[clug] Transact whinge, was "broadband ISPs in Canberra"

[Andrew Smith]

On Tue, 2004-09-28 at 13:38, Alex Satrapa wrote:
> 1) TransACT has to pay for their infrastructure somehow
> 2) Your choice is between TransACT and Telstra ADSL, so there is no 
> reason for them to set the price too low
> 3) People want to compare oranges with things that look like oranges
> 4) If TransACT was to preemtively lower their prices, how long do you 
> think it would take for Telstra to unleash their war chest? Drop 
> installation to $0, set the first three months to $0, and watch as 
> TransACT loses customers hand over fist for three months (and never get 
> them back, 'cos they're locked into 24 month contracts with 100% exit 
> fees).

Transact could happily cost-recover a better product.  Some of the
(data) sales I see to end users were made simply because they were sold
on the new technology.  In some cases the $70/month for the modem would
buy their entire service through Telstra delivered DSL, customers become
sad when they spend too much unnecessarily.

I'm sure if Telstra were concerned about competion from a small carrier
servicing a poofteenth of a 400k population, they'd be rolling out cable
and providing tv.

> It doesn't matter whether you're in the same building or across the 
> country, the bandwidth has to be provided throughout the network. 
> Bandwidth between colocated machines and end users still has to be 
> provided by the TransACT network out in the streets. That's what the 
> rate based charging is for - budgeting not only for cable installation, 
> maintenance, expansion and replacement, but for the work it takes to 
> keep the network going. It's a pricing model that people who have dealt 
> with Telstra take for granted, so why shouldn't TransACT mimic it?

It does, and they charge for that seperately.  If you have a business
transVPN customer, you get to pay a lot more for the priviledge of
2M/256k in the street, and that's fair enough.  The ERX capping does not
follow the Telstra model though, you already pay recurring charges for
the physical patch, same as the Telstra ATM feed.  It though is
_distance_ based, ie: how far am I from the POP where my customers
terminate and how much data do I want over that long distance shot. 
There's a massive difference in cost between cabling in the same
premises and going outside.  Don't forget that Transact have the spare
capacity.  Certainly large users should pay over a threshold (hi Brian
:), but the smaller ERX users (<100 ends) shouldn't be hit with a
metering charge.

> There is such a thing as being *too* innovative when it comes to 
> dealing with bean counters and muggles.

Except they play the "we're the most advanced network" card, you can't
cry poor after selling that.  Go back and rollout using Unconditioned
Local Loops, oh, oops, they are :)

Andrew
Ok, now we're way OT, replies should probably be off-list.