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I've often wondered what the "H" stands for.
I presume it's Harold from the Lord's prayer (Our Father who art
in heaven, Harold be thy name), but I'm no scholar.
bp
<part15sbs{at}gmail{dot}com>
On 11/19/2019 8:42 AM, Steve Jones
wrote:
Jesus H Christ, we have major bridges that you can
look though the road deck to the water below, and they want
those same people to build and maintain a fiber infrastructure
we rely on? At least fiber cant start forrest fires
Not a customer, I can’t reach them.
Probably nobody can, other than mobile or satellite.
Or maybe the govt will get them free
fiber by taxing Google and Apple, like the Labour Party
is promising in the UK. Vermin Supreme needs to update
his campaign promises, free ponies are so dated, like
Dr. Evil demanding only 1 million dollars.
Honestly, with mobile carriers
promising rural fixed wireless, and SpaceX and others
promising LEO satellite broadband for everyone, I’m
thinking we need to worry less about serving every last
house in our service area. And if a few people have to
get their TV the old fashioned way, it’s not the end of
the world (although climate change might be).
And while I’m babbling on, last
Sunday the New York Times magazine was a special feature
on the Internet. It had a map of broadband
availability, with broadband defined as 100 Mbps
download. Oh, those poor disadvantaged people with
access to a mere 25 or 50 Mbps. They won’t be able to
stream Disney+ and Stadia in 4K on more than 2 or 3
devices at a time.
Oh, and I see that EFF is proposing
that Congress should allocate the money from C-band
auctions to building universal fiber infrastructure:
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2019/11/fcc-about-raise-billions-congress-should-invest-it-fiber-infrastructure
From: AF <af-boun...@af.afmug.com>
On Behalf Of Kurt Fankhauser
Sent: Monday, November 18, 2019 10:24 PM
To: AnimalFarm Microwave Users Group <af@af.afmug.com>
Subject: Re: [AFMUG] tired of entitled streamers
Out of curiosity to the original
post'er, how much is that customer paying monthly for
their package that they are expecting to watch 4 TV's
on? Maybe you are not pricing you packages properly?
Here is how we do it:
Package A - $49.95 - (advertised
as capable of 1 SD video stream)
Package B - $64.95 - (advertised
as capable of 1 HD video stream) *** most popular
package
Package C - $89.95 - (advertised
as capable of 2 HD video stream)
Package D - $119.95 - (advertised
as capable of 3 HD video stream)
We are using Procera to build
these packages this way. We tell the customer right
up front about the # of video streams supported on
each package. Never have had a complaint. This
pricing model above is very close to what the
household would be paying for DirecTV/Dish to watch
4 TV's at the same time. So why not YOU get that
revenue instead of DirecTV? I learned 4 years ago
that people are willing to pay for the ability to
stream and the # of streams per household. I see the
average cost of service going from the $65/month
average now to the $100/month average over the next
5 years. Start building your networks NOW to support
this. PMP450 is what saved our ass 5 years ago. We
tried out EPMP (first generation) and quickly stayed
with the 450 and it was the best decision we ever
made. I have SM's in the the field (original 5ghz
450's) that will still be serving customers 5 years
from now and those radios will be 10 years old. What
other radio can last 10 years of usefulness? (of
course we will probably be running Medusa AP's at
that point on the tower side).
We have 4 other WISPS in the area
and we are still beating all of them because we are
the only one that can offer 50mbps packages in a
rural area. There is no cable here. DSL is 1mbps.
People are paying us $300+ installs and in some
cases $500.00 installs and they are NOT BATTING AN
EYE. If you can get bandwidth to their house they
are willing to pay huge prices. Hell they are paying
$1200.00 each for 3-4 smartphones in their house so
why wouldn't they be willing to pay $400 for
internet to use that phone to its potential?
Don't sell yourself short. Charge
the big bucks. Money you left at the table you will
never get back....
Yeah,
I know wut ya mean...
We have 23 sites both rural and urban sites and
our heaviest sites sit both urban and rural
with 2 cable providers and all the other mobile
and satellite options in our area.
We use Medusa on 5 of our largest sites and
everything else falls within 450i or epmp
operations.
The smallest backhall is a Force200 link where
everything else is all ptp670 or 11ghz 1Gb
I think we have a few ptp550 links in there
somewhere.
We just put our best foot forward on
performance,quality and reliability as well as
local support.
On 11/17/19 9:25 AM, Ken
Hohhof wrote:
If that’s all it costs you,
kudos.
But we’re running out of
spectrum at many towers (there are other WISPs
throughout our service area), plus we also
have to add backhaul capacity, and all that
uses power so we need more batteries. We’re
having to run backhauls in licensed spectrum,
even to micropops. And we’re having to add
“small cells” to get closer to customers.
Because with all the streaming we can’t have
customers at low modulations, and to reach
those customers who move to a low spot
surrounded by trees, and to deal with spectrum
exhaustion. All this costs a lot more than
$300.
We have 3.65GHz sites fed
via 11 GHz with 10 subscribers. The only way
that makes money is averaging over all our
sites. And still we can’t build enough
micropops to get LOS to everyone who chooses
to live down by a creek surrounded by trees.
Yesterday I checked photos from 3 of our
towers to a prospective customer and the only
thing we could see was a little of the peak of
a 40 ft barn with big gaping holes in the roof
that would be unsafe to walk on, and that was
on an old micropop where we’re out of backhaul
capacity to sell 20+ Mbps speeds (it’s
actually fed via an SM from another tower,
something we don’t do anymore). They
apparently bought the house from an elderly
couple, at their previous house they had
gigabit Metronet fiber. Well, that was pretty
sweet, maybe you shouldn’t have moved.
