🚀 go-pugleaf

Joseph Mills (shalom@netcom.com) wrote:

:      If you were running this ISP  or any other Cleveland-based ISP on 
: the west coast or in the NYC area you would be run out of town because of 
: the high prices  providers charge.   I see many providers that provide 
: PPP for as little as $15 a month, flat rate and no hour limit, in 
: addition to WWW and FTP space.    As far as I know, the ISPs here in 
: Cleveland don't even allow the usage of TIA.

We had a staff meeting and were discussing costs yesterday, and we talked 
about our prices vs. others in the market. 

We don't market, nor have we ever marketed, based on price.  Zbig
positioned himself as a local ISP who can serve people in Cleveland better
than Netcom or PSI could ever hope to.  He only had the hourly plan up
until now because he didn't have the bandwidth available to support the
large number of people who would have applied for accounts had he had
a plan like Netcom. And speaking of Netcom specifically, I say: You get
what you pay for. I was mucking around their system when they first came
to Cleveland... I used the guest login and even though I was dialing up,
the link was interminably slow. And if (WHEN) you ever have problems, your
savings can potentially get eaten up by calls to Tech Support.... in
California.

Plus, I believe that there is not enough competition for everyone to be able
to justify charging ten dollars a month - the markets that have $10/month
have vicious competition (how many service providers are there in Southern
California? Think about it). Maybe if we were swamped with ISP's in Cleveland
.. but even a local competitor who competes with us on price doesn't have
what could be considered rock-bottom fees. Netcom is probably the least 
expensive in Cleveland, but for their price you get no service.

There are some other reasons too. I can cross-post the discussion from 
apk.general if it would clear things up further for you.


--
Steve Sobol * The Tiny Software Company (Programming/Tutoring/Training)
            * APK Net Ltd. (Marketing/Tech Support)
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