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f1sushi2
join:2002-05-30
Nepean, ON

f1sushi2

Member

More on the new 1500/192kbps reality...

Spoke to Rogers today - confirmed that 1500/192 is the new norm for now (bits caps anyone?). I asked them if they were planning to email all subscribers with info on this reduction in service, and they responded that they would.

1. It's interesting that subscribers that make use of bandwidth allocated by Rogers were once regarded as valued customers, but are now publicly referred to at abusers. How do you abuse of something that was originally advertised as a service feature?

2. Rogers indicated that the throttle was implemented to avoid congestion. Seems to me (and anyone with common sense) that the throttle is implemented to manage an increasing subscriber base. That must be their way of saying "you'll get less product for a higher price", or that "you'll share the same bandwidth with more subscribers so that we can rescue our business model at your expense".

3. I have no problem with the current measures being taken (I completely understand how desperate these folks are to rescue their poorly planned and executed failure of a business model), but the fanfare early on, and the current cloak and dagger approach to network changes is just bad business. Keep in mind that the average customer still has no idea a) that their bandwidth has been reduced and b) that their price per Gigabit is about to go up.

Bandwidth caps AND bit caps? Maybe. At a higher price? I don't know. The first step implemented without prior customer knowledge? Smoke me a kipper, I'll be back for breakfast!

sbrook
Mod
join:2001-12-14
Ottawa

sbrook

Mod

Remember it's not Rogers or Shaw or Cogeco or Sympatico that defined this crappy model, and it's not the cable operators that were in essence bound by this crappy model. It was @home that drove the business, and now see what happened to them.

If the broadband operators continued with the @home model, they'd be following @home down the road to oblivion.

HiVolt
Premium Member
join:2000-12-28
Toronto, ON

HiVolt

Premium Member

said by sbrook:
Remember it's not Rogers or Shaw or Cogeco or Sympatico that defined this crappy model, and it's not the cable operators that were in essence bound by this crappy model. It was @home that drove the business, and now see what happened to them.

If the broadband operators continued with the @home model, they'd be following @home down the road to oblivion.
I dunno about Rogers and the others, but I started with Shaw here in Toronto in mid '98 and back then they weren't on @Home, it was Shaw Wave. Then they jumped onto the bandwagon a few months later and they got renamed into Shaw@Home.

As for the throttling, I dont really care, as long as the caps they eventually introduce will be reasonable. On Shaw I had an uncapped 10mbit downstream, and 1mbit upstream. Once Rogers took over in Dec. 2000, they throttled it down to 3mbit downstream and 400kbps upstream. Now they wanna cut it down by half, its not that bad... I prefer lower speeds rather than transfer quotas anyway.

Last time I checked, I was still at 2.3mbit download and 385kbps upload, so my area hasnt gotten hit yet.
f1sushi2
join:2002-05-30
Nepean, ON

f1sushi2 to sbrook

Member

to sbrook
That's a valid point, sbrook - I'm just looking at this mess from the average end user's optics. Rogers, to whom we pay our monthly bill, took it upon themselves to provide the end user with a service, which was advertised in a manner that promissed us unlimited usage at a fixed price. At the very least, that was the spirit of the promotion.

Rogers' failed alignment with @home is a product of a failed business model, and both are to blame. Rogers wasn't a victim of the mess, they were part of the problem by exercising poor due diligence, and now they have passed the problem along to the consumer. They were simply swept up by the whole sweeping "internet revolution thingy" and implied riches from same. So were a lot of investors...

