Seems like I remember a more recent case involving the FCC and a large fine/sanction wherea fellow had set up shop under one of the big boys. my Googlefu couldn't find it, however I did find this old one.
https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2009/03/comcast-goes-after-illegal-resale-of-its-internet-service/ On Monday, August 17, 2020 Adam Moffett <af@af.afmug.com> wrote: Here's a case where a 3rd party worked in our favor: A vending machine company sells these fancy juke boxes to bars. They download songs over the Internet so they have a library of millions of songs you can pick from without actually having to store millions of songs. The bar needs an internet connection for this to work of course. Several of these bars had a recurring "issue" where the Jukebox would stop working and they'd call the vending machine company who would then call us and find out the bill for Internet wasn't paid. So the vending machine company took over the Internet bills for several of these bars. From my perspective this was a win-win. The vending machine company pays the Internet bill reliably and on time every month. The bar owner always calls them for support anyway, and barely knows who we are. The vending machine co has to collect on their service contract anyway, so collecting on the Internet at the same time wasn't a big deal to them, but now they don't have to take the call about the jukebox "not working" due to the Internet bill not being paid. .....lots of other times the 3rd party seller was more trouble than they were worth, but in this particular case we were better off having them in the loop. On 8/17/2020 8:39 PM, Ken Hohhof wrote: > It means what the contract says it means, but there's probably at least 3 > issues: > > 1) Taking away potential customers. > > 2) Whether it is shared/oversubscribed service (either residential or > commercial), or DIA which by definition is dedicated bandwidth that you can > use 100% 24x7 if you want. > > 3) Who has the end customer relationship, for purposes of AUP/TOS, > maintenance, etc. I will no longer sell through middlemen, where I don't > have the end customer relationship. If someone wants a commission of some > sort for bringing me the sale, that's different. But if the customer wants > to open a trouble ticket, I want them to call me, not some reseller. If we > see a violation of our terms of service, or get a court order from LEA > regarding customer's use of the connection, or an abuse report, or we need to > do maintenance or a repair, I want a name and number to call. If the > connection is down, I want an actual site contact to find out if power is on, > etc. If we do a dispatch, I want a contact for someone who will meet us at > the site. > > We've all heard stories of WISPs who get calls about an outage or lousy > service from customers they don't recognize, only to discover that a customer > is reselling their service to several neighbors. You go to a site like > speedtest.net and it tells you the provider, not the reseller, so that's who > you badmouth for having bad service. Even if it's the guy with the Linksys > router in the Tupperware tub who is reselling the service. > > Comcast has had cases where some guy orders one residential cable connection > in each of several dozen MDUs, and then goes into business selling that > service to the other residents, at a rate below Comcast's retail rate. So > they don't get any other customers in those buildings. Needless to say, they > got their lawyers involved. > > -----Original Message----- > From: AF <af-boun...@af.afmug.com> On Behalf Of Adam Moffett > Sent: Monday, August 17, 2020 7:02 PM > To: af@af.afmug.com > Subject: Re: [AFMUG] What is “reselling”? > > I think if you provide some significant part of the infrastructure required > to reach that end user then you're not reselling, you are just the next tier > in the chain of service providers. The ongoing use of the concepts of "Tier > 1" through "Tier 3" providers supports that notion. > > I've always thought of reselling as being a middle man in the sales channel > without putting in significant last mile infrastructure. At one time we were > reselling Verizon DSL. We had a connection to them and they would somehow L2 > bridge the DSL traffic from our customers' lines over an ATM circuit to our > office. We provided AAA and L3 connectivity to the Internet, but they > provided the entire last mile connection. If you paid them more per unit > they would do the entire thing from the house to the Internet and all you did > was push money around (and take the support calls). Those are clear reseller > scenarios. > > To Chuck's comment about the AUP: I would definitely disallow the first > practice unless someone is paying appropriately for a Tier2 service. I don't > actually care if they do the second scenario. If they want to buy my service > and mark it up $20 and call it their own then I 100% don't care (MSP's do > that all the time, in fact). I'm getting paid either way. I might even be > inclined to encourage that if the middle man is competent. > > -Adam > > > On 8/17/2020 6:54 PM, Matt Hoppes wrote: >> Define “reselling” a circuit. >> >> Obviously getting a connection and sticking customers on the provider’s IP >> addresses would be reselling without a doubt. >> >> Is running a tunnel over a circuit back to a data center and sticking >> customer traffic in the tunnel reselling? I would think not as the only >> thing the connection is carrying is my VPN traffic. >> >> So now further down the rabbit hole - if the provider supports BGP and I’m >> using my IP addresses - am I “reselling” the provider’s service or mine? -- AF mailing list AF@af.afmug.com http://af.afmug.com/mailman/listinfo/af_af.afmug.com
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