On The Future of ISPs, Both Large and Small... 111
DwnaboutDSL asks: "I work for an unamed ISP, its decent size but still basically a local company. Months ago, we were bought out by a company which is nationwide, with some international ties as well. I can't mention either company by name due to confidentiality, however, what was said is quite frankly disturbing at best. In a press release which is to be released sometime during the evening of April 5th, our parent company is going to be dropping the axe on roughly 2000 employees. Nationally, we only have 4300 or so, so this means that 1 out of every 2 employees will be looking for a new job. This all due to the market, and funding. One of the main funding sources for our company is Lucent. Which is a fairly huge operation, and is even more disturbing to hear that they seem to be going under as well." Given the recent bad news in the DSL market, is it likely that the market slowdown will create delays in broadband Internet services offered to home users, and how will the ISP market look after all of the economic turbulence has ceased?
"My main concern, and question seems to be what is going on. Yesterday there was a story about DSL companies (large and small) being hit, and hit hard. Going under with little to no notice. Now our parent company, and even we are being hit as well. We do offer DSL, and its through Covad, which was said to be dying off in yesterdays article. Though, even still, that isnt the cause.
I guess another main concern as well, is where is this going to end? What has happened in the Internet industry to cause such a decline in not only sales, but in jobs as well?
We got lucky, no one at our ISP is going to be cut, not now anyway. There's still a chance a couple weeks from now perhaps, but we were spared from this, but many...too many, were not."
Re:Sounds like NetBeam (Score:1)
Hmmm anyone want to do the trivial searching (Score:1)
Re:VaLinux bust in 6 months. (Score:1)
From: Larry Augustin
Organization: VA Linux Systems, Inc.
To: All Employees
I'd like to thank everyone for their patience while we've gone through
our planning process.
As you've probably heard by now we will cut our operating expenses by
at least $5M per quarter going forward. We need to do that to stay viable
as a business during the economic slowdown. It's very disappointing
to have to do this, but some very large companies (Dell, HP, and GE
for example) have had to do this as well. We are not alone.
Economic growth has slowed for the economy in general and for us
specifically. We must reset our plans to get the company back on
track towards profitability, and we must reach profitability at lower
revenue levels.
In order to cut that much spending, we need to reduce headcount by
25%. We constantly hear that everyone is overworked and we are trying
to do too much. The only way to reduce headcount and not be more
overworked is to focus on what is important and drop what is not. At
the same time we must improve customer focus and accountability.
We have identified three strategic areas where we will focus, and cut
investment in other areas. Those areas are Storage (NAS), SourceForge
OnSite (SFOS), and Web server solutions. We will be increasing
headcount in those three areas significantly, and cutting headcount in
other areas as a result.
We are also making some significant organizational changes to help us
achieve success in those three areas. First, I am pleased to announce
the promotion of Ali Jenab to President & COO. Ali will focus his
attention on operational success within the company, while I will
focus on strategic direction and customers. I have the utmost
confidence in Ali's ability to manage the operations of the business.
Reporting to Ali will be these people in each of the major functional
areas:
SVP Marketing - John Hall will move to the role of SVP Marketing. All
marketing functions within the company, including corporate marketing,
product marketing, and community marketing will report to John. John
has complete control of all marketing functions and control of the
marketing budget. I'm confident in John's ability to lead the
company's product vision and positioning from this role.
SVP OSDN - Richard French will continue in the role of SVP OSDN that
he took over from John just a few weeks ago. Richard has a goal of
maximizing the amount of leverage we get in software engineering by
utilizing the Open Source community on OSDN. Richard's background in
developing Enterprise software at Oracle will be a huge benefit to us
in this role.
VP Quality, Service, & Engineering - As announced earlier, Allen Ibara
will assume responsibility for all quality, customer care, and
hardware engineering functions. Allen has proven his skills over the
past two quarters with a significant improvement in quality. Allen
also has extensive experience running mission critical support
services in his previous jobs. Bringing Allen's strong management
skills and devotion to customer quality to a broader role will help us
in engineering management.
Also reporting directly to Ali will be these senior managers in their
existing roles:
SVP Sales - Bob Russo
VP Professional Services - Kyle Spencer
VP Manufacturing - Daniel Shore
VP Human Resources - McKinley Littlejohn
Finally, Todd Schull remains as CFO reporting to me.