You're right on the ball when you say that the @home model can't be continued, and I think we see things the same way. I'm just approaching the mess from the Rogers' subscriber's point of view.
Friendol
join:2001-11-20
Vancouver, BC

Friendol to sbrook

Member

to sbrook
If one follows the financial news, one should realize @Home's demise is NOT because it didn't charge enough for BW or did not throttle speed. Just that it's business model simply failed. At that time, Canadian ISPs with almost free BW from @Home was charging lower than their US counterpart. Today, with the demise of @Home, the Amercians are still charging a flat rate with no speed and bit cap whatsoever. Their charges are only higher than us when one ignores the extra charge imposed or will be imposed by the many Canadian ISPs. I estimated if one does an average of 10 to 12 GB/month, one should be paying a lot more than what the Amercians are now paying. The American system is rather simple.... no web meter, not caps and talking about OOL...8000/1000 in real life......now that's speed!! Check out their prices....what a bargain!!

sbrook
Mod
join:2001-12-14
Ottawa

sbrook

Mod

First, @home succeeded @wave.

Second, Rogers business model was simple. We provide the cable connections to the user, @home provides the network, we call it Rogers@home. @home bills us (about) $30 per month per user for all the bandwidth, all the network architecture after the CMTS. They had a contract with @home for some time, and before it went under, @home was trying to renegotiate some of the contracts.

@home tried to offset the increasing bandwidth costs by the advertising portal ... it expected big money, and it sold itself to Rogers and other cable operators that way.

What Rogers and many other cable operators were guilty of was believing @home's prediction that they could continue to provide the service, and that they didn't see the writing ont he wall soon enough.

ROgers took on the business as seemlessly as possible, so didn't convey what it was they were facing ... they probably didn't realize ... they were still looking at the model provided by @home, and probably quickly discovered why @home went away, and have moved fairly quickly to prevent the same thing by implementing a price increase to start, and then looked at their next major cost - bandwidth, and decided they had to get a control on it ... and started talking bit caps.

Sympatico, which had to follow @home for competetive reasons, jumped at the opportunity to stem what had been red ink and upped they price first and implemented bit caps first.

US operators were also pinned under the @home problems, and are themselves increasing prices and starting to impose bit caps too. OOL is an anomoly, and I don't think anyone knows quite how they are doing it ... we'll find out eventually if they're doing some creative accounting.
f1sushi2
join:2002-05-30
Nepean, ON

f1sushi2

Member

Agreed. I get the impression Rogers saw the writing on the wall a long time ago, but was forced to play along with the portal revenue rescue plan because of their already substantial investment and existing obligations with excite@home.

What really insults me is the VP of Sales & Marketing (Alek Krstajic) placing the blame for bitcaps on the top 10% of users who "abuse" the service, instead of on a flawed business model. Thanks Alek!

To quote the article below, "just what did the broadband suppliers think they were selling in the first place? Ads by cable and digital subscriber line carriers touted always-on connections, with no hint of a limit. Their very speed meant that large files could be downloaded very quickly, relieving the bottlenecks created by slow connections."

»www.rbua.org/rbua_news/0 ··· ail.html

The bottom line is - nothing ever really changes. Investors payed up first with huge losses. Now the subscriber is being forced to come to the rescue. Most importantly, the subscriber, and not big corporate (mis)management, is being blamed for the problem. That's quite a spin. I guess the customer isn't always right...

tymex
join:2002-06-10
canada

tymex

Member

said by F1Sushi:


What really insults me is the VP of Sales & Marketing (Alek Krstajic) placing the blame for bitcaps on the top 10% of users who "abuse" the service, instead of on a flawed business model. Thanks Alek!


Because he wants to impose progressive fees on those 10%, but still wants a flat fee on the other 90% over which he has an advantage, instead of a complete usage based model, he just wants a partial one. Calling the 10% abuser is amount to admitting flat fee doesn't work, however he doesn't really want to fix it, he just want to have it both ways.
Friendol
join:2001-11-20
Vancouver, BC

Friendol to sbrook

Member

to sbrook
Still can not agree with sbrook totally. Sorry

1) Whether @home was billing Rogers at "about" $30/month was questionable and spectulative on your part. Becuase of @Home's "perceived" portal revenue, @Home was basically given it away to other ISPs. Roger, Shaw etc were quicked to jump into the deal. And so the story goes..... BTW, the demise of @Home was brought about in a large part by a lot of poor merger decisions. @Home and Excite was rumored to be one of them. @Home was simply into too many things at that time.

