Its bread and butter time for the smaller ISPs, they almost live month to month when they first start out they cant have a burn rate.
This is untrue. The company I work for started small. We got investors who gave us money due to the solidity of our business model and plan.
Starting at a small BBS turned ISP (cet.com [cet.com]),
This is one case. I know several companies that started small.
I seen how the owner would sell a full T1 and split it a dozen ways,
This is common practice, ALL ISPs do this.
scam customers on software packages,
The term SCAM is largely perception based, what you consider a scam, I may consider a good deal.
replace broken hardware that wasnt broken.
As a former technician, I have on several occasions replaced equipment I knew was perfectly functional in order to rule it out as a point of failure. I notice you didn't indicate that he charged for such replacement.
I moved onto another ISP, and saw how the salesmen reminded me of car salesmen, "Let me talk to the manager..."
All salespeople do this to one degree or another. I do it. Our company has certain discounts we are allowed to offer to a customer. I have to call and have every one approved. If I don't, they turn it down. This is not bad salesmanship, this is a fact of sales. Have you ever gone to a garagesale and offered some money for something and have the guy say, "Let me ask my wife." This is the same thing. Sometimes we need to defer to others.
People dont see whats going on behind the scenes, how the young kids are working thier ass off to keep the servers up cause they cant hire professional admins.
Again.... This is a single case. The company I work for only hires certfied engineers for our service department.
The systems are always having outages and they blame the larger telcos as a "network problem..."
Who's to say that's not a problem? I was a technician for PrimusTel in Canada and 99% of our problems were as a result of Bell Canada having problems. We occasionally had our own issues but it was mostly Bell.
That was my biggest problem, I couldnt stand being dishonest to a customer, and you cant be a good salesmen without bending the truth, spreading on the bullshit like butter. Even with a good product, its thier job to sell or they dont eat.
I am outright offended at this. I am one of the leading salespeople in my company. I have NEVER lied to a customer. EVER. If you were incapable of selling your product without telling lies, then either you didn't believe in your product or it was garbage. I have lost sales as a result of telling the truth. My boss is OK with that. When I started here, I explained that I have a reputation for honesty that I WILL NOT violate. I sell every service here with 100% honesty. If you are a liar, don't try to shuck your blame by trashing the profession. Incidentally, I make a good HONEST living.
Smaller ISP's have to cut costs too, I remember when all the ISPs in Spokane moved into the tel-west building so they could cut out the local exchange. Save 200 bux on federal taxes and transport fees. A T1 that costs 900 bux wholesale could be bought for 500, since all they had to do was run some cable down the hallway (overhead). Sell the T1 (frac) to 10 people paying you 300 bux, and they pay thier own costs, you could out bid. And then charge them for any hourly work needed. (You need help configuring your router? 10 hours billed)
I don't understand the point of this. It's called doing business.
Another reason ISPs needed to move into the telco buildings was the digital lines, to have the 56K v90 modems, the ISP has to have digital lines. I remember how everyone and thier brother was buying livingston port masters and running radius. Every ISP was the same, except for the modems on the end of the portmasters.
So what? Access doesn't sell, customer service sells. If you have two identical ISPs, the one with the better customer service will win out.
I think most slashdotters can confirm the shady side of the ISPs. How some run out of computer stores in the back, or BBS's that turned ISP. H
This is the same kind of logic that brings us bigotry. An ISP I work for was "shady", so all of them are. Doesn't sound too different from, "A [insert ethnicity here] person once stole my car so all of those people are "shady".
Hell, one of the most popular ISPs Eskimo [eskimo.com] here in seattle runs out of his living room. When I moved over here to this side of washington state, I went over and met the guy. Typical homegrown ISP, but this guy has shitloads of customers.
Again... your point? Does he provide the service he promises for a price that his customers are happy with? He must be. Good for him and his successful business. Who cares where it's run from.
Been there done that, now I work for a major wireless telco, millions of customers, and I never have to be shady. Drawbacks? Less ownership in the product. I get paid, but I dont make the choices. Management and Marketing does. Sometimes I just shake my head and say "Umm, if our stockholders only knew....)
Hmmm, sound dishonest to me.
