I think you need to go to the various websites like USwest.com, or search for DSL on a search engine, and look at ISP price lists.
Companies recognize the "sweet spot" in the consumer price list. People are willing to pay $20/month, but tell them to get rid of the second phone line, and pay $40/month for a high speed line, they balk.
consumer pricing is weird.
How the ISP makes money is an art form. Most small ISPs use Internet access as a foot in the door to provide MIS services to small companies. Then they charge $75 to $200/hr to provide these consulting services.
Take NCG/Netcom's firedrill to sell off their dial up accounts. NCG bought Netcom supposedly for its internet operations and backbone. Now all it apparently wants is the backbone. The dial up service is too expensive to maintain.
So, the ISP answer is to oversubscribe. If they do it too much like Covad (rumored to be 30:1) or CWIX, then their customers will complain, and they will lose customers. If they are a monopoly then they can thumb their nose at the customer and say, that's the best I can do now.
You also have to be lucky or flexible with the net browsing time. At 6:30am, I notice that I cannot log in to earthlink or cwix, or a few other ISPs because people are checking their financial pages at that time (PST, so market open up at 9:30amEST). This is just the standard result of oversubscription.
So, your answer is clear - pay $895/month for a T1 line (128k burstable to T1), and have a clear channel to the Internet at all hours of the day, or pay $60/month for a 1 meg DSL line, and get clogged throughout the day and clear sailing at night.
right now, these are the market price dynamics.
BL |
