they draw the line.
>Too fast and revenue drops, too slow - revenue *will* drop.
>Remember it is a free service people will stop using it if it gets too slow,
>thus Freeserve make no money.
You'd be surprised at what people will put up with!
>
>
>>4) Nildram is growing at a steady, sustainable rate. As we grow, some
>>systems get overloaded and break. We are able to plan for this and
>>(usually) take preventative maintenance. Freeserve don't stand a
>>chance, no matter how good their engineers are. Then again, they quite
>>possibly don't care.
>
>
>So you believe Freeserve will not be able to cope in the long-term?
I believe that in the very short term they should be ok as they have
obviously pre-provisioned etc. Medium term they will have reliability
problems, long term they will get a lot of it sorted, but will have
performance problems. That's just my personal prediction.
>Would would have thought in the short term maybe, long term the future looks
>very good.
>Other Free ISP's as resellers can get kick backs of up to 0.5p per min
>(volume based) now what does a Telco make when they deal direct, almost
>cutting out the middle man.
>I would have the revenue more than adequate to fund the company.
Absolutely, but there is only one Telco I know of offering such a high
kick-back, and they are providing a complete service, and IMO,
definitely haven't got a clue about the Internet side of things.
>
>Also are you saying that Freeserve have less caring or competent staff?
>I can list many an ISP you pay ( Global Internet being the obvious choice
>from experience) that have been well below the relatively poor existing
>industry standard.
>
There will always be those who are below the industry standard, and
all providers will have some (ex-)customers who really didn't get on
with them. The Freeserve support, from what I can gather, is provided
by Dixons Mastercare division, who may be able to tell you how to fix
your fridge, but will not have much of a clue when it comes to the
internet, and will be too isolated from those who provide the service
to adequately support it.
>
>>Please take this stuff as IMO. Also, if it makes you feel better,
>>please substitute Nildram with your favourite ISP (with the proviso
>>that your favourite ISP isn't a telco trying to cash in on the
>>Internet).
>
>
>How do you explain Pipex?
>They are part of UUNET - a wholly owned subsidiary of Worldcom, their
>service and quality are probably amongst the few at the top of the industry.
Easy. Re-read my bit - I carefully worded it. Pipex & UUNet still act
fairly autonomously from the MFS/Worldcom side. Likewise Demon and
Scottish Telecom. The sort of names I was thinking of were BT, Cable &
Wireless, Telinco or maybe your local cable company...
>
>You talk of bandwidth problems and poor support, as more of these services
>enter the market, the strain on bandwidth will be eased through distribution
>of users, Freenet is faster than it has been for a long time, probably
>partly due to Freeserve and swarms of people moving over to try it.
>Also they will need to compete with each other, services are always going to
>be similar, there is no price to undercut so speed will be important, as
>will support.
>These services have their own battle to fight with each other, as a
>consequence smaller ISP's and resellers will suffer - and eventually fail.
>
To be brutally honest, we're getting to a level of consumerism here
where it's not the best that wins, it's the best marketed, or that
with the most familiar brand. That's why people like Virgin Net and
Which Online have succeeded - they don't gain customers based on
quality of service, but by use of their names.
>Now I believe that one day, all ISP's will be owned by Telcos, and fee based
>subscriptions just won't exist for the home user.
>
>I hope you consider moving into telephone market, as Easynet have, I fear
>that it may be the only way your company will survive.
>
I'm a little more optimistic than that. A while ago, someone was
quoted as saying 'get big, get niche or get out'. Many of us
small-to-middling ISPs are niche in our own ways, and I think we're
actually more able to weather any storms that come along than some of
the bigger guys are.
As for becoming a telco, no thanks! (famous last words, that!)
Adrian
Iain
wrote:
>On Wed, 30 Sep 1998 14:06:27 +0100, "Bargain Bin"
><nos...@no.spam.please> wrote:
>
<snip>
>
>There will always be those who are below the industry standard, and
>all providers will have some (ex-)customers who really didn't get on
>with them. The Freeserve support, from what I can gather, is provided
>by Dixons Mastercare division, who may be able to tell you how to fix
>your fridge, but will not have much of a clue when it comes to the
>internet, and will be too isolated from those who provide the service
>to adequately support it.
>
Mastercare consists of
Mastercare Brown Goods
Mastercare White Goods
Mastercare Distribution
Mastercare PC Services
possibly now Mastercare Freeserve Tech support
All different divisions of the Mastercare , Brown goods will not fix
your fridge or your PC similarly PC Services will not repair your
Video of fridge.
Nigel Metheringham
>3) Wise ISPs understand issue such as bandwidth, contention ratios
>etc. Telcos in general understand switch minutes and very little else.
I'd just like to comment that Planet have been a sucessful ISP for a
while. We have only been bought by the telco recently. Now we have
had no tech team changes since, so our competance (or otherwise) as an
ISP should not have significantly changed (I hope we are stll gaining
yet more experience).
So its not just a telco jumping in with big wellies!
Mark Goodge
wrote:
>On Wed, 30 Sep 1998 10:46:45 +0100, "Steve Manners"
><st...@manners.freeserve.co.uk> wrote:
>
>>>Experienced Internet users will probably stay clear, wary of poor
>>>performance. Freeserve will mainly attract domestic users who are entirely
>>>new to the Internet.
>>
>>Ouch, not for a moment in my view. Almost every single user here is very
>>experienced I think you'll find. I personally am dropping BT to be here,
>>others quote the systems they are dropping. Some have mentioned your
>>company.
>
>I think you'll find a lot of people are trying freeserve, after all
>they have nothing to lose. I doubt if many are immediately abandoning
>their ISPs in favour of it.
Indeed. Heck, I *work* for an ISP, but I've signed up for my Freeserve
account as well. The more dial-up connections I've got on my PC the
better, and if some of them are free backups to the ones I normally
use then that's all to the good.
Mark
--
Visit Mark's World at http://www.good-stuff.co.uk/mark/
Mark Goodge
<st...@manners.freeserve.co.uk> wrote:
> I think the advent of free services on one national
>number in the UK is different, and almost everyone here talks of droppinbg
>their existing ISP and simply using Freeserve and saving hundreds of pounds
>per year.
The problem is that you can't. Not if you want to be able to access
your home email from your office PC, not if you want to be able to
connect up when travelling abroad, not if you want webspace that
allows you to run cgi, not if you want friendly tech support that you
don't have to pay extra for, not if you want to use a real domanin
name instead of a subdomain, not if you want to use a non-wintel
platform[1], not if you want a solution that will scale with the
growth of your business.
In other words, for a lot of people, Freeserve are not an option. And
those for whom it is, are not those that the major commercial ISPs are
making money from anyway. Now, if someone starts offering free T1
lines...
Mark
[1] Strictly speaking, that's not true. Freeserve say that you need to
use their CD and IE4 to signup, but anyone with the necessary nous can
bypass that quite easily.
Mark Goodge
something else]
On Wed, 30 Sep 1998 10:22:42 GMT, co...@nildram.net (Colin Swan)
wrote:
>
>I think you'll find a lot of people are trying freeserve, after all
>they have nothing to lose. I doubt if many are immediately abandoning
>their ISPs in favour of it.
In fact, it must be in Energis's business plan to target net newbies
almost exclusively. They're making their money from the phone calls to
their lines; the internet acess is provided free simply to persuade
people to make more calls (hence the restrictions on accessing the
servers from non-Freeserve connections).
This will only work if the total number of calls increases; if people
simply switch from other ISPs to Freeserve then Energis won't gain
anything - the amount they gain from Freeserve will be offset by the
loss of business on other ISP lines. For Freeserve to work,
financially, it has to increase the overall number of calls to Energis
lines significantly, and that will only happen if it expands the home
user market. That's probably one of the reasons why you can't register
online, you have to go into Dixons to pick up a CD.
Mark
and...@newtonsols.net
> Remember it is a free service people will stop using it if it gets too slow,
> thus Freeserve make no money.
In my experience, the average user is not capable of identifying the cause
of poor performance. It's either "I can't get connected fast enough" or "the
Internet is slow again tonight". Most people are not skilled enough to judge
and make valid comparisons between the onward Internet connectivity of
different ISPs.
So, while it's true that the more able users might ditch free services on
performance grounds, the majority will not. You only need to look at some of
the current dialup ISPs to see that they are able to hold on to users
indefinitely despite offering a piss-poor service. If they can do that at a
tenner a month, what can they get away with on a free basis? :)
> Also are you saying that Freeserve have less caring or competent staff?
> I can list many an ISP you pay ( Global Internet being the obvious choice
> from experience) that have been well below the relatively poor existing
> industry standard.
I think Adrian's point is not a financial argument, more a recognition of
the current situation. In this country at least, telco's make crappy ISPs.