In addition to the structural changes in senior management, we have
instituted a mechanism for creating accountability in the company for
our key areas of focus. We have created top level P&Ls for our
important lines of business, and assigned responsibility for those
P&Ls to product line managers. Further, we are in the process of
identifying team leads for each of the major functional areas
(engineering, marketing, sales, support, and operations) within each
of those lines of business.
Over the course of the next few weeks, the product line managers will
finish building their teams and report the team leads, goals, and
business plan to the company. Ultimately every employee will have a
one-page summary for each of these lines of business so we all know
who is responsible for that business as a whole and for the functions
within that business.
First, the areas of key investment for us:
SourceForge OnSite
Headcount: 31
Product Line Manager: Adam Frey
NAS
Headcount: 30
Product Line Manager: Cheryl Sindelar
Web Server Solutions
Headcount: 9
Product Line Manager: Jay McKinsey
Our change of focus here is apparent from the resources we have
devoted to each of these businesses. We have moved away from working
on a variety of different products into focusing on these 3 areas.
In addition to those 3 key areas, we have structured the company into
6 other lines of business with P&Ls and definitions of clear
responsibility. These areas are important to our success:
Linux Servers
Headcount: 108
Product Line Manager: TBD
Open Source Infrastructure Solutions
Headcount: 23
Product Line Manager: Marty Larsen
Contract Engineering
Headcount: 13
Product Line Manager: Marty Larsen
OSDN Online
Headcount: 50
Product Line Manager: Jeff Bates
OSDN Events
Headcount: 5
Product Line Manager: Mark Stone
OSDN ECommerce
Headcount: 12
Product Line Manager: Doug Schatz
As we look at the business, there are a number of areas that we have
not funded. We had to make some difficult decisions about what
businesses we were in, and what businesses we were not in. We
selected the top three businesses and assigned to them whatever
resources they needed to be successful. With the remaining
businesses, we chose those that were least defocusing, best leveraged
our Linux and Open Source expertise, best leveraged OSDN, aligned with
common target customers, and provided us the most differentiation in
the market.
We have a tremendous opportunity in the businesses we have chosen to
target. We also have a tremendous opportunity for other products and
businesses that we have chosen not to target. Before we build those
new businesses, we must make these existing businesses work. We must
focus all of our energy behind these lines of business. Once they are
successful, we can turn our attention elsewhere to new ideas.
We are the leading company in Open Source. Deutsche Banc Alex Brown
expects corporate IT departments to spend $75 Billion dollars by 2004
on Open Source. We can be the leading company providing those IT
departments Open Source solutions. We have $126 million dollars in
the bank to do it. But we must execute. We believe that the changes
we are making today and over the rest of the quarter will put us in a
position to execute.
Thanks,
Larry
Re:The fate of the local ISP (Score:1)
We originally went to Easystreet for colo facilities when our prior colo place went under. They were pretty cool about it, we basically called them up within an hour of hearing we needed to evacuate our servers, and they gave us rackspace and IPs by the end of the day. Pretty good rush work. So, when it came time to get DSL service, it made sense to use them, since we already had a rapport with our account rep.
I agree about Hevanet. They're one of the nice comfortable sized local ISPs that we used to have a large number of. It's nice to see there are still some around. I'd say stick with them as long as they can serve you.
Re:The fate of the local ISP (Score:1)
The delay is just a matter of time it takes for the two devices to exchange handshakes, establish the connection, etc.
Aquisitions (Score:1)
Re:The fate of the local ISP (Score:1)
As for the line, it's just a bridge, no PPPoE or anything fancy. It can take around 10-30 seconds for the bridge to hook up with the ISP, but I cope. We also have a dialup account with the service to fall back on if Verizon craps out for an extended period of time.
Most of my DSL-using coworkers are North Portland residents or eastsiders, so they're all stuck with Qwest, but they're fairly content with their service.
Re:DSL killed small ISPs (Score:1)
Re:my isp (Score:1)
Sounds like NetBeam (Score:1)
Took me 2 hours with @home to get static IP back! (Score:1)
I don't think I'd be able to talk that much on the phone using voice.
It took a battle similar to court room to get my static IP address back. Yes, I did it! No, I didn't pay a cent for it.