Honestly, I think the only
real, long-term solution to rural broadband is
FTTH. The problem of course is money. And
with several companies launching thousands of
LEO satellites promising broadband for
everyone, I think that will suppress even
further any large investments in rural
broadband. Investors would also have to weigh
how serious the mobile carriers are about
rural fixed wireless, is it just marketing
hype and lobbying to regulators as it has been
in the past?
I do find it ironic that we
have low flush toilets, energy efficient
appliances, LED light bulbs, alternate day
lawn watering, and mandated fuel efficiency
for vehicles, yet conspicuous consumption of
Internet bandwidth seems to be our patriotic
duty. With all the content moving to
streaming services like Disney+ and content
being priced high to cable companies but
disruptively low for streaming, it’s clear
there won’t be a choice, traditional broadcast
and cable TV is dying and everyone will have
to get their TV via the Internet. It’s like
having to get a cellphone because there aren’t
any payphones anymore, the train is leaving
and you either buy a ticket or get left
behind. For awhile though, people do have a
choice, you can still put up a TV antenna or
get satellite TV. It’s becoming 500 channels
of crap though.
Still, if you have gigabit
fiber where you live now, maybe don’t move to
Green Acres unless you really like doing
country stuff. Or at least cut down some of
the damn trees. Sheesh, miles and miles of
open fields, and then 75 foot trees all around
your house.
I get that. But my point
is - if this is truly a rural environment it
costs maybe $300 to add another access point
for capacity.
I just don’t see the
point in penalizing customers when the cost
to add capacity is so low.
I would say it more nicely, but IMO
there's a very valid point here. Having
been at both a 100% rural WISP and an
urban WISP running side by side with cable
I can say that it's less stressful for you
if the unsatisfied customers have a real
option to leave. It forces you to stay on
top of your game, but also allows a
pressure valve to release the customers
you can never satisfy. And wouldn't we
all like to have only the low to median
usage and non-complaining customers? I
don't see anything wrong with trying to
strategically dis-incentivize the ones you
don't want.
In Darin's shoes the thing I'd try to
remember is that the GB values are going
to be a moving target trending ever
upwards. You'll have to evaluate and
probably raise those GB allowances every
year to keep the median customers
satisfied and maintain that balance.
-Adam
On 11/16/2019 3:07
PM, Darin Steffl wrote:
Matt,
You can simply go
away. We have competitor wisp's and
many have poor reviews. We simply do
it best and have the highest
Facebook ratings of any ISP.
We simply want to
make heavy users pay more. Why
should we raise prices for all
customers when only a small
percentage are the ones driving us
to upgrade things? I'll take 5
average customers at 200gb per month
over one customer using 1TB.
You may be a tech
guy but not understand business very
well. The point of this is to drive
away bad customers and keep good
ones. Good customers will not be
penalized with these plans. Fewer
customers with the same amount of
revenue means higher profit, plain
and simple.
Wow. Yikes.
If I was in your area you’d be
driving me to start a competing
ISP with you.
You’ll drive
your users away.
Seriously. It
doesn’t cost that much to
upgrade a tower or backhaul to
support more capacity.
We're
moving away from "truly
unlimited" plans and going
to unlimited with X amount
of high-speed data between
noon and midnight.
For
example, we'll have plans
with high-speed data
amounts of 65, 300, 600,
900, 1200, 1800GB a month
with that data only being
counted 12 hours each day.
Outside noon to midnight,
the data will not count to
encourage them to shift
large downloads to our off
peak times. If they insist
on streaming on 4 devices
during peak and using
100GB per day like some
homes, their bill will be
well over $250 a month.
Here is our rural pricing
for these proposed plans.
Once they hit their
threshold, they slow down
to 1 mbps. We will never
have overage charges so
they're in full control of
their cost. Either they
lower their usage or pay
more to continue the high
usage.
What I
call abusive usage
continues to increase and
I feel we need to have
plans like these to make
heavy users pay for the
cost of us upgrading our
gear earlier than planned
for. These plans are also
still way better than any
satellite plan in terms of
caps and latency.
25
Meg/300GB - $90 35
Meg/600GB - $110
45
Meg/900GB - $130
55
Meg/1,200GB - $150
55-100
Meg/1,800GB - $200
Give
them what you sell
them. If they call in
more than 3 times
complaining then say
'you obviously can't
provide them the
experience they're
expecting, and that
you'll be out in a few
days to remove the
equipment.' That should
either silence them, or
push them to hughesnet
and they can see what
being rural really
means.
On
11/16/2019 11:31 AM,
Ken Hohhof wrote:
Anybody
else losing their
patience with
streamers?
The
people who just
moved from somewhere
they had gigabit
fiber to the middle
of nowhere in a low
spot surrounded by
tons of trees, and
say they stream all
their TV on 3-4
screens at the same
time.
I
want to yell at
them, if you had
affordable blazing
fast Internet, and
it’s that important
to you, why did you
move? And if you
had to move, why
didn’t you move to a
nice suburb with
fiber or at least
cable? And why do
you have to stream
everything? You
could get satellite
TV. Yes, it’s
expensive, get over
it. You could put
up a TV antenna.
You could get DVDs
by mail. Or if
moving to the
country was so
important, you could
go out on the ATV or
horse or snowmobile,
or go hunting, or
feed the chickens
and mini goats. If
they’re streaming
all the time, I have
to suspect the
reason for moving to
Green Acres was to
save on property
taxes, and the
reason for streaming
is to avoid paying
$200/month to
DirecTV or DISH.
It’s
gotten so bad, a
significant number
of prospective
customers say they
only want Internet
to stream, anything
else they can do on
their phone. And
when a streaming
subscription is sub
$10 (or free with
Amazon Prime),
they’re thinking
Internet is like
shipping, it
shouldn’t cost more
than the item being
delivered.
I
know, “OK boomer”.
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