2) I thought it was established in another thread that Sympatico was in a profitable position before the caps. It is Rogers now that is waiting in the wing to do the same. And why not...it's $$..isn't it!!

3) It was also mentioned in another thread that the wholesale price to a Calgary ISP from Telus was $0.89/2.0 /GB. To even suggest to retail that at $8 to $20
per GB to end users is outrageous. Remember, your installed customer base remains your BIGGEST customers and should deserve better.

4) Customers are customers....not "abusers"!!

5) Can you name same major US ISPs that have impose bit caps?? Be factual please.

sbrook
Mod
join:2001-12-14
Ottawa

sbrook

Mod

First, see this ...

»US Cable Companies May Introduce Download Limits

Next, find the AUPs for Cox, ATTBI and Charter and you'll see that the ability to impose caps is ready and waiting, no changes required. The fact that this clause is in so many of the AUP's which were modelled on the @home AUP, shows that @home were considering bandwidth caps.

The speculative part is the "about $30" ... the fact that it was billed flat rate is widely known and published.

The downfall of @home was indeed due to the lavish spending of predominantly Excite in its attempt to sell the concept of the advertising laden "portal" for @home users. Advertisers were seeing how this didn't work, but excite didn't. @home believed that they could subsidize the increasing bandwidth costs with advertising. Profitability of the internet business was declining. Again all this is published in trade journals at the time.

It was established in another thread that BELL Canada was profitable, not that HSE service was. Unfortunately, Bell does not seem to post the P&L figures for providing Sympatico HSE service, although the profitable part is providing the "last mile" service, the physical DSL, but don't forget, that's by internal accounting, because they must to justify "last mile" service charges to other ISPs. So we don't know what real costs are and where any profits and losses get moved or assigned, since HSE is an operating area of Bell, not a separately accountable company.

The wholesale price of bandwidth does seem to vary anything from $1 to $2.50 approx per gig, so I agree, to charge $8 for bandwidth is gouging. I've always agreed with that. BUT I've also said that the high fee is not to get money, but to stop people using excess bandwidth, in all likelihood to contain bandwidth costs because of costs of providing more pipes and higher capacity routers etc.

The AUPs explain very clearly that consumption of excessive bandwidth that degrades performance is actionable, therefore, while they may be customers, they are customers you don't want, so it's not unreasonable to call them abusers.
[text was edited by author 2002-06-16 09:01:53]
f1sushi2
join:2002-05-30
Nepean, ON

f1sushi2

Member

Agree with a lot of what you say, Stuart, but to say that AUP provisions action on users of excessive bandwidth is one thing, while altering terms of service for all to rescue a failed business model is another. Any uncapped service will always have users in the high 10 percentile.

Rogers conveniently sliced off the top 10% (ab)users of bandwidth, regardless of what that bandwidth figure was, and used them as a scapegoat for altering everyone's terms of service, at least according to an interview with their VP of Sales and Marketing. AUP never specified what consisted of excessive bandwidth, thus abusers could be freely categorized as the top...say...10% of users by bandwidth. How convenient!

Interesting to note that subscribers are supposed to sign the EUA which contains the AUP (that was actually one of the questions in the last survey), and I have never been asked to do so (nobody I know has ever signed it). Could this be because Rogers understands that the AUP has no teeth?

Rogers provided a service heavily advertised as "unlimited use for a fixed price", will soon fail to deliver, and will continue to blame it on the top 10% of (ab)users by bandwidth...

Some good facts coming out of this discussion, and I think we all more or less agree that although the writing was on the wall, the public perception that Rogers is trying to instill really stinks.

sbrook
Mod
join:2001-12-14
Ottawa

sbrook

Mod

I'll agree that the PR that Rogers and Sympatico have conveyed by not "coming clean" really is bad. If they had come clean about the relationship between them and @home when they had to introduce @rogers, the pavement would be a little more smooth.

The AUPs are of questionable validity, but that said, some parts are very clear and would probably stand court challenges, although the cost to try to challenge it in court would be ridiculously more than the service costs.

