Oh, no offense taken. Do understand - I don't think the telcos have significantly increased costs of operations during the second and subsequent years, but in many cases the initial year is priced so low as to offer little or no profit, with the expectation that the later years of subscription balance it out for a net profit. It's the same principle as the loss leader, really. However, they have increased the costs that *we* have to pay to keep doing what we're doing. Since that's the baseline from the telco we have to work with, that's why the prices we offer have to vary in a similar manner.
If anything, it's the initial year of service that has the highest operation cost, as that's the year where the connection is originally set up, which requires time in the office to set up on the computers, labor to physically connect cables where needed, etc. Also, if there's a pre-existing problem with the phone line (such as a frayed cable or the like), that usually gets found and fixed during the first year, too. Those costs-of-business get 'balanced out' against projected future profits from later years, hence the lop-sided pricing when comparing first year to later years. That's why someone signing up for a brand-new account as a monthly account (rather than annual contract) has to pay an initial set-up fee - because there's no guarantee that the customer will actually stay long enough for the company to recoup those initial set-up costs.
This also explains why the telcos offer cheaper costs to us when an annual renewal contract is agreed to vs. a monthly subscription - there's some reasonable expectation that the customer IS going to be sticking around and using the service for year(s) to come. If the servers are running for 12 months a year, it doesn't make a difference to the electricity used if they're running for twelve individual 1-months or one combined 12-month, after all.
It's not just DSL Extreme - look at just about ANY subscription-based service, such as cellphone plans, cable TV, other DSL or cable internet providers, etc. It's an industry standard, really. Can't say that I LIKE it (your cellphone bill shouldn't be even remotely comparable to your car payments!
) but there you go. Trust me, I wish I could say otherwise