If you look at a source like the Internet Magazine listings (their
methodology is a little flawed, but the tests do have value) you'll see that
telco-owned ISPs are all towards the bottom of the list, and the small
independents are at the top.
This, IMHO, is because telco's don't understand the Internet. They have too
much money and not enough spirit of fun. They are used to specifying,
designing, and rolling out a new project over a decade - but new Internet
technologies come out every day.
> How do you explain Pipex?
> They are part of UUNET - a wholly owned subsidiary of Worldcom, their
> service and quality are probably amongst the few at the top of the industry.
Pipex are an above average ISP, but they're far from the best. The success
they currently have is due, IMHO, to them keeping a large degree of
independence from the parent organisation. This is a good thing - ISPs need
to be as independent as possible.
> I am not being personal here but how big is Nildram, I have heard of them
> but never considered using them. I would have thought that unless you are
> one of the top 5 ISP's then these free services are a serious threat.
Top five in size, or in performance? While certainly smaller, Nildram
consistently performs better than BTnet, C&W. Demon, Pipex, PSInet..
> Now I believe that one day, all ISP's will be owned by Telcos, and fee based
> subscriptions just won't exist for the home user.
This is almost certainly true. The question is, is it a good thing? Wouldn't
you rather pay a monthly fixed fee to the ISP and have free calls? The
current "free" internet movement is, after all, just taking advantage of the
ridiculous call charging model in this country.
Think about this:
* If you call, on a BT line, from Aberdeen to London,
they will charge you, off peak, 3.55p/min.
* If you call, from Aberdeen, an 0845 number which
terminates in London, they will charge you 1p/min
off peak, and yet make enough profit to GIVE THE
CALL RECIPIENT A KICKBACK.
I conclude therefore that all telco's are making obscene profits which are
against the interests of the public, and that they should not be allowed to
wade in, throw some money around, and break the Internet.
--
Andrew Crawford
+44 1883 626244
Liam
>At the risk of flooding this thread with posts from Nildram staff, I'd
>like to just raise a few thought points.
>
>1) It is in Nildram's financial interest to keep support calls to a
>minimum. It is in Freeserve's financial interest to have as many
>support calls as possible.
>
>2) It is in Nildram's financial interest to provide fast, high
>performance connection to the Internet to allow people to stay on-line
>for less time to do what they have to do, and keep them as subscribers
>who are paying for and expect a certain quality of service. It is in
>Freeserve's financial interest to buy as little internet bandwidth as
>they can get away with as that will mean people spend longer on-line
>(more call revenue), and quality Internet bandwidth costs money.
>
>3) Wise ISPs understand issue such as bandwidth, contention ratios
>etc. Telcos in general understand switch minutes and very little else.
>
>4) Nildram is growing at a steady, sustainable rate. As we grow, some
>systems get overloaded and break. We are able to plan for this and
>(usually) take preventative maintenance. Freeserve don't stand a
>chance, no matter how good their engineers are. Then again, they quite
>possibly don't care.
>
>Please take this stuff as IMO. Also, if it makes you feel better,
>please substitute Nildram with your favourite ISP (with the proviso
>that your favourite ISP isn't a telco trying to cash in on the
>Internet).
>
>Regards,
>
>Adrian Mardlin
>Managing Director
>Nildram Ltd
>
Sounds like the sort of thing you hear from an ISP who can see "the writing
on the wall"!
What you are forgetting is that it is DIXONS who are heavily involved in
Freeserve. A pretty formidable competitor in anyones book.
It is common knowledge within Dixons that the company intends that Freeserve
will be the No. 1 UK internet service provider. Maybe not this month or next
month, but not too far down the line.
Believe you me, if that is what they are planning, then I wouldn't like to
put money on the other ones.
Liam
Mark Johnson
<6uuhma$t53$1...@newsreader1.core.theplanet.net>...
>
> What you are forgetting is that it is DIXONS who are heavily
involved in
> Freeserve. A pretty formidable competitor in anyones book.
> It is common knowledge within Dixons that the company intends that
Freeserve
> will be the No. 1 UK internet service provider. Maybe not this
month or next
> month, but not too far down the line.
>
If by "No. 1 UK internet service provider" you mean the most signed
up to ISP then I'm sure you are right. If you mean the No.1 in terms
of quality of service and reliability then I think I could safely bet
a few quid that it ain't gonna happen!
I am also of the opinion that this CAN be a good thing for the UK
internet industry as a whole by greatly enlarging the market and
creating customers willing to pay for additional internet services
that either Freeserve don't provide or are too expensive. Maybe a
technical support number at 50p per minute anyone? Maybe a quality
news service at 2.00 per month anyone? The list is endless!
--
Mark Johnson
MJoh...@gemsoft.net
http://www.gemsoft.net/
Please remove "NoSpam" from reply to address
Colin Price
<ma...@good-stuff.co.uk> writes
<Previous contributions snipped>
> That's probably one of the reasons why you can't register
>online, you have to go into Dixons to pick up a CD.
>
This is not true - I registered online. I haven't even seen a CD, let
alone used one. Postings seen elsewhere suggest that the dreaded CD
mucks up existing Internet settings, so I deliberately avoided it.
Regards,
--
Colin Price
Adrian Mardlin
Metheringham) wrote:
>At Wed, 30 Sep 1998 12:04:07 GMT, Adrian Mardlin said:-
>>3) Wise ISPs understand issue such as bandwidth, contention ratios
>>etc. Telcos in general understand switch minutes and very little else.
>
>I'd just like to comment that Planet have been a sucessful ISP for a
>while. We have only been bought by the telco recently. Now we have
>had no tech team changes since, so our competance (or otherwise) as an
>ISP should not have significantly changed (I hope we are stll gaining
>yet more experience).
>
>So its not just a telco jumping in with big wellies!
>
And that's probably the second most scary thing about this particular
'free' offering (the scariest being that they give away the CDs at
Dixons).
I'm sure Planet will continue to do a top job for their corporate
customers. However, a couple of things strike me as being obvious
problems for the Freeserve customers.
1) When the bandwidth usage increases dramatically from the dial-ups,
you will probably have to put in some bandwidth controls to stop it
affecting your business customers
2) One of the biggest problems with dealing with Telcos is that the
people who answer the phones know nothing about the engineering side,
and those who do the engineering don't have to talk to customers and
pay the penalty for their crimes, therefore there is less incentive to
get it right first time. I see nothing different with the Freeserve
situation.
Adrian
Roland Perry
>simply switch from other ISPs to Freeserve then Energis won't gain
>anything - the amount they gain from Freeserve will be offset by the
>loss of business on other ISP lines.
No. The existing inbound ISP traffic to Energis will have a significant
proportion of vPoP numbers, which are both contracted for years in advance
by the ISP *and* have much less inbound revenue for Energis - so even if
those lines dry up completely, there is no significant loss of revenue to
Energis.
--
Roland Perry
Roland Perry
writes
>
>I conclude therefore that all telco's are making obscene profits which are
>against the interests of the public, and that they should not be allowed to
>wade in, throw some money around, and break the Internet.
This does not, however, appear to be the case. BT makes about the same
percentage profit on turnover as businesses in other sectors [around 15% iirc]
and when I last looked Energis had consistently made losses.
--
Roland Perry
Nick Humphries
>What you are forgetting is that it is DIXONS who are heavily involved in
>Freeserve. A pretty formidable competitor in anyones book.
>It is common knowledge within Dixons that the company intends that Freeserve
>will be the No. 1 UK internet service provider. Maybe not this month or next
>month, but not too far down the line.
>
>put money on the other ones.
This argument is flawed. If a "formidable competitor" launches a new service,
it doesn't guarantee success at all. The service has to stand by itself. An
example would be Scottish Widows backing FreeMail, just as Dixons are backing
Freeserve.
And before anyone jumps on me for saying that, I'll point out that it doesn't
guarantee failure neither. Depends how you're biased really.
-------------------------------------------------------
Nick Humphries, ni...@the-den.clara.net, at your service
-------------------------------------------------------
The Your Sinclair Rock'n'Roll Years
http://www.the-den.clara.net/ys/cover.htm
Now with hundreds of articles!!
-------------------------------------------------------
and...@cwci.net
>>While certainly smaller, Nildram
>>consistently performs better than BTnet, C&W. Demon, Pipex, PSInet..
> Your evidence for this is what, precisely ?
There's not a lot of hard evidence on these matters. My statement was based
on my personal experience of each of the named ISPs. As well as having
experienced all of them as a customer at one time or another, I've worked
for four of them.
As it happens, things like the Internet Magazine ratings do rather bear me
out. Their month to month ratings are of limited value, but I believe the
six month tables are quite useful.