When you consider that according to most broadband operators studies, 10% of of the customers are using 80% of the bandwidth. Rough calculations would indicate that on that basis, bringing that 10% under a cap would reduce bandwidth costs by nearly 70%. Now if you're an ISP and you've got bandwidth costs of say 10 million per month, pissing off 10% of your customers to save 7 million per month in bandwidth charges, while only losing maybe 500,000 in lost revenues which made no profit anyway is nothing. You can do a lot of network upgrades for 7 million per month!

Now trying to class the next 10% as abusers is going to be a lot more difficult, and by the law of diminishing returns, the savings per month would probably not be cost effective at all, because the next 10% may not be giving you profits, but they aren't costing you big time like the first 10%.

When you run a business, you don't have to take everyone who knocks on your door as a customer. And of course, we know that the marketing people twist words. Unlimited has for many years meant "time" in the ISP industry. What the marketers failed to realize was that unlimited time with speed = gobs of bandwidth!
f1sushi2
join:2002-05-30
Nepean, ON

f1sushi2

Member

Agreed, except that not only have (ab)users been brought or will soon be brought under a bit cap - all users have had their upstream bandwidth curtailed by 50%. Again, I take the angle of the median user.

The former measure has had some publicity, although no official communication with the customer via email or mail-out. That's fine - the limits aren't in effect yet. That's the tweak to the business model that was inevitable, and we can agree not to agree 100% on the "spirit" of the agreement with the end-user.

The latter measure was done very much with a "cloak and dagger" approach. A 50% reduction in upstream bandwidth across the board without prior notification, basically grouping all users and (ab)users together. This measure is clearly to manage an increasing subscriber base and generate more revenue from existing infrastructure by cramming more users per CMTS upstream channel. That medicine is a bit tougher to swallow...

sbrook
Mod
join:2001-12-14
Ottawa

sbrook

Mod

That I will agree to since whatever it was they did to implement that cut in upstream has KILLED downstream too. I used to be capped at 1.5/384 ... now I'm supposedly at 1.5/192 ... and I used to get 1.2-1.4/370 off peak (time) and about 0.9/360 peak (evenings). Now, I get 700/180 offpeak and about 300/170 peak!

I am in a battle with Rogers to get that cleaned up.

You're in Nepean ... what's your Phub and cmts gateway ? I'm on fallowfield rd, tlgw4.

In theory, for most stuff, the 192 cut from 384 shouldn't have had too much affect, since as a residential service, most of the activity should be downlink (except of course for the games players who are getting hit both ways).

Stuart
[text was edited by author 2002-06-16 11:28:06]
Friendol
join:2001-11-20
Vancouver, BC

Friendol to sbrook

Member

to sbrook
Well said!!

Down South, from what I have read, the most talked about and the only option that has implemented for certain ISP (s) is tier-pricing based on speed. Of course, anything else is possible. The reason for speed cap of course is not because of p2p/file-sharing/piracy as mentioned in your link. In Canada, however, the ISPs are putting the entire blame on these activities for the impending bit cap. Now, this is not fair. With a reasonable speed cap, it is still tolerable. However, what is a fair bit cap?? Figures like 10%/20%...of the users are using 60%/70%/90% of the BW have been thrown around wildly. I do understand, as you may agree, there are thousands and thousands of broadband users who are only turning their computers on once or twice a week. So, again the "real" users get the short end of the stick. Now, that's not fair.

To comment on the unfairness of most of the ISP-imposed AUPs would take another thread and is a topic that has been discussed to death in many Canadian forums already. I only want to say this.....most AUPs try to define a rather unrealistic and narrow limit of 5/1...6/1. Sympatico of course is trying to enforce a much discussed and hated limit of 5/5. Like many of us here, I don't use p2p or file sharing at all and I find these limits inadequate. I do go on the net a lot though. So, should Canada introduce bit cap, I would have to pay through my nose for the extra GB used. The $8/GB charged right now is simply outrageous. This will definitely drive a lot of people who would be in a position to use broadband to have second thoughts and look elsewhere. What might eventually happen is anybody's guess.

