WTHIWWY
@allthatnet.com
| reply to Anon
Re: Anybody heard anything final about IBS Networks?
Well, at least it looks that some ISPs--apparently not many--made some contingency plans, while IBS did not. While there may not be any legal basis for action against IBS for breaking the contract, I honestly do not care. I signed up with them and made a commitment and investment. I expect to get service at the agreed price till the end of my contract.
And I agree, IBS is leaving us hanging. Now I do not know, if I should hang on and see what they can do or place an order with someone else and pay 3-4x what I was paying for my present speed!!! One thing I know, I will not be switching to IBS business DSL... Why? Because for all purposes I *am* a business customer already despite the fact that I have a residential line. If they did not want my business, they would not have sold me their service. And since I am a paying customer, I am a business customer, no matter what they think. I did not sign the contract with NorthPoint, I signed it with IBS. And they are just about to fail me with their service.
The word about SpeakEasy is that they oversold their bandwidth and that their customer service got crappy lately (according to their own claims, their CS is overwhelmed due to the NorthPoint disaster). Not certain about the accuracy of the claims of either of the sides, just a word of caution.
I hope that something will come out of this noise about DSL. FTC should have looked into marketing of most ISP and web hosts long time ago. One-sided contracts with residential customers, endless vague promises of "unlimited" bandwidth and so on should have sparked their interest long time ago. I have no doubt that this will be a lesson for us all.
Then the funny thing about the AT&T transaction is that 81,000 customers paying average $49/month (what I pay) amounts to cool $47.5 million a year. OK, let us make it $30 million. That is 1/4 of what AT&T paid for the assets!!! Of course, some it will be eaten up by costs, but it cannot be that bad! AT&T already has support structure. I have no doubts that most people would agree to a small hike in the price at least for the duration of their contract instead of loosing their service. Talk about business decisions and customer acquisition costs...
Ta ta... |