Someday Im going to start another business, and try to keep the "mom and pop" attitude. Actually sell what the customer wants, and give it to them. Only thing stands in my way, People are cheap. (-;
What a good way to end the post, a statement that contradicts the rest of your argument.
I work for a wireless ISP in Canada. We are a multi-million dollar company that acts like a small Mom and Pop operation. We don't move into an area until we have a number of signed customers already. We are one of the FEW growing ISPs in Canada and it is due to our business model.
Wireless ISPs can work, the problem is that most are run by people who think like a phone company.
I see sooooooooo many posts by people about how everything MS does is wrong and that someone needs to break the stranglehold that MS has on the PC market.
Here it is.... along comes a solution....
What happens? It gets badmouthed.
You want to know why I tell people I know to use Windows and not Linux...... You tell me how to explain to my 85 year old grandmother how to use linux when she has trouble with the concept of a right vs left click. Then you explain why it is that she couldn't use that neat program about cats that she bought off of the shelf at Shoppers Drug Mart.
DAMMIT, sometimes some of you people REALLY piss me off. There is a place for ALL software. And if a distro of Linux that looks, runs and acts in all ways like Windows and will convert people from MS to it and have the security, stability of linux and the ability to use linux software.. Why wouldn't you support it?
The main problem with ICQIS and similar products is that they work. I work in sales at my company and traditionally, 1 out of 100 people contacted buy from you. If you change that to one in 1000 to reflect spam measure or so on, think about this.
Lets say your ICQIS bot sends outs 30000 messages in one day. That means you have 30 sales a day per bot.
I know an organization using this and the numbers work. It sucks but as long as it works, companies will do it. Its great that 99% of us block it, but because 1% doesn't it will keep happening.
My company is replacing the TelCo last mile
on
Why ADCo?
·
· Score: 1
The company I work for (This is not a plug so I won't mention who) has leveraged itself in a position to replace the TelCo's here. We are using broadband wireless technology and we have done significant enough damage to the phone company here that they have started to market specifically against us. We are not using 802.11b (I know I'm going to get flamed for that) or any other non-propietary protocol. Our equipment is built for what we are using it for. We don't make the subscribers buy any equipment, we keep ownership so that if you leave our network, you are not stuck with a useless piece of equipment.
We use the 5.8 Ghz frequecy for the SU's so that there is no worry about wash from too many devices in the band and our equipment is directional so there is little chance of stray signals messing up the equipment. On our backbone we use 18, 27 and 38 Ghz to go between our access points. We won't have any issues with over subscription because for $2500 we caqn slap up a new access panel for a 60 degree arc to service more people.
Our customer service record is second to none. The company has been around for two years and we have 0 customer churn. Not one customer has left our company for any reason.
So/. is recycling news from wired who
recycles it from fuckedcompany.com...sigh.
I would like to point out that 99% of/. stories are posted elsewhere. Since./ doesn't employ reporters (at least that I know of), its really hard to go out and find news that isn't from somewhere else or that wasn't published first.
Licensed airwaves is a good thing. It ensures that frequencies remain useable and don't obstruct other frequencies. If anyone could broadcast on any frequency, the airwaves would be useless due to noise.
Licensed airwaves is a good thing. It ensures that frequencies remain useable and don't obstruct other frequencies. If anyone could broadcast on any frequency, the airwaves would be useless due to noise.
I have to agree completely. I work for a wireless ISP and I can just imagine having to have the following conversation.....
"Hello sir, this is Devon from ******, we figured out what the problem with your network connection was. We realize that you lost important e-mails and all of the data that you had ftp'd in this weekend is all corrupt, but Radio is unlicensed and a bunch of people playing Wolfenstein this weekend setup a wireless LAN using our frequencies."
This is why my company bought the spectrum licenses, to avoid things like this. There are MANY unlicensed bands for people to use without disallowing people the use of a private frequency.
Additionally, I can imagine if you got rid of all licenses this situation. Sitting in your car and having to turn the dial all over the place because FM station have been forced to go spread spectrum and my Radio Station isn't in the same place as it was before.