Mark Goodge
<Co...@frogmore6.freeserve.co.uk> wrote:
>In article <361d88ee...@bobble.good-stuff.co.uk>, Mark Goodge
><ma...@good-stuff.co.uk> writes
>
><Previous contributions snipped>
>
>> That's probably one of the reasons why you can't register
>>online, you have to go into Dixons to pick up a CD.
>>
>This is not true - I registered online. I haven't even seen a CD, let
>alone used one. Postings seen elsewhere suggest that the dreaded CD
>mucks up existing Internet settings, so I deliberately avoided it.
How? I looked at the website, and it specifically mentions that you
can't register online.
(You can, of course, get hold of the CD's signup.isp details from the
net somewhere and put them in manually, which is what I did, but
that's not what I meant. Freeserve themselves don't offer an online
registration).
Mark Goodge
Liam wrote:
>
> What you are forgetting is that it is DIXONS who are heavily involved in
> Freeserve. A pretty formidable competitor in anyones book.
> It is common knowledge within Dixons that the company intends that Freeserve
> will be the No. 1 UK internet service provider. Maybe not this month or next
> month, but not too far down the line.
No company that focusses solely on the domestic market will ever be the
"No. 1" UK ISP. They might get to be the ISP with the largest number of
home users, but that's not the same thing.
> Believe you me, if that is what they are planning, then I wouldn't like to
> put money on the other ones.
I'd put my money on the ISPs that sell to people who want more than a
heavily restricted home dial-up service. The business model for Internet
access is changing, and I don't think it's impossible that most people
will soon get their basic dial-up at home free, courtesy of their phone
or cable company. But that is not, and never has been, the market sector
where real money is to be made.
Freeserve will be bad news for some small dial-up providers. But it's
good news for niche suppliers and providers of webhosting, corporate
connectivity, online content and value-added services.
JB (sensible)
>making money from anyway. Now, if someone starts offering free T1
>lines...
>
Easy: go to university.
If you've already been, do a postgrad or summat ;)
Marcus
>On 30 Sep 98 20:07:59 GMT, and...@newtonsols.net wrote:
>
>>While certainly smaller, Nildram
>>consistently performs better than BTnet, C&W. Demon, Pipex, PSInet..
>
>Your evidence for this is what, precisely ?
Well, I'll admit I'm surprised by the result but:
Internet Magazine ISP Tests (the performance bible!), gives the following
results for performance over the last 6 months (averaged):
No. 1 - Technocom (First!)
No. 5 - Nildram
No. 19 - Pipex Dial
No. 27 - Netcom Internet
No. 38 - Telinco (Providers of Freenet etc.)
No. 51 - BT Internet
No. 53 - Global Internet
No. 72 - Which? Online
No. 75 - Virgin Net
No. 78 - Cable & Wireless
No. 89 - UK Online (Last!)
This months results (for last month tested only) show:
Nildram at No. 8, still above all the others named here.
Availability % = 98.94
The Highest score of the group above
Average Webspeed = 20.38
About 12.5% faster than it's closest rival from those named above (Netcom)
and 133% faster than it's slowest rival. (C&W Internet)
I actually think this is pretty impressive for a small ISP, not only have
they done well this month, they have come out very high over a 6 month
period.
Credit where credit is due.
--
Marcus
Note: Remove ' * ' from e-mail address to reply.
PS: I am in no way connected to Nildram - I'm not even a customer!
Mark Goodge
Wouldn't help.
I've already got all the connectivity I want at work. It's my PC at
home that feels a bit disconnected!
Iain Ogilvie
>In article <6v24mr$ovf$1...@newsreader2.core.theplanet.net>,
> m.sharma*@digitalmail.com ("Marcus") wrote:
>
>> Internet Magazine ISP Tests (the performance bible!), gives the following
>
>
>The TD of one ISP was told "you'll get higher up the table if you take some
>advertising space".
So it's all a conspiracy then?
I can personally guarantee that the fact we advertise with them has had
absolutely no bearing on these tests whatsoever.
Nildram is a privately owned, technically led company, run by knowledgeable
people, who are also Internet enthusiasts. We've even had to introduce a
midnight curfew in order to make sure our staff actually go home at night!
:o)
We take a pride in our service and our levels of support. We do not flood
the market with cover CDs or free trials, we prefer to grow at a sustainable
rate, constantly improving our network infrastructure as we grow. That's why
we do well in the independent tests, not bribery! :o)
Regards,
Colin Price
<ma...@good-stuff.co.uk> writes
>
>How? I looked at the website, and it specifically mentions that you
>can't register online.
This is true if you try to register via an existing connection.
>
>(You can, of course, get hold of the CD's signup.isp details from the
>net somewhere and put them in manually, which is what I did, but
>that's not what I meant. Freeserve themselves don't offer an online
>registration).
>
We may be slightly at cross-purposes here. FWIW, I set up a connectoid
in DUN, name Freeserve, phone no 0845 079669, DUN log on
freeservesignup, password signup. I then pointed my browser at
https://signup.freeserve.net and followed the instructions. Afterwards,
I deleted the connectoid and set up my existing software to use the new
account. I didn't need to use the CD at all.
If know about this route already, then apologies for teaching
grandmother to suck eggs :)
Regards,
--
Colin Price
Mark Goodge
<Co...@frogmore6.freeserve.co.uk> wrote:
>In article <3616e407...@bobble.good-stuff.co.uk>, Mark Goodge
><ma...@good-stuff.co.uk> writes
>>
>>How? I looked at the website, and it specifically mentions that you
>>can't register online.
>
>This is true if you try to register via an existing connection.
>>
>>(You can, of course, get hold of the CD's signup.isp details from the
>>net somewhere and put them in manually, which is what I did, but
>>that's not what I meant. Freeserve themselves don't offer an online
>>registration).
>>
>We may be slightly at cross-purposes here. FWIW, I set up a connectoid
>in DUN, name Freeserve, phone no 0845 079669, DUN log on
>freeservesignup, password signup. I then pointed my browser at
>https://signup.freeserve.net and followed the instructions. Afterwards,
>I deleted the connectoid and set up my existing software to use the new
>account. I didn't need to use the CD at all.
Ah, yes, that's how I did it too. However, by doing so, we both
bypassed the "official" registration system, which doesn't offer an
online option.
>If know about this route already, then apologies for teaching
>grandmother to suck eggs :)
Fair enough!
and...@newtonsols.net
> As a matter of interest only (honestly !), did you say the same
> things about your then employers when you worked for BTNet, CWC,
> Demon and Pipex ?
Honestly, no :) In fact, I don't currently work for Nildram, but I do choose
to be a paying customer of theirs despite working for one of the other
providers listed, who would give me the same service free.
> IMO it is incredibly difficult to rate ISPs in any kind of "test" -
> not least because there are just so many variables to consider. I
> would always ask to speak to 2 or 3 existing customers before making
> any major commitment.
That's a reasonable approach. One thing I find interesting is to do a
dejanews search for references to the company (for instance "nildram ISP").
Particularly, the ISPs local groups are usually informative reading. (If the
ISP doesn't let the local groups leave their network, take that as a bad
sign! :) )
Jonathan Baker-Bates
>they have nothing to lose. I doubt if many are immediately abandoning
>their ISPs in favour of it.
I am. After using Freeserve for the past couple of weeks, I think it's at
least as good as my existing BT connection.
JJ
Colin Swan wrote in message <3611ff9f...@goodnews.nildram.co.uk>...
>On Wed, 30 Sep 1998 10:46:45 +0100, "Steve Manners"
><st...@manners.freeserve.co.uk> wrote:
>
>>>Experienced Internet users will probably stay clear, wary of poor
>>>performance. Freeserve will mainly attract domestic users who are
entirely
>>>new to the Internet.
>>
>>Ouch, not for a moment in my view. Almost every single user here is very
>>experienced I think you'll find. I personally am dropping BT to be here,
>>others quote the systems they are dropping. Some have mentioned your
>>company.
>
>I think you'll find a lot of people are trying freeserve, after all
>they have nothing to lose. I doubt if many are immediately abandoning
>their ISPs in favour of it.
>
>>So you feel Energis is poor at performance and so on? I doubt that, and
>>they are in the background for a lot of folks online already.
Freeserve
>>does appear to have major service problems, and for some weird reason not
to
>>have setup its support or modems etc properly and with a lot of thought,
but
>>I guess we all hope that will be resolved quickly - even if nobody from
>>Freeserve is in here telling us it will be.
>
>No, Energis are not poor performing, but allowing free access to a
>provider, no matter how good they are is a surefire recipe for engaged
>tones, slow connects and poor network performance. OK, so it may be
>useable now, although I have heard reports of busy tones, but just
>wait until more people start using it. You yourself say that they have
>major service problems, so I don't understand why you have been so
>quick to drop your current provider...