How? I quoted every policy I could find. I was extremely persistent (while being polite), and exploited every possible policy loophole I could find on their websites. I was also ready to discuss the features of DOCSIS (cable modem standard) and DHCP (you know what it is). I that didn't help, I could quote directly from the DHCP RFC written @HOME's own R. Troll discussing the scenario I wanted to implement.
Those interested in logs, all 30K of them, can e-mail me at the address associated with this posting.
They sent me a letter by mail, and then made it extremely difficult to follow through on it. I don't think the support supervisor will forget my name any time soon
I am about to try to get my old shell account back tomorrow with another ISP that was consumed by Verio. I want my shell11.ba account back! I still have access to shell17.ba, so I know it's up. Wish me luck, and lots of it, because Verio is hell to deal with and I know a lot of their reps by name.
Fight back, get your old account features back! It is possible, you just need to spend a lot of time on it.
--
Leonid S. Knyshov
The Computer Industry / ISPs (Score:1)
A couple of years ago, there was a huge boom. Computers were flying off the shelves like nothing else in the world. It was, possibly, the best thing to happen to the economy in a long time. And to compensate, companies started hiring more people and making more computers. They had to, to keep up.
Then something happened. Everyone had a computer. The average person will not want to buy another computer until there's a damn good reason, even if their current one is slow and way behind the times. It's kinda like TV--sure you could get the next big thing, but if what you have suits you just fine (and obviously it does, 'cause they've been using it for so long) then why pay so much for a slightly bigger one?
So computer sales dropped like a rock, and these companies find themselves with too many payrolls to support. They have to let people go.
It's similar with ISPs. They see huge grown, they probably undersell their bandwidth to their customers ('cause the money just keeps coming in) but at some point everyone's gonna have broadband, and then what? At least with ISPs they get money monthly, but if they have too much bandwidth coming in or too many people on staff, it just won't work.
Microsoft used to make all it's money on bundleware. They got smart, real fast. You'll notice that once the computer economy started slowing, they started talking about subscription based software. Unfortunately, in order for a computer company to survive, this is how it's going to have to be--that is, until the next generation of hardware comes out that that the next generation of software requires in order to run, forcing everyone to upgrade again..
Distributed computing (Score:1)
Pennypinchers may soon have to swap cpu cycles while they sleep if they want "free" internet access - not such a steep price IMO.
ISP's have to do something to offset costs, even sneaky ones like Juno.
Re:Telco foot-dragging and Consumer Indifference (Score:1)
But with DSL, your wiring becomes part of thier problem and they have to have to make sure it will work with your computer as well! I've had two DSL installations now and one cable modem, and each time it's taken a few hours for some guy (multiple guys in the case of the cable modem) to finish the job with me as a VERY accomidating customer. Run a cable from my bedroom into my study to get it working? Not an issue. Need to use the second pair of wires as the first pair offers lousy signal strength? Switch 'em over, I'll re-wire the jacks later!
Not to mention that here in Denver, Qwest advertises DSL pretty heavily. I think one of the reasons they didn't advertise it much here for a while and might not in your area is lack of qualified personaell to take care of a flood of orders. I think after about ten years or so when a lot of homes have hooked up DSL lines already and companies have a map of what homes are ready, then DSL installations will be a little more routine.
Re:The Economics of Being an ISP (Score:1)
Re:Hot topic at ISPCON last week.... (Score:1)
They are a local ISP in a moderate sized (250,000) market. Ask anyone around who their ISP is and chances are it's them. They have excellent tech support and an average monthly cost. They get a lot of free exposure for participating in (often non-computer related) community and charity events along with their paid television and billboard spots. They always have a booth set up at the computer user group meetings and home shows. They have free tech days where you can come in and they will teach anything that a newbie would want to know. They give away t-shirts at sporting events and the such.
Unless they are made an offer that they can't refuse by one of the really big guys, I don't see them going away anytime soon.
Re:What about wireless (Score:1)
We're doing things with it that would blow your mind. I'd give details but my boss would probably hurt me.
The next wave (Score:1)
Re:Hot topic at ISPCON last week.... (Score:1)
Most rank and file folks don't care about subnets, and being able to run daemons. They just want to download porn and games at a respectable rate.
Who can blame them? Cable isn't for commercial subscribers. I'd never use a cable modem again, but I don't have to...
Dave
Hot topic at ISPCON last week.... (Score:1)
It looks like this....