Insurrection was a hyped up episode of TNG. To me if I'm going to go see a movie and shell out $10, I expect it to be better than the re-runs I can catch at 3am.
If this one is better than an episode, I will be happy with it, otherwise.
I agree that the characters seemed robotic and void of depth, but this is not limited to animated characters.
Actors like Keanu Reeves are making it easier for Hollywood to replace them. If you want to see a performance that is robotic and void of depth, watch in in The Matrix or Johnny Mnemonic. The guy has as much depth as a rain puddle.
We shouldn't look at this and say that it's a bad thing that actors are being replaced, we should be saying that we need better actors.
Judging by your signature, I would think you live in Canada.
The Space channel shows Enterprise on Sunday nights at 8 and I think CityTV shows it Friday nights
--
Canadians.... The other other other white meat
Re:Microsoft invents Customer Feedback
on
Windows XP Embedded
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
i don't see the claim in that paragraph that they invented, mearly they are using it. surely you won't chide them for that? not to mention visual sourcesafe makes whatever GNU hippie program de jour look like a joke.
I myself use Windows, I am pro-windows in many ways, but even to me posts like this look like MS trolls.
Examine it closely for a moment.....
Point #1: Lack of proper capitalization.
This seems to be very common in MS trolls. I figure either they have no shift keys or do so many of these posts a minute that the keystroke required to hit shift actually represents a significant time cost.
Point #2: Mentioning a product by MS
MS Trolls are almost frightening in their ability to reference ANY MS product in a statement. In most cases, the product reference is either usually garbage or not related to the topic at hand.
Point #3: Taking shots at open source
Every MS troll seems to bash open source at every available opportunity. The open standards/source/etc are evil arguments are always a sure sign.
Point #3a: People who use anything open are
Why is it that pro-MS people always refer to everybody who isn't as a Timothy Leary type, acid-dropping hippy freak hanging out at Berkley and coding BSD to bring down the man.
Slashdot Mirror
Its bread and butter time for the smaller ISPs, they almost live month to month when they first start out they cant have a burn rate.
This is untrue. The company I work for started small. We got investors who gave us money due to the solidity of our business model and plan.
Starting at a small BBS turned ISP (cet.com [cet.com]),
This is one case. I know several companies that started small.
I seen how the owner would sell a full T1 and split it a dozen ways,
This is common practice, ALL ISPs do this.
scam customers on software packages,
The term SCAM is largely perception based, what you consider a scam, I may consider a good deal.
replace broken hardware that wasnt broken.
As a former technician, I have on several occasions replaced equipment I knew was perfectly functional in order to rule it out as a point of failure. I notice you didn't indicate that he charged for such replacement.
I moved onto another ISP, and saw how the salesmen reminded me of car salesmen, "Let me talk to the manager..."
All salespeople do this to one degree or another. I do it. Our company has certain discounts we are allowed to offer to a customer. I have to call and have every one approved. If I don't, they turn it down. This is not bad salesmanship, this is a fact of sales. Have you ever gone to a garagesale and offered some money for something and have the guy say, "Let me ask my wife." This is the same thing. Sometimes we need to defer to others.
People dont see whats going on behind the scenes, how the young kids are working thier ass off to keep the servers up cause they cant hire professional admins.
Again.... This is a single case. The company I work for only hires certfied engineers for our service department.
The systems are always having outages and they blame the larger telcos as a "network problem..."
Who's to say that's not a problem? I was a technician for PrimusTel in Canada and 99% of our problems were as a result of Bell Canada having problems. We occasionally had our own issues but it was mostly Bell.
That was my biggest problem, I couldnt stand being dishonest to a customer, and you cant be a good salesmen without bending the truth, spreading on the bullshit like butter. Even with a good product, its thier job to sell or they dont eat.
I am outright offended at this. I am one of the leading salespeople in my company. I have NEVER lied to a customer. EVER. If you were incapable of selling your product without telling lies, then either you didn't believe in your product or it was garbage. I have lost sales as a result of telling the truth. My boss is OK with that. When I started here, I explained that I have a reputation for honesty that I WILL NOT violate. I sell every service here with 100% honesty. If you are a liar, don't try to shuck your blame by trashing the profession. Incidentally, I make a good HONEST living.