>
>>>may need to pay and will start looking around at other services. In the
>>long
>>>term, they will help expand the Internet market within the UK, which is
>>good
>>>for all ISPs. I wonder if they realise just how much potential long term
>>>marketing they are doing for their competitors?
>>
>>
>>That has always worked in the ISP business I know, AOL advertises and
>>everyone gains etc. I think the advent of free services on one national
>>number in the UK is different, and almost everyone here talks of droppinbg
>>their existing ISP and simply using Freeserve and saving hundreds of
pounds
>>per year.
>
>So, they will save between 100 - 120 pounds per year by not having to
>pay a subscription, but you take a chance that you will not be
>spending extra on your phone bills due to the overall service being
>slow. I suspect that the real saving will be much less than you say
>and will not be worth it for most people in view of the extra
>frustration that I am sure will arise. Then there's the cost of
>support - you could easily blow any saving on that :-)
>
>>I agree, and if for instance your company drops all charges I am sure it
>>will have many more customers. If it competes on a charged v non charged
>>basis I suspect it won't make it long term, the UK market is not the US
>>market etc and there probably won't be much room left once we get several
>>more major free services as is said to be likely real soon now.
>
>The market is big enough to allow for both free services and fast,
>high quality subscription services. There are other countries who
>have major free services and it seems to be the case that everyone has
>a free account, as well as one they pay a subscription for. This is
>simply due to the free services not being very good and them not being
>able to rely on it for their connectivity.
>
>I think that there is a general romantic notion that the Internet
>should be free, and people are seeing that Freeserve is realising this
>dream. The reality is that Internet connectivity costs money,
>especially in the UK, and this money has to come from somewhere. Add
>to that the fact that all ISPs are businesses and need to make some
>profit somewhere along the line, and you will see that there really is
>no free Internet. All Freeserve are doing is using a different way of
>getting their money, but in the grand scheme of things, it is the user
>who still pays...
>
>These views are entirely my own and do not represent the views of my
>employers.
>
>
>Regards,
>
>Colin Swan
>Nildram Technical Support
Colin Swan
<j...@bbates.freeserve.NOSPAM.co.uk> wrote:
>>I think you'll find a lot of people are trying freeserve, after all
>>they have nothing to lose. I doubt if many are immediately abandoning
>>their ISPs in favour of it.
>
>I am. After using Freeserve for the past couple of weeks, I think it's at
>least as good as my existing BT connection.
I think that say's something about the BT service :-) Seriously
though, aren't you being a bit premature here, after all, Freeserve
have only been running for a few weeks.
Jonathan Baker-Bates
I could pahse it back in if Freeserve goes west of course.
JJ
Colin Swan wrote in message <361630e7....@goodnews.nildram.co.uk>...
KenG
Jonathan Baker-Bates wrote in message
<6v6bs6$6ji$1...@newsreader1.core.theplanet.net>...
>Perhaps. In fact I plan to phase out my BT account over the next few
months.
>I could pahse it back in if Freeserve goes west of course.
>
>JJ
At present rates, JJ customers will be thin on the ground for BTi, and
they deserve all they get. BTi is one of the worst ISPs for quality of
service and customer care. I am amazed that some people stay with them
when there are far better ISPs around. If a garage kept making a balls
of servicing your car would you keep going back in the hopes they would
get it right one day? It seems we apply different standards to ISPs,
perhaps because the internet is new to a lot of people and they don't
know any better. If nothing else Freeserve will shake up other ISPs and
maybe they will put their houses in order, and regarding BTi - maybe
pigs will fly.
KenG
Mike Griffiths
and
>they deserve all they get. BTi is one of the worst ISPs for quality
of
>service and customer care. I am amazed that some people stay with
them
>when there are far better ISPs around. If a garage kept making a
balls
>of servicing your car would you keep going back in the hopes they
would
>get it right one day?
It's a lot easier to take a car to a different garage than it is to
tell everyone you know who sends you e-mail you've changed your
address. People stay with ISPs because otherwise they have to send out
copies of their new adress to everyone, and even then someone may be
missed. That's the reason I stayed with AOL for six months after teh
free month, and why I'm staying with Global for another six months at
least before moving here completely. I've told teh most frequent users
fo my adress I'm moving, and I've got a automatic reply telling
anybody else where I've gone, but I can't just give it up like that.
Jonathan Baker-Bates
You have GOT to be joking! Internet Magazine is as biased as all hell. If
they slagged off a major advertiser, the publisher would kill that article
dead. The positioning is purely political.
JJ
Mike Nield
Adrian Mardlin wrote in message
<36123af6....@goodnews.nildram.co.uk>...
{SNIP}
>Easy. Re-read my bit - I carefully worded it. Pipex & UUNet still act
>fairly autonomously from the MFS/Worldcom side. Likewise Demon and
>Scottish Telecom. The sort of names I was thinking of were BT, Cable &
>Wireless, Telinco or maybe your local cable company...
Adrian,
The term "your local cable company" suggests that the British cable industry
still consists of many small cable companies running a franchise or two here
and there - WRONG! There are now only five (last time I counted) Cable
Companies and the three major ones are Telewest, CWC & NTL. To defend the
cable companies I honestly think you are very wrong to suggest that they, or
any other major telco, don't have a decent understanding of the internet.
They all know it's the future and are spending big money to make sure they
play a part in it. Speaking for Telewest (which incorporates Cable
Internet) I can tell you that a hell of lot money has been spent on the
building the internet side of the business over the last 3-4 years and we
understand more than "switch minutes and very little else" as you put it.
I'm sure CWC and NTL are pretty much the same.
As for Energis and Freeserve - time will tell but it has certainly made
people stop and look.
Mike
==============================================
Mike Nield
Data Network Engineering & Internet
Telewest Communications (inc. Cable Internet)
==============================================
Adrian Mardlin
wrote:
>
>Adrian Mardlin wrote in message
><36123af6....@goodnews.nildram.co.uk>...
>
>{SNIP}
>
>>Easy. Re-read my bit - I carefully worded it. Pipex & UUNet still act
>>fairly autonomously from the MFS/Worldcom side. Likewise Demon and
>>Scottish Telecom. The sort of names I was thinking of were BT, Cable &
>>Wireless, Telinco or maybe your local cable company...
>
>
>Adrian,
>
>The term "your local cable company" suggests that the British cable industry
>still consists of many small cable companies running a franchise or two here
>and there - WRONG! There are now only five (last time I counted) Cable
>Companies and the three major ones are Telewest, CWC & NTL. To defend the
>cable companies I honestly think you are very wrong to suggest that they, or
>any other major telco, don't have a decent understanding of the internet.
>They all know it's the future and are spending big money to make sure they
>play a part in it. Speaking for Telewest (which incorporates Cable
>Internet) I can tell you that a hell of lot money has been spent on the
>building the internet side of the business over the last 3-4 years and we
>understand more than "switch minutes and very little else" as you put it.
>I'm sure CWC and NTL are pretty much the same.
>
Credit where credit's due - I think Telewest have generally done a
good job of being an ISP and understanding the business. I'm afraid I
wouldn't personally say the same of CWC. NTL's internet business model
seems largely geared around dial-up so they can sell switch minutes on
their own network, and there are still a handful of other cable
companies (Diamond, Telecential, General Telecom come to mind)...
Adrian
Paul Womar
> Credit where credit's due - I think Telewest have generally done a
> good job of being an ISP and understanding the business.
Credit where credit is due and Telewst are not 2 things I'd expect to
see in the same sentence, I'm sure Ron will agree.
--
-> The email address in this message *IS* Valid <-
Clive D.W. Feather
writes
>Just out of interest, could you please post here (follow-ups reset) the
>flaws in the Internet Magazines methodology that skews results for the ISPs
>that they test? I for one would like to know what weight can be given to
>the survey and the suggestion of bias is disturbing - assuming that there
>are grounds for it.
I don't know what the current flaws are, since I don't know what the
current methodology is (it often isn't published). However, whenever
I've looked in the past, it has emphasises first-time connection without
an engaged tone over almost everything else, including ability to reach
the rest of the world.
At least one previous system gave a higher score for a provider that
offered 14k4 connections every time and no 28k8 service than another
provider that offered 28k8 and an average rate of 28k3 - they seemed to
think that averge/maximum was more important that anything else.
--
Clive D.W. Feather | Regulation Officer, LINX | Work: <cl...@linx.org>
Tel: +44 1733 705000 | (on secondment from | Home: <cd...@i.am>
Fax: +44 1733 353929 | Demon Internet) | <http://i.am/davros>
Written on my laptop; please observe the Reply-To address
Paul Wright
Mike Griffiths <mi...@griffnet.freeserve.co.uk> wrote:
>It's a lot easier to take a car to a different garage than it is to
>tell everyone you know who sends you e-mail you've changed your
>address. People stay with ISPs because otherwise they have to send out
>copies of their new adress to everyone, and even then someone may be
>missed. That's the reason I stayed with AOL for six months after teh
>free month, and why I'm staying with Global for another six months at
>least before moving here completely. I've told teh most frequent users
>fo my adress I'm moving, and I've got a automatic reply telling
>anybody else where I've gone, but I can't just give it up like that.
www.pobox.com is your friend. Pay them $15 per year (or something like
that) and they forward your mail for you. Handy eh? You can also get
free services that do the same thing (eg Bigfoot) but in some way I feel
happier about paying a small amount to a company who seem clued up about
it.
