When people find that they are being deliberately and surreptitiously messed up by their internet service provider, they get really annoyed.
Even an apparently trivial thing as you experienced "Please pay 99c" was sufficient to turn you off.
Telstra for some unknown reason blocked Zenbu's ip addresses meaning Zenbu didn't work at Telstra customers. Initially they denied they had caused a problem but then after some badgering and detective work admitted that they were the problem and fixed it.
They had started getting a lot of customer complaints when Zenbu emailed the Telstra customers that the reason Zenbu wasn't working was that Telstra had stopped it working and that if they wanted Zenbu, they would have to ask Telstra to allow them to access Zenbu.
You can imagine that when people ask which is a good, reliable, recommended isp, Telstra is not top of mind as a supplier.
Some businesses try to think up ways to make life better for customers, other businesses think up ways to make life worse for customers and to charge them more if they don't want their lives to be as bad.
It seems likely that those who come up with creative and valuable ways to make life better, at really low cost, will do a lot better than those who come up with ways of being highway robbers "Stand and deliver!! Your money or your life." It's a reasonable way of running a business and Somali pirates use that business plan. Tigers operate on a similar basis but they cut to the chase and take the life. Hagfish hook on and chew up what they can.
Apart from the banditry another issue regarding net neutrality is netilepsy. When things are free or uncontrolled with no feedback loops to price low value things off the market, jamming, queues, despair and inefficiency and the tragedy of the commons, death and despoliation and desolation are the normal mechanism to share things out "equitably" with free and equal access for all.
In Big Brother societies, important people get access and the proletariat is told to go to Hell. So with net neutrality, government departments, "emergency", vips and other preferred important people will have access - the same way the USSR ran for decades. It suits those at the top and friends of the system.
With charging what the market will bear, greedy highway robber isps will find they lose business to those who do a good job. People will enjoy having reliable access anytime at lowest prices without net neutrality and won't have to have permission from some the FCC or some government department to have their turn to use some megabytes.
"Free" sounds appealing but there are no free lunches, free car factories or free cyberspace. They all have a cost and the law of supply and demand applies to them all.
Having been an early "victim" of no net neutrality [Telstra blocking ip addresses] you might think I'd favour net neutrality, but having experienced several decades of government departments "solving" problems, I prefer to let markets sort themselves out. Telstra's customers soon sorted Telstra out and now they have got a bad reputation.
A Telstra sales rep phoned here a few nights ago asking us to sign up for our home services. I told him he was up against it because Telstra is not a reliable isp and that while their minor discount is temporarily attractive, they don't seem a good company to deal with.
They didn't apologize for messing things up for Zenbu or offer any compensation to their customers as far as I know.
Would you say their ip blocking was a good idea or not? Would you say a company which blocks Skype is likely to do well?
Randomized undetectable blocking and downgrading sounds very mathematically clever, but any blocking is measurable and it would not be difficult for Zenbu for example to publish "uptime" for the various isps, connection speeds etc. Users don't care what mathematical cunning is used to block cyberspace or whether it was deliberate or just stupidity, they want access and "uptime" is useful information. Information on isps which block addresses or slow things or whatever they do would also be useful information to help people decide on suitable isps.
Companies which provide good quality, fast, convenient, reliable services at low prices will do well, others will not.
Mqurice |