Smaller ISP's have to cut costs too, I remember when all the ISPs in Spokane moved into the tel-west building so they could cut out the local exchange. Save 200 bux on federal taxes and transport fees. A T1 that costs 900 bux wholesale could be bought for 500, since all they had to do was run some cable down the hallway (overhead). Sell the T1 (frac) to 10 people paying you 300 bux, and they pay thier own costs, you could out bid. And then charge them for any hourly work needed. (You need help configuring your router? 10 hours billed)
I don't understand the point of this. It's called doing business.
Another reason ISPs needed to move into the telco buildings was the digital lines, to have the 56K v90 modems, the ISP has to have digital lines. I remember how everyone and thier brother was buying livingston port masters and running radius. Every ISP was the same, except for the modems on the end of the portmasters.
So what? Access doesn't sell, customer service sells. If you have two identical ISPs, the one with the better customer service will win out.
I think most slashdotters can confirm the shady side of the ISPs. How some run out of computer stores in the back, or BBS's that turned ISP. H
This is the same kind of logic that brings us bigotry. An ISP I work for was "shady", so all of them are. Doesn't sound too different from, "A [insert ethnicity here] person once stole my car so all of those people are "shady".
Hell, one of the most popular ISPs Eskimo [eskimo.com] here in seattle runs out of his living room. When I moved over here to this side of washington state, I went over and met the guy. Typical homegrown ISP, but this guy has shitloads of customers.
Again... your point? Does he provide the service he promises for a price that his customers are happy with? He must be. Good for him and his successful business. Who cares where it's run from.
Been there done that, now I work for a major wireless telco, millions of customers, and I never have to be shady. Drawbacks? Less ownership in the product. I get paid, but I dont make the choices. Management and Marketing does. Sometimes I just shake my head and say "Umm, if our stockholders only knew....)
Hmmm, sound dishonest to me.
Someday Im going to start another business, and try to keep the "mom and pop" attitude. Actually sell what the customer wants, and give it to them. Only thing stands in my way, People are cheap. (-;
What a good way to end the post, a statement that contradicts the rest of your argument.
I work for a wireless ISP in Canada. We are a multi-million dollar company that acts like a small Mom and Pop operation. We don't move into an area until we have a number of signed customers already. We are one of the FEW growing ISPs in Canada and it is due to our business model.
:TeraGo Networks
Wireless ISPs can work, the problem is that most are run by people who think like a phone company.
_______________
Shameless Plug
I see sooooooooo many posts by people about how everything MS does is wrong and that someone needs to break the stranglehold that MS has on the PC market.
Here it is.... along comes a solution....
What happens? It gets badmouthed.
You want to know why I tell people I know to use Windows and not Linux...... You tell me how to explain to my 85 year old grandmother how to use linux when she has trouble with the concept of a right vs left click. Then you explain why it is that she couldn't use that neat program about cats that she bought off of the shelf at Shoppers Drug Mart.
DAMMIT, sometimes some of you people REALLY piss me off. There is a place for ALL software. And if a distro of Linux that looks, runs and acts in all ways like Windows and will convert people from MS to it and have the security, stability of linux and the ability to use linux software.. Why wouldn't you support it?
The main problem with ICQIS and similar products is that they work. I work in sales at my company and traditionally, 1 out of 100 people contacted buy from you. If you change that to one in 1000 to reflect spam measure or so on, think about this.
Lets say your ICQIS bot sends outs 30000 messages in one day. That means you have 30 sales a day per bot.
I know an organization using this and the numbers work. It sucks but as long as it works, companies will do it. Its great that 99% of us block it, but because 1% doesn't it will keep happening.
The company I work for (This is not a plug so I won't mention who) has leveraged itself in a position to replace the TelCo's here. We are using broadband wireless technology and we have done significant enough damage to the phone company here that they have started to market specifically against us. We are not using 802.11b (I know I'm going to get flamed for that) or any other non-propietary protocol. Our equipment is built for what we are using it for. We don't make the subscribers buy any equipment, we keep ownership so that if you leave our network, you are not stuck with a useless piece of equipment.