(I am not associated with pobox, except as a customer).
--
Paul Wright | O'Riordan's Theorem: Brains x Beauty = Constant.
paul_...@pobox.com| Purmal's Corollary: As the limit of (Brains x Beauty)
www.pobox.com/~pw201 | goes to infinity, availability goes to zero.
Darren Pardoe
6v80rh$ekm$4...@newsreader2.core.theplanet.net...
>It's a lot easier to take a car to a different garage than it is to
>tell everyone you know who sends you e-mail you've changed your
>address. People stay with ISPs because otherwise they have to send out
>copies of their new adress to everyone, and even then someone may be
>missed. That's the reason I stayed with AOL for six months after teh
>free month, and why I'm staying with Global for another six months at
>least before moving here completely. I've told teh most frequent users
>fo my adress I'm moving, and I've got a automatic reply telling
>anybody else where I've gone, but I can't just give it up like that.
Get yourself a virtual e-mail address. Take a look at www.usa.com and keep
your e-mail address for life.
Daz
Alasdair Allan
> www.pobox.com is your friend. Pay them $15 per year (or something like
> that) and they forward your mail for you. Handy eh? You can also get
> free services that do the same thing (eg Bigfoot) but in some way I feel
> happier about paying a small amount to a company who seem clued up about
> it.
>
> (I am not associated with pobox, except as a customer).
Iname offer the same service but they have a couple of hundred domain names
to choose from. You can get *@iname.com for free or pay a nominal sum for
any of their other domains.
null.net is one such domain. Although those of us who arranged it when
they had just started their service got even these domains for free :-).
Again, no connection other than that as a satisfied (non) customer. They
appear to be linked the the Yahoo white pages service four11 and can be
found at :-
http://www.iname.com
--
Alasdair Allan |I chose not to choose life,
x-st...@null.net |I chose something else...
X-Static's Rangers Webzine |Scottish Football
http://www.x-static.demon.co.uk/ |
Adrian Mardlin
Womar) wrote:
>Adrian Mardlin <adr...@nildram.net> wrote:
>
>> Credit where credit's due - I think Telewest have generally done a
>> good job of being an ISP and understanding the business.
>
>Credit where credit is due and Telewst are not 2 things I'd expect to
>see in the same sentence, I'm sure Ron will agree.
I cannot speak for their dial-up service or customer care, of course,
but was giving credit for the perceived quality of their backbone, and
their knowledgability when dealing with them on peering issues etc,
both of which are better than many ISPs in this country.
Adrian
Mike Nield
Adrian Mardlin wrote in message
>Credit where credit's due - I think Telewest have generally done a
>good job of being an ISP and understanding the business. I'm afraid I
>wouldn't personally say the same of CWC.
I agree about Telewest (but I would:-). Not really had too much dealings
with CWC as far as their internet is concerned so I can't really disagree or
agree but if your right then it's obviously their loss - they've got MCI's
internet backbone to play with aswell now!!
>NTL's internet business model
>seems largely geared around dial-up so they can sell switch minutes on
>their own network,
I think that the Which Online and Virgin Net virtual ISP's certainly
supports the above statement - I don't know how involved NTL Internet are
with business/leased line services.
>and there are still a handful of other cable
>companies (Diamond, Telecential, General Telecom come to mind)...
I may be wrong but to my knowledge there are now only five main Cable
Companies left:-
Telewest
CWC
NTL
Atlantic Telecom
Eurobell
All the rest have been swallowed at some point by the top three (Diamond
were taken over by NTL).
Mike
Barry O'Neill
says...
> On Mon, 5 Oct 1998 18:39:58 +0100, {$PW$}@pwomar.demon.co.uk (Paul
> Womar) wrote:
>
> >Adrian Mardlin <adr...@nildram.net> wrote:
> >
> >> good job of being an ISP and understanding the business.
> >
> >see in the same sentence, I'm sure Ron will agree.
>
> I cannot speak for their dial-up service or customer care, of course,
> but was giving credit for the perceived quality of their backbone, and
> their knowledgability when dealing with them on peering issues etc,
> both of which are better than many ISPs in this country.
This is the _same_ Telewest whose news service has been offline for four
days due to peering problems is it? Or are you referring to some other
Telewest I'm not aware of.
regards,
Barry
--
This IS my other OS. I'll be rebooting into Linux as soon as I've posted
this...
Nick Wynne
Darren Pardoe wrote in message
<6vbjnb$icv$1...@newsreader1.core.theplanet.net>...
>Mike Griffiths <mi...@griffnet.freeserve.co.uk> wrote in message
>6v80rh$ekm$4...@newsreader2.core.theplanet.net...
>Get yourself a virtual e-mail address. Take a look at www.usa.com and keep
>your e-mail address for life.
Yep, & be in loads of killfiles from day one.
usa.com msn.com yahoo.com mailexite.com aol.com hotmail.com etc, along
with about 200 others are all in my servers barring list.
I'm waiting for my 1st spam from freeserve, & then that'll get barred as
well.
Mike Nield
Paul Womar <{$PW$}@pwomar.demon.co.uk> wrote in message
<1dgfhu7.ut...@pwomar.demon.co.uk>...
>Credit where credit is due and Telewst are not 2 things I'd expect to
>see in the same sentence, I'm sure Ron will agree.
I wouldn't expect Ron to agree with the term "credit where credit is due"
and "the name of numerous ISP's that he has passed through" being used in
the same sentence! A bad example me's thinks (I'm assuming you mean Ron
Chew).
Mike
Paul Womar
I wasn't trying to use him as a tool to back me up, far from it, just
making an observation of what normally happens, even better is that if I
say he'll turn up, he doesn't, just to prove me wrong and we can spare
ourselves some pain, yeah!
Paul L. Allen
{R}@sunshine.tm (Richard Ashton) writes:
> In article <BCHY57...@beachyhd.demon.co.uk>
> ram...@beachyhd.demon.co.uk "Nick Wynne" writes:
> } I'm waiting for my 1st spam from freeserve, & then that'll get barred as
> } well.
>
> <AOL>
Yeah, aol.com is in my mailkill. As is ao1.com - presumably some clever
UBEr noticed that AOL took legal action against one UBEr who forged aol.com
as the from address because of the expense incurred in dealing with all
the complaints to their abuse department and the resources tied up in
dealing with all the bounces. And they won. Bloody good thing, too.
And that's the reason I bounce UBE even when I think or know that the
from address is valid but forged. Because it gives the ISP legal grounds to
go after the UBEr. Which may be the only way we'll ever keep this crap
under control until and unless every country in the world passes legislation
making UBE illegal (which may not happen because some clever 3rd-world
country will spot a way of making money if they don't pass such
legislation - sudden major boost to their economy as servers and UBE
companies get located there).
I favour shotguns aimed at kneecaps, myself. Or chainsaws. But that's
only when I'm feeling rather mellow - sometimes I'm in a bad mood and
I think of far worse solutions to be applied to UBErs. Not that I consider
removing somebody's skin using an orbital sander that bad, really. I shall
have to give the matter more thought.
--Paul
Paul Valerio
> In article <907713403s...@sunshine.tm>
> {R}@sunshine.tm (Richard Ashton) writes:
> > In article <BCHY57...@beachyhd.demon.co.uk>
> > ram...@beachyhd.demon.co.uk "Nick Wynne" writes:
> > } I'm waiting for my 1st spam from freeserve, & then that'll get barred as
> > } well.
> > <AOL>
> Yeah, aol.com is in my mailkill. As is ao1.com
Eh?
<solutions to UBE>
> I favour shotguns aimed at kneecaps, myself. Or chainsaws. But that's
> only when I'm feeling rather mellow - sometimes I'm in a bad mood and
> I think of far worse solutions to be applied to UBErs. Not that I consider
> removing somebody's skin using an orbital sander that bad, really. I shall
> have to give the matter more thought.
Vigorous massage with a cheese grater, I think.
--
Paul Valerio
paul@kenly.$REMOVABLE$.demon.co.uk
Paul L. Allen
pa...@kenly.REMOVABLE.demon.co.uk (Paul Valerio) writes:
> In article <FD-T8...@sktb.demon.co.uk>, p...@sktb.demon.co.uk says...
> > Yeah, aol.com is in my mailkill. As is ao1.com
>
> Eh?
