> I just logged into a FREE internet service being offered in Corpus
> Christi....
>
> Any thoughts?
I was wondering when this was going to cross the pond. We've had free
ISPs in the UK for about a year now and I'd say that they have had very
little impact on our customer base.
This is mainly because we offer a more personal, tailored service to our
customers rather than just offering a standard package to everyone. We
also try to offer better support than you will see from most ISPs (which
is why we started edNET in the first place).
We looked at becoming a free ISP when it all started and we decided
against it for the following reasons:
1) technical support - You have to either start charging premium rates for
support calls, employ more staff or degrade your support service.
2) dialin access - buy heaps more lines (and NASen) or let users get busy
tones
3) bandwidth - buy more or degrade your user's download rates
4) cut-throat competition - there are ISPs offering "cheaper than free"
services as of last month (you don't want to know)
I'm sure it is economical viable to be a free ISP, but I don't think you
are giving a better service to your customer at the end of the day, which
is what was important to us. I'm not saying that we haven't lost
customers because of free ISPs, but no more than through the problems
we've had with our portmangler.
My favourite response when asked about free ISPs is that you get what you
pay for. We could cut costs by providing a lower quality service, but
that's not something that we are interested in doing and it seems that
our customers aren't interested in it either.
-- Richard Morrell richard@ednet.co.uk System Administrator - edNET: Internet Access for Edinburgh - www.ednet.co.uk
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