We use the 5.8 Ghz frequecy for the SU's so that there is no worry about wash from too many devices in the band and our equipment is directional so there is little chance of stray signals messing up the equipment. On our backbone we use 18, 27 and 38 Ghz to go between our access points. We won't have any issues with over subscription because for $2500 we caqn slap up a new access panel for a 60 degree arc to service more people.
Our customer service record is second to none. The company has been around for two years and we have 0 customer churn. Not one customer has left our company for any reason.
Devon
So /. is recycling news from wired who
recycles it from fuckedcompany.com...sigh.
/. stories are posted elsewhere. Since ./ doesn't employ reporters (at least that I know of), its really hard to go out and find news that isn't from somewhere else or that wasn't published first.
I would like to point out that 99% of
I just broke their policy [kpmg.com].
Oops [kpmg.com] I [kpmg.com] did [kpmg.com] it [kpmg.com] again! [kpmg.com]
Damnit! [kpmg.com]
FOUL!!!! You are sent to the penalty box for posting something that reminds me of Britney Spears!
www.kpmg.com
Licensed airwaves is a good thing. It ensures that frequencies remain useable and don't obstruct other frequencies. If anyone could broadcast on any frequency, the airwaves would be useless due to noise.
Licensed airwaves is a good thing. It ensures that frequencies remain useable and don't obstruct other frequencies. If anyone could broadcast on any frequency, the airwaves would be useless due to noise.
I have to agree completely. I work for a wireless ISP and I can just imagine having to have the following conversation.....
"Hello sir, this is Devon from ******, we figured out what the problem with your network connection was. We realize that you lost important e-mails and all of the data that you had ftp'd in this weekend is all corrupt, but Radio is unlicensed and a bunch of people playing Wolfenstein this weekend setup a wireless LAN using our frequencies."
This is why my company bought the spectrum licenses, to avoid things like this. There are MANY unlicensed bands for people to use without disallowing people the use of a private frequency.
Additionally, I can imagine if you got rid of all licenses this situation. Sitting in your car and having to turn the dial all over the place because FM station have been forced to go spread spectrum and my Radio Station isn't in the same place as it was before.
Insurrection was a hyped up episode of TNG. To me if I'm going to go see a movie and shell out $10, I expect it to be better than the re-runs I can catch at 3am.
If this one is better than an episode, I will be happy with it, otherwise.
PPPPPtttttttthhhpppttTt!!!!!
------- Rasberries of the world unite!
I agree that the characters seemed robotic and void of depth, but this is not limited to animated characters.
Actors like Keanu Reeves are making it easier for Hollywood to replace them. If you want to see a performance that is robotic and void of depth, watch in in The Matrix or Johnny Mnemonic. The guy has as much depth as a rain puddle.
We shouldn't look at this and say that it's a bad thing that actors are being replaced, we should be saying that we need better actors.
Judging by your signature, I would think you live in Canada.
The Space channel shows Enterprise on Sunday nights at 8 and I think CityTV shows it Friday nights
--
Canadians.... The other other other white meat
i don't see the claim in that paragraph that they invented, mearly they are using it. surely you won't chide them for that? not to mention visual sourcesafe makes whatever GNU hippie program de jour look like a joke.
I myself use Windows, I am pro-windows in many ways, but even to me posts like this look like MS trolls.
Examine it closely for a moment.....
Point #1: Lack of proper capitalization.
This seems to be very common in MS trolls. I figure either they have no shift keys or do so many of these posts a minute that the keystroke required to hit shift actually represents a significant time cost.
Point #2: Mentioning a product by MS
MS Trolls are almost frightening in their ability to reference ANY MS product in a statement. In most cases, the product reference is either usually garbage or not related to the topic at hand.
Point #3: Taking shots at open source
Every MS troll seems to bash open source at every available opportunity. The open standards/source/etc are evil arguments are always a sure sign.
Point #3a: People who use anything open are
Why is it that pro-MS people always refer to everybody who isn't as a Timothy Leary type, acid-dropping hippy freak hanging out at Berkley and coding BSD to bring down the man.
-Canadria
Oh well,
Another Rant Bites the Dust