Best internet system for full-time work?

[Stillwater]

Originally Posted by FlyingDiver

Want some cheese to go with that whine?

I won't even bother trying to explain the differences between buying commodity physical goods and network access. If you don't like what you're getting, good luck with another provider. If you want guaranteed bandwidth at remote locations, you'll need to purchase a dedicated satellite channel at thousands of dollars a day.

joe

If you think there's a difference then you are welcome to your opinion. Network access isn't anything special it's just a service. I pays my money I expect service, nothing more, nothing less.

[BigV]

Hard goods and internet service are different. You don't sell a single pizza and advertise it as all you can eat.

I was in the internet business in the early days. Our board meetings got very heated over just this topic. Back then it was dialup and our board was split over metered vs. non-metered.

I argued that you can't sell unlimited service and have a meter running. It was a lie. I had a real problem with that.

The truth is that it is a numbers game. You will have a breakdown of users that are split between high, medium and low usage. You have to build you business model based on those numbers. I see the exact same bean counters working the cell data biz as I had when I was in dialup. They see someone USING the service as taking advantage of them. They ignore the large number of people that only use the service occasionally. They don't see it as the company taking advantage of them.

Bottom line is I don't like liars. Either sell me a metered service or unlimited. Not unlimited, but not really.

[FlyingDiver]

Originally Posted by BigV

Hard goods and internet service are different. You don't sell a single pizza and advertise it as all you can eat.

I was in the internet business in the early days. Our board meetings got very heated over just this topic. Back then it was dialup and our board was split over metered vs. non-metered.

I argued that you can't sell unlimited service and have a meter running. It was a lie. I had a real problem with that.

The truth is that it is a numbers game. You will have a breakdown of users that are split between high, medium and low usage. You have to build you business model based on those numbers. I see the exact same bean counters working the cell data biz as I had when I was in dialup. They see someone USING the service as taking advantage of them. They ignore the large number of people that only use the service occasionally. They don't see it as the company taking advantage of them.

Bottom line is I don't like liars. Either sell me a metered service or unlimited. Not unlimited, but not really.

The problem here is that we're not really talking about metered vs unmetered. Most cell data plans these days are pretty up-front about data limits. Some old "unlimited" plans may be shading the truth, but those are in decline, as far as I can tell.

The problem here is quality of service. It's just math (and engineering) that when you have a certain amount of service (bandwidth) available in a specific location, the service each individual gets is going to be a lot better when there's less users. The number of cell towers doesn't change in Yuma between July and January. But the number of cell phone (or cell modem) users goes WAY up. 4x? 10x? More? I've never been there, so I don't know the actual number. But it's a lot. So the QoS (bandwidth, etc) is going to be a lot worse. Simple math.

joe

[WheelingIt]

Originally Posted by FlyingDiver

The problem here is that we're not really talking about metered vs unmetered. Most cell data plans these days are pretty up-front about data limits.

I have to agree. It's not so much a metering issue, but rather a bandwidth issue. You get the data you pay for, but if the towers are blocked with a bunch of users you will simply get it at a much slower rate. As far as I know none of the cellphone data plans guarantee bandwidth/speed (and it would be hard to do so, to be honest). The service they offer is access to a certain amount of data, not a guarantee on the speed of that data. So, it makes sense to me...

[Stillwater]

Ok, so if your system is being used to a point that I'm only getting 50% of the service I paid for, only charge me 50% or put in enough equipment to support your customer load. This is like paying for airfare from New York to San Francisco and then having them put you on a bus with no refund. Who and why was this thread started anyway, anyone remember???

[FlyingDiver]

Originally Posted by Stillwater

Ok, so if your system is being used to a point that I'm only getting 50% of the service I paid for, only charge me 50% or put in enough equipment to support your customer load. This is like paying for airfare from New York to San Francisco and then having them put you on a bus with no refund. Who and why was this thread started anyway, anyone remember???

What service, exactly, did you pay for that you're only getting 50% of?

joe

[Wayne M]

I hope someone in the business drops in, but I'm thinking that there is "time sharing" going on. An early day example of time sharing communications was two different messages being sent at the same time. Take for example "The quick brown fox," and "Now is the time for...." it would be something like this, "TNhoew qiusick......etc" Every other letter would be from I different word in the different sentences. So present day bandwidth is "shared." Think of that being sent at 60 words per minute. It actually would be 30 words per minute to the user. Add a third sentence with every 3rd letter, and it drops it to 33 1/3 WPM. The more users you have the less bandwidth you will experience. When the bandwidth is trimmed down, you will see slowness in your abilities to upload and download. The same goes for the equipment that a company uses. If it is good enough to carry large bandwidths of information then slowness will be non existent. Considering a Cell tower, I'm thinking it can get overcrowded real quick. Heck, I have even had "circuit busy" during high peak times. I sure don't get my money back for those times.

AT&T just recently sent out announcements that it will start monitoring DSL network usage. They have set a cap of 150 Gigabytes. I was concerned since I stream some videos from Netflix, Hulu, ABC, NBC, CBS, that I would be limited in what I could download. So I went to the "usage" site and looked at my history of usage. My highest monthly usage was 24.26 Gb of which 21.13Gb was download, and 3.13 Gb was upload. So far this month I'm at 13.45 Gb total with 13.45 Gb download and 1.1 Gb uploaded.

When I'm on the road I have a USB Modem and it has a 5Gb limit. So, I ask those who email me not to send me large attachment files (I hate them, when research will reveal a URL that could be sent instead), and I limit my activities to other than streaming.

Although 20 Mb files sent 100 times would be 2 Gb of data. It would not take to long at 20 Mb a day to exceed most companies limits. Shop around and get the best deal, and unlimited data would be the nicest.

Good luck.

[Rapid Robert]

Originally Posted by Stillwater

Ok, so if your system is being used to a point that I'm only getting 50% of the service I paid for, only charge me 50% or put in enough equipment to support your customer load. This is like paying for airfare from New York to San Francisco and then having them put you on a bus with no refund. Who and why was this thread started anyway, anyone remember???

If you take the time to read any contract today you will soon realize that you are guaranteed absolutely nothing for your money but the obligation to pay to pay the piper! Even the fine print on the back of a cash purchase contract for a new RV (signed and paid for) stated that they could change the total any time up to actual delivery. In my case they tried to change it 20 days after I took delivery. You just take what they give you and shut up, it's that kind of world today because we allowed it to be! This is a fact not whining!

[Stillwater]

There is hope for the consumer. The Canadian government just fined the largest Cdn. telecommunications company $ 10,000,000 for misleading advertising. Think in terms that the population of the US is 10x the size of Canada. The second largest company has also been charged but as yet not fined. The reason for the fine was that Bell was advertising a bundled rate for TV, Internet and telephone for about $ 69.00 a month, but by the time all the mandatory service charges in the fine print was added on no one paid less than $ 80.00 a month, about 15% higher. These charges where brought after consumer complaints to the agency.
Hopefully they will be taken to task about the fine print of "up too" a certain amount of speed they advertise then fall far short of providing that.
You know like paying for a ticket on the space shuttle and being given a ride in a Cessna.