[NCLUG] ISP suggestions

John L. Bass jbass at dmsd.com
Sun Aug 4 00:44:13 MDT 2002


	Last time I tried to debug it with one of their techs, I got the run around
	and the "Well, we don't really have to deal with your problem because we
	don't support Linux"-spiel (an attitude that really turns me off to any
	ISP, since once you get stuff working, it's way easier to support than
	Windows), but by then it was time for me to go back home, so it never
	mattered.

Expectations of support for areas not provided by the ISP are a growing problem.

With Windoze, there are roughly 4 major releases in 7 years, plus a few patches
(service packs) that the ISP has to support. With linux there are almost 6 dozen
major releases (spanning 9 organizations/distros) over the same time period - with
an installed base of about 1% of Windoze in normal home and office settings. The
business decision is simple - is it worth the cost of staffing and training to
support linux ... roughly $200K/yr (3 relatively junior phone people, plus a senior
linux specialist) ... to support a revenue stream for a few dozen users totaling at
most $3k/yr.

The market place anaogy, is expecting Total service stations to provide bumper to
bumper service for your car just because you buy their gas. 60 years ago, that
wasn't uncommon ... and we had real service stations and a personal relationship
with the owner/mechanic. Today, about 1 in 500 service stations will provide any
more service than a Pop and a Twinke to go.

At CWX we made that decision clear early, the small group of us didn't want to
pay for traditional support - so we provide no customer end equipment support
at all. Prospective members that even press for support and QoS guarentees are
generally politely refered to go elsewhere right up front. If you can't debug
your own problems, or afford to hire someone to do it for you (and we have several
members that use consultants) ... you really do not want to join our cooperative
and use our member owned, member operated services.  Even at that, we get several
inquires a month from people expecting us to be some combination of AOL, Quest
and AT&T.

Have fun,
John



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