A fairly common junk mail address many months ago. I think the guy
was working on the principle that if people using POP3 scan their mailbox
and see a message from aol.com they know it's a big ISP so there's a good
chance it's not junk mail (very bad logic, but some people might follow
it and/or the junk mailer might believe it). However, AOL took a junk
mailer to court (and won) because he forged the address to look like it
came from an AOL user so it cost AOL a lot of money dealing with all
the complaints and it slowed down their mail system because of all
the bounce messages. So this particular junk mailer who used ao1.com
must have chosen it because at first glance it looks like it came
from an AOL subscriber (very hard to tell apart) but no chance of AOL
taking him to court.
Hmmm, speaking of it being very hard to spot the difference between aol.com
and ao1.com, was your "Eh?" because you got caught by it?
--Paul
James Riddle
James Coupe
<ja...@riddle.freeserve.co.uk> writes
>The default font that OE uses makes it very clear that 1 and l are
>different.
From the previous header:
X-Newsreader: Archimedes ReadNews
So, no help there then.
Also, not all people use Billyware - either as a matter of principle, or
because they find something that works better, complies with more RFCs
or is available on their platform.
--
James Coupe
'I said, "Kyle, if you do not give me back my triangle, I will kick you in the
nuts." So I kicked him square in the nuts and he cried, like Nancy Kerrigan.'
James Riddle
>X-Newsreader: Archimedes ReadNews
I did know that. I can read headers. I was just informing about OE because
you weren't using it.
>So, no help there then.
>
>Also, not all people use Billyware - either as a matter of principle, or
>because they find something that works better, complies with more RFCs
>or is available on their platform.
Why does everyone want to start an argument about which crappy bit of
software they use? This "My Dad is bigger than your Dad" attitude is so
childish.
James
James Riddle
Barry O'Neill wrote in message ...
>In article <6vnaju$ung$1...@newsreader1.core.theplanet.net>,
Here we go again "My newreader is better than your newsreader - nah nah nee
nah nah"
Grow up will you!
James
Peter Corlett
[...]
> Why does everyone want to start an argument about which crappy bit
> of software they use? This "My Dad is bigger than your Dad"
> attitude is so childish.
Because there are people that have the attitide that "well, *I* use
this, so why do other people choose to use something different?"
Of course, such people don't take any notice of reasoned argument,
and still insist their way is better.
--
Peter Corlett, Moseley, Birmingham, England. Tel. +44 7050 603311
"My glass was greasy and smeary, but the proprietor took an old rag
from his belt and buffed it until it was shiny, so they couldn't have
been more obliging" (On eating in Co Durham) [Good Food Guide 1998]
Barry O'Neill
ja...@riddle.freeserve.co.uk says...
>
> Paul L. Allen wrote in message ...
> >Hmmm, speaking of it being very hard to spot the difference between aol.com
> >and ao1.com, was your "Eh?" because you got caught by it?
>
> different.
Luckily, OE is not everyone's default newsreader...
Paul Valerio
> In article <MPG.1088629bb...@news.demon.co.uk>
> pa...@kenly.REMOVABLE.demon.co.uk (Paul Valerio) writes:
> > In article <FD-T8...@sktb.demon.co.uk>, p...@sktb.demon.co.uk says...
> > > Yeah, aol.com is in my mailkill. As is ao1.com
> > Eh?
<junk mail story snipped>
> So this particular junk mailer who used ao1.com
> must have chosen it because at first glance it looks like it came
> from an AOL subscriber (very hard to tell apart) but no chance of AOL
> taking him to court.
I think I remember reading about that one a while back. Weren't they the
first big "internet provider" (for want of a better term) to go after
spammers?
> Hmmm, speaking of it being very hard to spot the difference between aol.com
> and ao1.com, was your "Eh?" because you got caught by it?
Indeed. aol.com being in your killfile as well as ao1.com did confuse me
a little - the two appear identical in Courier New. Time for a display
font change, methinks...
:)
--
Paul Valerio
paul@kenly.$REMOVABLE$.demon.co.uk
Phil
list.
Phil
Weirdo wrote in message <6vtj6l$pae$4...@eros.clara.net>...
>I think I have found a sure fire way to get rid of spam forever. If I am
>missing something obvious here then please tell me, but I have used this
>method ever since I got on the internet. Basicly all you do is, when a
spam
>comes in you just highlight it and click on delete. This seems to make the
>spam dissappear and I just forget about it. This is perfect as I don't
even
>a killfile. Good, eh?
Andy Smith
>I think I have found a sure fire way to get rid of spam forever. If I am
>missing something obvious here then please tell me, but I have used this
>method ever since I got on the internet. Basicly all you do is, when a spam
>comes in you just highlight it and click on delete. This seems to make the
>spam dissappear and I just forget about it. This is perfect as I don't even
>a killfile. Good, eh?
Not really. You have still paid to download it, or paid for the online
time to view it and decide it's spam, if you happen to be cursed with
only a Hotmailesque account.
Your service provider has still be robbed of the processor times and
bandwidth required to deliver the spam. Other ISPs may have had their
relays misappropriated in order to send the spam to hundreds, thousands
or millions of addresses.
And lastly, your address will be marked as "deliverable" and passed
between spammers even more frenziedly.
So it's not really a great solution after all. But well done for
trying.
--
Andy J. Smith ... <an...@mythic.net> ... <http://www.strugglers.net/andy>
Mail to andy...@mythic.net for PGP Key, or check the key servers ......
KeyID: 0xBF15490B FP: 0E42 36CB 5295 1E14 5360 6622 2099 B64C BF15 490B
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a Perl
script.
Weirdo
Paul L. Allen wrote in message ...
> {R}@sunshine.tm (Richard Ashton) writes:
>
>> In article <BCHY57...@beachyhd.demon.co.uk>
>> ram...@beachyhd.demon.co.uk "Nick Wynne" writes:
>
>> } I'm waiting for my 1st spam from freeserve, & then that'll get barred
as
>> } well.
Peter Corlett
> I have regular 112K spam from one company. They keep sending me
> their CC list.
Firstly, please learn to quote properly. The *relevant* portion on
what you are commenting goes above the reply, or interleaved if there
are several points being made.
The last UK company that tried regular junk mail like that got a
letter advising them that I would charge them by the byte for any
future unsolicited email - the bill worked out at approximately Ł170
per message.
This seemed to encourage them to take me off their list before the
next one, so I didn't have to send the bill.
You might like to try similar.
Mark Goodge
Richard Ashton wrote:
>
> In article <6vtj6l$pae$4...@eros.clara.net> Weir...@yahoo.com "Weirdo" writes:
>
> } I think I have found a sure fire way to get rid of spam forever. If I am
> } missing something obvious here then please tell me, but I have used this
> } method ever since I got on the internet. Basicly all you do is, when a spam
> } comes in you just highlight it and click on delete. This seems to make the
> } spam dissappear and I just forget about it. This is perfect as I don't even
> } a killfile. Good, eh?
>
> I will accept this as your entry for the Fuckwit of the month
> competition.
Not at all - it's quite a good solution, really. If everyone did this,
then spam wouldn't exist - the spammers only do it because they get
enough responses to make it worthwhile.
Mark
--
Visit Mark's World at http://www.good-stuff.co.uk/mark/
Andy Helsby
>list.
As you are using OE then set up an Inbox assistant rule to automatically
delete the message from their user (and complain to abuse@). If you need
any help on this then email me direct.
Take your brain out to reply via email though
Bill Unsworth
wrote:
>Liam <no....@my.place> wrote in article
><6uuhma$t53$1...@newsreader1.core.theplanet.net>...
>>
>> What you are forgetting is that it is DIXONS who are heavily
>involved in
>> Freeserve. A pretty formidable competitor in anyones book.
>> It is common knowledge within Dixons that the company intends that
>Freeserve
>> will be the No. 1 UK internet service provider. Maybe not this
>month or next
>> month, but not too far down the line.
>>
>
>If by "No. 1 UK internet service provider" you mean the most signed
>up to ISP then I'm sure you are right. If you mean the No.1 in terms
>of quality of service and reliability then I think I could safely bet
>a few quid that it ain't gonna happen!
>
>I am also of the opinion that this CAN be a good thing for the UK
>internet industry as a whole by greatly enlarging the market and
>creating customers willing to pay for additional internet services
>that either Freeserve don't provide or are too expensive. Maybe a
>technical support number at 50p per minute anyone? Maybe a quality
>news service at 2.00 per month anyone? The list is endless!
>--
Well just some rought financial marker on this - I would estimate the
cost of servicing 100,000 users at around 12 milion pounds a year -
hence Dixons/Energis are looking at at cost of around 30M pa for
250,000 users less call income at say 1/6th of that = cost of 25M pa.