When I call a person.."customer".. he is a customer. He buys from me and he is on my customer list as a customer. Some are less profitable and others are more profitable. That is business. When I remove a customer from my customer list for whatever reason, he is not longer a customer...but then still not an "abuser". Depending who's side you are on, you could argue until your face turns red who is actually abusing who. The term "abuser" therefore should only be reserved for "internal" use. It sounds BAD when it is used in public. That's a customer point of view.

In general, considering your background, I find that you are quite patient and informative in many cases. Rogers is proud to have you as staff. Keep up the good work.

Have a nice day

HiVolt
Premium Member
join:2000-12-28
Toronto, ON

HiVolt to f1sushi2

Premium Member

to f1sushi2
Hehe, of course they're trying to cram more users onto the existing infrastructure, and that's why the 1500/192 throttle. They want to be able to handle the fallout from Sympatico, the tons of users that will be going elsewhere. And since Sympatico has a 1000/128 speed, none of those users will really mind going UP to 1500/192, for even a few months with no caps, especially with the introductory deals that Rogers is offering.

Another thing that is hurting the ISP's themselves in not making profit, is these ridiculous promotions. Here in Toronto at least, when a friend of mine got Sympatico last november, he signed on for a minimum of 6 months at a lower rate (dont remember), AND got a $150 Future Shop gift certificate. I believe Rogers was offering something to that effect as well with a $200 Future Shop gift certificate. WHY? Just stick to the old promotions that worked in the past, "free installation, save $100" cuz there's really nothing to installing cable or DSL in 90% of the cases.

These ISP's are GIVING things away, and then crying about not making profit, and blaming it onto a small percentage of "abusers", which it lured into their network by essentially false advertising.

sbrook
Mod
join:2001-12-14
Ottawa

sbrook to Friendol

Mod

to Friendol
said by Friendol:
I only want to say this.....most AUPs try to define a rather unrealistic and narrow limit of 5/1...6/1. Sympatico of course is trying to enforce a much discussed and hated limit of 5/5.

I think everyone is in agreement that 5 down is definitely too low, but I don't see it going over 10 for a standard tier, and I absolutely agree that $8 per gig over is ridiculous, even as a penalty. (Personally, I'd rather speed cap me to 56K when I hit the cap rather than charge me $8 per gig!!!)
said by Friendol:

When I call a person.."customer".. he is a customer. He buys from me and he is on my customer list as a customer. Some are less profitable and others are more profitable. That is business. When I remove a customer from my customer list for whatever reason, he is not longer a customer...but then still not an "abuser". Depending who's side you are on, you could argue until your face turns red who is actually abusing who. The term "abuser" therefore should only be reserved for "internal" use. It sounds BAD when it is used in public. That's a customer point of view.

To some extent, I'll agree that labeling someone as an abuser has a distinct negative connotation ... who's next to be called an abuser. But at the same time, they are calling a spade a spade. If they only did that with the rest of the business, we'd be in a lot better position!
said by Friendol:

In general, considering your background, I find that you are quite patient and informative in many cases. Rogers is proud to have you as staff. Keep up the good work.

Have a nice day
HAHAHAHAHA! Considering my background ... heehee!

Sorry, I don't work for Rogers! I do work as a systems consultant in computers and communications, but not for Rogers and not for any of their competitors either. I used to work for a major computer manufacturer who bit the dust a few years back and now work for a small manufacturer of computers and comms equipment.

I don't think Rogers could afford me!

Stuart
Friendol
join:2001-11-20
Vancouver, BC

Friendol

Member

Well...well...well...SORRY!! But are you aure you don't work for Rogers....It was you who said the following :

"Second, Rogers business model was simple. We provide the cable connections to the user, @home provides the network, we call it Rogers@home. @home bills us (about) $30 per month per user for all the bandwidth, all the network architecture after the CMTS. They had a contract with @home for some time, and before it went under, @home was trying to renegotiate some of the contracts."

