When our WISP started doing managed WiFi our reasoning was that people try to make their internal stuff our problem anyway. If they're going to put that on us, then we might as well get paid for it.
I think the difference between this and the old phone stuff is that we don't make it mandatory. If our experience with providing WiFi tells us anything, it's that the phone companies should have made the leased phones optional. They wouldn't have run into legal problems over it, and there would likely have been people who would have continued paying for the leased phone because they just want it to be someone else's problem. ________________________________ From: AF <af-boun...@af.afmug.com> on behalf of Ken Hohhof <khoh...@kwom.com> Sent: Sunday, January 26, 2025 1:23 PM To: 'AnimalFarm Microwave Users Group' <af@af.afmug.com> Subject: [AFMUG] home networks Carterfone decision was 1968, up to that point you leased your phones from the phone company which maintained the inside wiring. If you added another phone, your bill went up, and they would run automated line tests to detect phones you weren’t paying for. After Carterfone, telcos installed demarcs on the outside of houses and were responsible for the network up to the demarc, unless you paid extra for home wiring maintenance. Nobody rents or even buys their landline phones from the phone company anymore. So is anyone surprised that home Internet is kind of going the opposite direction? Actually, we find our customers divide into two camps. The majority think leasing things like routers is a ripoff by greedy ISPs, and they want to own and manage their own networking equipment (whether they actually know how to do that or not). Basically they figure that after a couple years it would be cheaper to own it. But another group views it all as “Internet”, and they’re paying us for Internet, right? The big ISPs have mostly accepted this and actually use it as a marketing tool under the name “whole home WiFi”. But in reality, they just sell or lease you additional WiFi mesh nodes which you can plug in where you want and monitor with an app if you want. Still pretty much DIY. Where that kind of breaks down is that many people in our rural area have outbuildings which may be barns, or shop buildings, or man caves and party barns where they watch football games. And of course all of the above need security cameras. So there are DIY solutions to these, and a limited number we are willing to install. We don’t do trenching, and we won’t do the WiFi mesh node in the window trick, even though it might work OK if they do it themselves. But some customers seem frustrated because they think it’s all Internet and if they’re paying us for Internet we have to get it to every corner of every building. I mean, I guess the landline phone company will install phone jacks in additional rooms or even bury wires to other buildings, but you’re going to pay labor and materials plus pay for maintenance. Maybe it’s all in “managing customer expectations” and I’m not good enough at that. Somehow when it comes to Internet, some people seem to think anything Internet related is covered by their monthly bill. I have seen some WISPs offer a monthly maintenance plan, but you’d think that would cover repairs, not unlimited home networking additions and device support. I feel like we’re expected to be the free version of Geek Squad. It just seems strange to me that on one hand people celebrate their freedom to not pay the phone company for their home wiring and phones, but on the other hand they expect almost concierge level service from their ISP. But I’m also surprised at people who have Amazon or Walmart deliver their groceries and put them in the garage or even the fridge. I wonder how that goes with people who have dogs.
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