Even with a marketing budget of 70M pa that is a significant amount of
money.
Bill Unsworth
--
U-NET Ltd
"Voted the Top ISP in Personal Computer World's 1998 Service and
Reliability Survey"
http://www.u-net.net/
Tel 01925 484444 Fax 01925 484466
Blade-Runner
Mark Goodge <ma...@good-stuff.co.uk> wrote some of this :
> the spammers only do it because they get
>enough responses to make it worthwhile.
I keep reading this. I'm not convinced it's the correct explanation.
--
Geoff (Blade-Runner)
N.Staffs Oatcake Home Page http://www.geocities.com/NapaValley/2333
Newsgroups uk.local.north-staffs alt.uk.virgin-net.oldbies
You may have to put the cat out to reply by e-mail
Simon Hopper
>It was Tue, 13 Oct 1998 14:05:19 +0100. You remember? It was in uk.net.
>Mark Goodge <ma...@good-stuff.co.uk> wrote some of this :
>> the spammers only do it because they get
>>enough responses to make it worthwhile.
>I keep reading this. I'm not convinced it's the correct explanation.
I think you're right to be suspicious. It's the *perception* that spamming
works that keeps it going. Spammers say to companies: "Internet marketing: want
lots of people to see your message? Come to us, we have millions of email
addresses." The companies not knowing any better sign up with them, not knowing
that those on the end of the UCE either delete it, filter it out, or vow never
to buy anything from them.
Simon Hopper (hopper...@ooh.dircon.co.uk)
Blade-Runner
Hopper" <si...@westmythREMOVE.freeserve.co.uk> wrote some of this :
>>I keep reading this. I'm not convinced it's the correct explanation.
>
>I think you're right to be suspicious. It's the *perception* that spamming
>works that keeps it going. Spammers say to companies: "Internet marketing: want
>lots of people to see your message? Come to us, we have millions of email
>addresses." The companies not knowing any better sign up with them, not knowing
>that those on the end of the UCE either delete it, filter it out, or vow never
>to buy anything from them.
That's more like it. Thanks Simon.
Weirdo
Andy Smith wrote in message <36268d81...@news.powernet.co.uk>...
>Not really. You have still paid to download it, or paid for the online
>time to view it and decide it's spam,
I pay about 0.000001p per email. I think I can live with this.
>if you happen to be cursed with only a Hotmailesque account.
I have a yahoo account, I use it to post to news groups all the time and I
only ever get one or less spams a day. The most I have had is 10, but that
was from the same person, so I guess their spam bot must have gone mental.
>Your service provider has still be robbed of the processor times and
>bandwidth required to deliver the spam.
Thats not my problem. I don't care.
>Other ISPs may have had their relays misappropriated in order to send the
spam to hundreds, thousands or millions of addresses.
See above, I can't really see how this will cause any harm to the ISP
though. I think the problem here is the people who write to the abuse@
addresses. If I sudenly got a big email or loads of emails from the same
place then maybe I would complain but this hads never happened to me and I
will never bother to take the time to write to abuse@whatever.
>And lastly, your address will be marked as "deliverable" and passed
>between spammers even more frenziedly.
I think this is more likely if you reply to it rather then just deleting it.
If you don't buy anything via spam the first time, what would anyone else
get out of it.
>So it's not really a great solution after all. But well done for
>trying.
Well, it seems to work okay for me.
Weirdo
Mark Goodge wrote in message <3623500F...@good-stuff.co.uk>...
>The spammers only do it because they get
>enough responses to make it worthwhile.
Well, my guess is that they only need a very small percent of people to show
an interest in their product for them to make a profit. If you think about
it then they don't have many overheads when they send out spam. Just write
one message and click on send to millions of people. It costs them next to
nothing to do.
Andy Smith
>
>Andy Smith wrote in message <36268d81...@news.powernet.co.uk>...
>>Not really. You have still paid to download it, or paid for the online
>>time to view it and decide it's spam,
>
>I pay about 0.000001p per email. I think I can live with this.
1) I think it is probably a bit more expensive than that.
2) Just because you are willing to forget about the cost to you it
doesn't mean everyone else should.
3) If everyone felt like this, the size of spam would steadily increase
until each was hundreds or thousands of KB in size, with the
frequency of spam also increasing until it all got ridiculously out
of control.
>>if you happen to be cursed with only a Hotmailesque account.
>
>I have a yahoo account, I use it to post to news groups all the time and I
>only ever get one or less spams a day.
You do not necessarily represent every internet user in the world.
Please consider the wider picture.
> The most I have had is 10, but that
>was from the same person, so I guess their spam bot must have gone mental.
That same spam will probably have gone ten times to every address on the
spammers list. Is that also acceptable?
>>Your service provider has still be robbed of the processor times and
>>bandwidth required to deliver the spam.
>
>Thats not my problem. I don't care.
Then I don't see why I should waste my time on a self-centred tosspot
such as yourself. I fail to see why you need the concept that spam
shouldn't need to be tolerated explained to you... unless this is a
troll?
>>Other ISPs may have had their relays misappropriated in order to send the
>spam to hundreds, thousands or millions of addresses.
>
>See above, I can't really see how this will cause any harm to the ISP
>though.
It is still an inappropriate and illegal use of another organization's
internet resources.
In the scale of things it might not be huge. I don't know what
percentage of email is spam, 5%, 1%, 0.01%, I don't know, but the fact
is it is still a nuisance that has cost you money, reduced your ISP's
overall bandwidth and possibly illegally used the internet facilities of
another company.
> I think the problem here is the people who write to the abuse@
>addresses. If I sudenly got a big email or loads of emails from the same
>place then maybe I would complain but this hads never happened to me and I
>will never bother to take the time to write to abuse@whatever.
If everyone took your view then the internet would be awash with spam.
You would get far more than you do now, and you would be crying about
it. Once again, consider that there are others users of the internet
apart from you.
>>And lastly, your address will be marked as "deliverable" and passed
>>between spammers even more frenziedly.
>
>I think this is more likely if you reply to it rather then just deleting it.
>If you don't buy anything via spam the first time, what would anyone else
>get out of it.
If there is no bounce then that pretty much guarantees that the spam was
delivered and read, even if only enough to be recognised and deleted. I
imagine that address would be kept and probably burned onto a CD and
sold to another spammer.
>>So it's not really a great solution after all. But well done for
>>trying.
>
>Well, it seems to work okay for me.
Everyone isn't you.
--
Andy J. Smith ... <an...@mythic.net> ... <http://www.strugglers.net/andy>
Mail to andy...@mythic.net for PGP Key, or check the key servers ......
KeyID: 0xBF15490B FP: 0E42 36CB 5295 1E14 5360 6622 2099 B64C BF15 490B
"The nice thing about Windows is: It doesn't just crash, it displays a
dialog box and lets you press 'OK' first."
-- Arno Schaefer
Paul Womar
> Andy Smith wrote in message <36268d81...@news.powernet.co.uk>...
> >Not really. You have still paid to download it, or paid for the online
> >time to view it and decide it's spam,
>
> I pay about 0.000001p per email. I think I can live with this.
You have a better Teleco than me then, I'd suggest that telephone costs
are more in the region of 0.01p per email, quite possibly more, 0.01p is
based on it taking less than a second to recieve and Weekend rates.
That is probably the cheapest part of the transaction, they are lots of
cost incurred before that. I wonder for example if there was no UCE,
would Demon's mail cluster be running on cheaper machines, maybe even
the Punts wouldn't be sticking and all that time spent online just
waiting for mail wouldn't be necessary.
> >Your service provider has still be robbed of the processor times and
> >bandwidth required to deliver the spam.
>
> Thats not my problem. I don't care.
Maybe you should, you pay for it.
Phil
Peter Corlett decided to wibble on in <700euh$6or$1...@verrine.demon.co.uk>
about
>The last UK company that tried regular junk mail like that got a
>letter advising them that I would charge them by the byte for any
>future unsolicited email - the bill worked out at approximately Ł170
>per message.
>
>This seemed to encourage them to take me off their list before the
>next one, so I didn't have to send the bill.
>
They were a Dutch company who stopped after I sent one of their emails back
at them with a note saying I would *never* be interested in working abroad.
And, would that stand up in *any* court of law? Did you have any proof that
they received and read the email? I think a company that would act like
that would also respond to a simple "remove".
Phil
ps is *this* better sir? You'll be telling me to talk through my nose next.
Clive D.W. Feather
net.net> writes
>Well just some rought financial marker on this - I would estimate the
>cost of servicing 100,000 users at around 12 milion pounds a year -
Or, in other words, about a tenner a month. Curious, that.
