I was a telco installer repairman back in the day when the order came down that
everyone had to now have modular jacks and they could indeed buy and use their
own phone. I spent months going to homes and installing jacks and modular line
cords on telco owned phones. We did every single phone in our service area.
But we still collected rent on the phones. Nothing forced them to buy and own.
Best Regards,
Chuck McCown
McCown Technology Corporation
8401 N Commerce Dr
Lake Point, Utah 84074
801-250-9503 Office
435-830-4306 Cell
www.mccowntech.com
www.microtrench.pro
www.terabitnetworks.com
From: Chris Fabien
Sent: Monday, January 27, 2025 6:40 AM
To: AnimalFarm Microwave Users Group
Subject: Re: [AFMUG] home networks
My experience, we find the majority of our customers do take a managed router,
we charge $8/mo. If they have that, we try to be helpful as we can with home
network issues including occasionally needing to send a tech out to figure out
what's going on. It is not a "covers anything repair plan" though, physical
damage is still a paid repair. For outbuildings, if the customer will install a
conduit to the building we will have tech pull a cat5 and install a mesh AP out
there for $5 additional monthly cost. If it's longer than ~300ft we tell them
its outside of our scope and we'd need to install a second fiber service, or
they can do whatever else they want on their own (fiber run, wireless link etc)
but it's not supported by us then.
On Sun, Jan 26, 2025 at 8:18 PM Dev <d...@logicalwebhost.com> wrote:
I think it’s smaller number than we think that want to know about the bits,
SNR, etc. Those are just the kinds of people we really like.
The other majority, probably vast majority, just want to see magic happen and
not know why, so they can get back to wasting their valuable time as a nation
of observers, not participants. You can have to do stuff to participate, easier
to just observe. Those people don’t own businesses like ours, or want to, or
want to know how they work really.
</rant>
On Jan 26, 2025, at 10:23 AM, Ken Hohhof <khoh...@kwom.com> wrote:
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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