Well may be you are/were involved in some contracting work from Rogers....But that's not important

I agree...Rogers can't afford you.
f1sushi2
join:2002-05-30
Nepean, ON

f1sushi2 to sbrook

Member

to sbrook
Your new downstream problem might be related to how the CMTS card manages connections. I was a hardware consultant for a major telco supplier's CMTS card. Sorry, I can't mention who due to NDA. The card was based on Cisco's reference design, which is a 4UP/1DN CompactPCI card using one of Broadcom's DOCSIS chipsets.

The CMTS card I worked on was a 6UP/1DN. Embedded code was architected to load CMTS CPU usage by an inversely similar ratio (1:6) per-subscriber. Do the math, but I get the sneaking suspicion that the CMTS card you're connected to is a 4UP/1DN.

This may not always hold true (ie. times of low usage) depending on how embedded code written to manage traffic through CMTS was architected, but I'd bet a few bucks on this accounting for your new downstream performance.

Ditto over here...

sbrook
Mod
join:2001-12-14
Ottawa

sbrook to Friendol

Mod

to Friendol
That was meant to be in quotes ... as in Rogers model was simple "We ..."

I have never worked for Rogers, never contracted to Rogers, The only contact I have with Rogers is a cell phone and this newly crappy internet connection. I just have a good understanding of the way the business works.

I was out of the country for 6 years and got back in 2000 and discovered that Rogers had taken over the cable and radio world!

Stuart
sbrook

sbrook to f1sushi2

Mod

to f1sushi2
I'm on a TeraLink system, but if that applies to these, then that would go a long way to explain it, even if they've provisioned it for 1.5 down.

I wanna new Modem on a new CMTS!

Stuart

tymex
join:2002-06-10
canada

tymex to Friendol

Member

to Friendol
said by Friendol:

1) Whether @home was billing Rogers at "about" $30/month was questionable and spectulative on your part.
The exactly amount is in the @home MDA (master distribution agreement) which is confidential.

Quote from »www.dotcomscoop.com/arti ··· p?sid=10

"27. The cable companies provide this network pursuant to the MDAs. The MDAs include an original distribution agreement entered into in June 1996 with Cox, Comcast, and TCI (the "Original MDA"), and later amendments. See At Home Corp., 5/16/1997 Form S-1, 62-67. Under the MDAs, At Home collects a share of subscription revenues paid by the subscribers to the cable companies. At Home generally receives 35% of the fees paid by the subscribers to the cable companies in the United States, and 20% of the fees paid by subscribers to the cable companies in Canada. See id. at 6; see also Debtors¡¯ Emergency Motion for Order Pursuant to 11 U.S.C. ¡ì 365(a) Authorizing Rejection of Unexpired Leases of Nonresidential Real Property, 4."

20% of of $40.xx is about $8-$9 canadian dollar, it was such a good deal that no MSO would want to renegotiate it.

Now, I don't know where the $30 guesstimate came from though.

sbrook
Mod
join:2001-12-14
Ottawa

sbrook

Mod

I saw it reported in the press at that. I suspect that they actually paid more than that, and that 20% covers one part of the service.

If it was only 20%, there's no way that @home could make money! Not a hope in hell.

tymex
join:2002-06-10
canada

tymex

Member

said by sbrook:
I saw it reported in the press at that. I suspect that they actually paid more than that, and that 20% covers one part of the service.

If it was only 20%, there's no way that @home could make money! Not a hope in hell.
You need a better argument in the face of "Pertinent facts" filed before a court than just saying "no way" and add more speculation without backing it up. I suggest the $30 is what the canadian cable companies pocketed base on the above information.

Note that they got better deals with US MSO's.