--
Clive D.W. Feather | Regulation Officer, LINX | Work: <cl...@linx.org>
Tel: +44 1733 705000 | (on secondment from | Home: <cd...@i.am>
Fax: +44 1733 353929 | Demon Internet) | <http://i.am/davros>
Written on my laptop; please observe the Reply-To address
Roland Perry
<{$PW$}@pwomar.demon.co.uk> writes
>You have a better Teleco than me then, I'd suggest that telephone costs
>are more in the region of 0.01p per email, quite possibly more
Indeed, when I'm on my mobile phone a spam only arrives at about 500cps,
at a rate of 30p a minute (or thereabouts). That's about 10p per email. And my
time is worth (commercially) about ukp100 an hour, so the 10 seconds to
identify and delete the email costs another 30p.
--
Roland Perry
Paul Harris
>
> >I have regular 112K spam from one company. They keep sending me their CC
> >list.
>
> As you are using OE then set up an Inbox assistant rule to automatically
> delete the message from their user (and complain to abuse@). If you need
> any help on this then email me direct.
Am I right in thinking OE will still download the 112K email and /then/
automatically delete it?
Phil
>Andy Helsby wrote:
>>
>Am I right in thinking OE will still download the 112K email and /then/
>automatically delete it?
It does, yes. This was, however, in my yahoo! mail account (since died from
SPAM).
Phil
Phil
Roland Perry wrote in message <+tiypXAx...@netcomuk.co.uk>...
>In article <1dgwtjm.10b...@pwomar.demon.co.uk>, Paul Womar
>And my time is worth (commercially) about ukp100 an hour, so the 10 seconds
to
>identify and delete the email costs another 30p.
>--
>Roland Perry
Lend us a tenner :o)
Phil
Paul Womar
He'll charge you 20 quid for the time it takes him to take it out of his
wallet :)
Roland Perry
But call income of .5p per min (average) for 30 hours a month (average) is
ukp9 not ukp1.66 (a sixth of a tenner). Or do you have different average
figures that you know apply to Planet/Freeserve?
--
Roland Perry
Roland Perry
<cl...@on-the-train.demon.co.uk> writes
>Or, in other words, about a tenner a month. Curious, that.
And as we know the entire Finchley experience is based on this.
But that ignores how much the leased line/corporate side of the business
subsidises the dial-up, and on the other hand how much Freeserve saves by
zero cost of tech support [1] and zero cost of accounts receivable and credit
risk.
[1] Which must at least be self financing at ukp1 a minute.
--
Roland Perry
on-a-different-train.
Roland Perry
<ph...@nospam.freeserve.co.uk> writes
>Lend us a tenner :o)
I didn't say I was *paid* that rate :-)
It's what I ought to be charged out at [1], which is about half what my
commercial lawyer costs - obviously engineering is not the most lucrative
profession in the world....
[1] And if my timesheet says "reading spam" that's not really attributable to a
customer.
--
Roland Perry
Paul Gregg
I don't know what other ISPs are like, however:
I ran stats on complete Aug and Sep dialup logs and in Aug the "average"
customer only used 12h51 and in Sep it was 12h2m.
Actually here's the real info:
August 1998:
Totals: 311 Users, 24438 logins, Average/login: 9m49s Average/user: 12h51m
September 1998:
Totals: 325 Users, 25301 logins, Average/login: 9m17s Average/user: 12h02m
Now we aren't a large ISP by any means (just over 400 dialup customers),
but I don't see why if you scale it up the average should increase to 30h.
Paul.
--
Email pgregg at tibus.net | Email pgregg at nyx.net | Eight out of every
Technical Director | System Administrator | five people are math
The Internet Business Ltd | Nyx Public Access Internet | illiterates.
http://www.tibus.net | http://www.nyx.net | - Anon.
Blade-Runner
Paul Gregg <pgr...@blackhole.nyx.net> wrote some of this :
>> But call income of .5p per min (average) for 30 hours a month (average) is
>> ukp9 not ukp1.66 (a sixth of a tenner). Or do you have different average
>> figures that you know apply to Planet/Freeserve?
>
>I don't know what other ISPs are like, however:
>
>I ran stats on complete Aug and Sep dialup logs and in Aug the "average"
>customer only used 12h51 and in Sep it was 12h2m.
Can't figure out why my call charges are so high as I only read news and
send e-mail. Ok I read news a lot, but offline. Of course a lot of
that is due to CBNLs and dropped lines (getting rather a lot of them
with FS)
Who gets the 5p min call charge? BT?
Roland Perry
<pgr...@blackhole.nyx.net> writes
>Now we aren't a large ISP by any means (just over 400 dialup customers),
>but I don't see why if you scale it up the average should increase to 30h.
It's not so much the scaling by size as the customer profile. And that includes
how their usage is spread and what the busy hours are.
For example: If you customers are using 12 hours a month evenly spread
over 18 hours a day 7 days a week then your modem ratio need only be 42:1
The fact that many ISPs need many more modems than that points to the
inevitable conclusion tat their users are on average much heavier than yours
(or that yours are perhaps very skewed towards either business or leisure).
--
Roland Perry
easyegg
Hi Roland long time no see......
>In article <708m58$53j$4...@newsreader1.core.theplanet.net>, Phil
><ph...@nospam.freeserve.co.uk> writes
>>Lend us a tenner :o)
>I didn't say I was *paid* that rate :-)
Should be perhaps :-)
>It's what I ought to be charged out at [1], which is about half what my
>commercial lawyer costs - obviously engineering is not the most lucrative
>profession in the world....
but Bill Gates seems to do OK ...
>[1] And if my timesheet says "reading spam" that's not really attributable to a
>customer.
Hear hear !!
>--
>Roland Perry
See you later
Pat
Adrian Mardlin
<pgr...@blackhole.nyx.net> wrote:
>Roland Perry <rol...@perry.co.uk> wrote:
>> In article <362459ef...@news.u-net.com>, Bill Unsworth <bill@u-
>> net.net> writes
>>>less call income at say 1/6th of that
>
>> But call income of .5p per min (average) for 30 hours a month (average) is
>> ukp9 not ukp1.66 (a sixth of a tenner). Or do you have different average
>> figures that you know apply to Planet/Freeserve?
>
>I don't know what other ISPs are like, however:
>
>I ran stats on complete Aug and Sep dialup logs and in Aug the "average"
>customer only used 12h51 and in Sep it was 12h2m.
>
>Actually here's the real info:
>
>August 1998:
>Totals: 311 Users, 24438 logins, Average/login: 9m49s Average/user: 12h51m
>
>September 1998:
>Totals: 325 Users, 25301 logins, Average/login: 9m17s Average/user: 12h02m
>
>Now we aren't a large ISP by any means (just over 400 dialup customers),
>but I don't see why if you scale it up the average should increase to 30h.
>
Our dial-up stats for September, show an average on-line time of 18
hours per user. I *suspect* that our user base is broad enough, and
the volume significant enough for this to be pretty representative. At
.5p per minute, this would equate to about £5.50 per user per month,
which is more than enough to run an ISP on when you cut the telephone
tech support out of the equation, plus throw in some pretty healthy
economies of scale.
Regards,
Adrian
---
Managing Director
Nildram Ltd
http://www.nildram.net
Roland Perry
<pat...@email.com> writes
>but Bill Gates seems to do OK ...
But he's not an engineer. And as for salary, if you reckon he does a 60 hour
week, the rate he gets [1] is really very close to 100 pounds an hour.
[1] ignoring dividends and capital gains.
--
Roland Perry
Nick Leverton
{$PW$}@pwomar.demon.co.uk (Paul Womar) writes:
>wallet :)
He sounds like a right banker :-)
N.
Bazza
>Roland Perry <rol...@perry.co.uk> wrote:
>Hi Roland long time no see......
Thought the name rang a distant bell - not the very same Roland Perry
that started my favourite ISP all those years back ( ably assisted by
Olivetti & Co. ) ??
And hello to Pat / Easyegg too - checking out the competition < VBG >
Bazza
easyegg
>Bazza
Snigger ...
Yep and very active lots of newbies and "old beans"
see ya
Pat
Peter Duck
bj.m...@ukonline.co.uk (Bazza) wrote:
> >Roland Perry <rol...@perry.co.uk> wrote:
> Thought the name rang a distant bell
As distant as a certain Editor, RPED ?
--
Peter Duck <pd...@zetnet.co.uk>
Roland Perry
<bj.m...@ukonline.co.uk> writes
>Thought the name rang a distant bell - not the very same Roland Perry
>that started my favourite ISP all those years back ( ably assisted by
>Olivetti & Co. ) ??
Yes, that's me.
[There are in fact very few Roland Perry's around. I know of no others in the
UK, one in Australia (who is a writer and sometimes get confused with me)
and two in the USA.]
--
Roland Perry
Roland Perry
<pd...@zetnet.co.uk> writes
>As distant as a certain Editor, RPED ?
Yes, guilty again ;-)
--
Roland Perry