Re: Current street prices for US Internet Transit

[Joe Provo <nanog-post () rsuc gweep net>]

On Mon, Aug 16, 2004 at 04:56:46PM -0400, John Curran wrote:
[snip]
> Do you take on customers at rock-bottom prices which barely cover 
> your out-of-pocket expenses, your payroll, and interest payments, 
> or do you let them go to your competition because no revenue is 
> better than revenue which doesn't let you cover the network growth 
> in 3 or 4 years?   This is a question which is being discussed at 
> quite a few ISP's today...

Bing!  Not to mention cost of acquiring and retaining the customer.
Hint: if they are shopping only by price, then lock them into a long
contract, else they will go shopping for the next guy who happens to 
have cheaped out some other elements of the network or beat you on
an ebay bid or hired a fresh pack of smart kids who never had a job 
before.  The cost of customer churn is very, very high.

There's some fishing anology here: trying to collect the bottom-
feeders often nets you nothing more than churn and muck.  

-- 
             RSUC / GweepNet / Spunk / FnB / Usenix / SAGE