You are right that there is no way @home could make anything, they never made their first dime, perhaps the company wasn't setup to make money. ATT being had the biggest stake and was quite willing to see it went down in flames and tried to buy the carcass at rock bottom price. Everyone knew who got the short end of the stick.
Friendol
join:2001-11-20
Vancouver, BC

Friendol

Member

Thanx tymex for the info. Come to think of it, your estimation of say $10/month/Canadian subscriber went to @Home sounds accurate enough. I vaguely remember there was a discussion on that in Cnet.com back a year ago.

One more question....

When @Home was at it's full swing...there were also a lot of other US and Canadian ISPs NOT affiliated with @Home in any way. A lot of them are still around. They apparently were operating ok then and still thriving. These days, except for Symapatico in the East, I didn't even hear a beep from any of them complaining. No caps are suggested as yet. Stuart did posted a link which mentioned a few US based ISPs namely Cox, Charter (formerly associated with @Home) and AT&T Broadband may be thinking along that line. So far, only Charter has introduced tiered pricing based on speed of service. Not a bit cap. Going into their respective forum, I failed to notice any discussion at all on this topic. That is very un-American like.

In Canada, the only ISPs that are screaming, except for Sympatico, are basically ISPs that were affiliated with @Home before. Rogers is one, Cogeco is another and Shaw is trailing. I have yet to hear anything from Telus. If Rogers is hurting so badly, then why not rr.com or Verizon etc. before and now?? These people are still charging a flat fee with no caps whatsoever. Now both rr.com and Verizon were around at @Home's time. They thrive then and they are still in business and doing reasonably well now. Of course, all could change if Sympatico succeeded in holding it's subscriber ransom and gets away with it.

Infrastructure costs are normally amortized over a number of years and nobody can recover these in a short time. The most important element is still one's installed base...... u and I. If the new pricing structure of Sympatico can be used as a model for things to come, these Canadian ISPs are in fact out to get the public. This got very little to do with self-preservation!!

Hmmm..I suspect Stuart's explanation based on the @Home's failed business model doesn't explain everything.

Anybody has any further thoughts on this?? Stuart, what is your thought on this??

tymex
join:2002-06-10
canada

tymex

Member

The excite@home case

»www.dotcomscoop.com/athm ··· cle.html

IMHO, it is a venture not set out to make money, but to serve the interest of certain MSOs at the detriment of investors.

You can see that the bankruptcy court judge is no dummy and see through all this.

Prior to @home's demise, the ISP aspect of the service was handled by @home, after that everybody have to learn to become ISPs, it is obviously that we have to pay their tuition fees, the post @home economy of scale or the lack there of.

We also have the most clueful insider who bought these at over $10USD/S while almost every other @home insider was selling.

»moneycentral.msn.com/inv ··· bol=ATHM

[text was edited by author 2002-06-16 21:12:36]
f1sushi2
join:2002-05-30
Nepean, ON

f1sushi2

Member

The second link is priceless! Regardless of the mechanism between @home and Rogers, the customer is left with higher prices (acceptable given the current reality), and half the bandwidth (not acceptable + cloak and dagger approach to customer relations).

It's clearly in Rogers' best interest not to disseminate the half-bandwidth measure and let it filter out to the masses slowly. We'll see if they let customers in on this new "feature" or maintain the cloak and dagger posture...

Interesting to note that my neighbor's DSL connection is now faster in both directions at any given time.

dirtyjeffer0
Posers don't use avatars.
Premium Member
join:2002-02-21
London, ON

dirtyjeffer0 to f1sushi2

Premium Member

to f1sushi2
man, you like to say "cloak and dagger" a lot!!
f1sushi2
join:2002-05-30
Nepean, ON

f1sushi2

Member

I like to call a spade a spade. Just don't accuse me of saying "spade" a lot...

mau108
Mau
Premium Member
join:2001-10-07
Thornhill, ON

mau108 to f1sushi2

Premium Member

to f1sushi2
2002-06-17 21:05:23 EST: 2242 / 165
Your download speed : 2242912 bps, or 2242 kbps.
A 273.7 KB/sec transfer rate.
Your upload speed : 165084 bps, or 165 kbps.
Seems like broadband .. above the 1mbit barrier!

dey capped my upload