For dialup, it's AOL, Earthlink and MSN. In all except the more remote/ rural locations, the little guy is going away, if he isn't already.
In terms of broadband, the cable guys will own the consumer set, while the established ILECs will own the biz DSL set. With ATT@Work offering US$800/month for a full DS1, it's only a matter of time before most mid size businesses switch from DSL. The thinking is, the CLECs are done, it's only a matter of time.
Dave
Re:Economies of scale (Score:1)
hehe... Nope, even the machines will be flipping the burgers... ;-)
--
Re:Economies of scale (Score:1)
True, true. This happes all the time, it just appears to be new to this person because they have no sense of history.
One point on your comment. Machines don't save you from doing more labor, but they save your company from paying for more labor.
This is not true. The companies are still paying for more labor, they're just paying the machines to do it. So, in effect the machines take over and save you, the employee, from the doing more labor.
--
DSL... BAH (Score:1)
Yesterday a verison salesman called and informed me my slow downloads were over. I could purchase DSL for ~$60/month and get a 1 month free. I informed the sales person I already pay $24.95/month for TW's RoadRunner Service and have had it for 3 years now.
This is why DSL is going down... cable has been around for a while and costs less.
Re:People want fast access, but ..... (Score:1)
My favorite (and, long standing) example is how VHS video wiped out the Beta format in the '80s, almost entirely due to the fact that the tapes were up to 6 hours versus a 4.5 hour maximum for Beta. Very few people really cared that Beta had MUCH better video quality, all they cared was that they could tape two football games or three movies without running out of tape.
It is the same at restaurants, where they have to serve huge portions or "all you can eat" to keep the customers coming in numbers sufficient to remain profitable.
Quality takes a back seat and most customers couldn't care less.
Re:Darwinian supply and demand... (Score:1)
I read an article a few weeks ago which said that the problem has occurred not just in high-tech, but also in industries as mundane as trucking. When the economy was exploding, all the truck lines saw all the potential revenue streams and over-invested in new (and very expensive) equipment to go after it. The trouble was, all of them were aiming for the same customer base. In the end, it blew up in their faces because there wasn't enough actual business to support all of the aggregated investments. Hence, lots of layoffs and bankruptcies.
Trucking was just an example widespread practices across many types of businesses. The overheated economy is now spiraling in the other direction. It will be just as difficult to slow down the probably imminent recession as it was to try to rein in the overinvestment that caused the bubble to burst.
Re:Hmmm anyone want to do the trivial searching (Score:1)
Re:Telco foot-dragging and Consumer Indifference (Score:1)
Re:The Economics of Being an ISP (Score:1)
On the one-hand, the CLEC/Local ISP evolved from local BBS owner/operators who added Internet 'gateways' in the late eighties and early nineties (a la the WELL, and all the old Mustang BBS's). They were packet switched, internally, but depended on the ILECs (CO-based circuit switched) for access and primarily concentrated on local services and/or underserved local markets. They extended services mainly by RAS. These were the early 'hobbyists.' MUDs are here today, but not much else unless the companies evolved into local ISP's. The point-of-presence these folks concentrated on spanned only inter-Area Local Exchanges.
Then there were the early 'nationals' such as AOL and CompuServe who fell into one of two business models: Pure play online (AOL), or Loss-leader/Commodity Resale (CompuServe and Prodigy). They were packet switched on a much wider basis, but still depended on the TELCOs, in this case the long-distance carriers. These folks defined POPs in terms of markets and populations served.
When the NSF 'privatized' the internet, these two fundamentally incompatible models (infrastrucures, business models, markets and customer bases served were different enough to be incompatible) attempted to merge at the push of an ignorant Wall Street, stuck in early Industrial-age 'economies of scale" models.
The above, as well as inexperienced management, pushes into additional 'services' such as consulting, and the froth of the 'Internet craze,' left us where we are today.
The ironic thing is that for the small, local ISP, in the right market, it is a license for geeks to print money. It can be Nirvana for a tech-crazed geek, in the right market, with realistic expectations. You just have to have some discipline and not be too greedy.
Internet going back to the bells? (Score:1)
Needless to say we have had some of our old customers call us to complain they're being treated like a number and not a person. To bad there really isn't anything we can do about it.
I still predict the bells will control DSL in the next 2 - 4 years. Maybe I should change my prediction to include DSL and dial-up in the next 2 - 4 years.
I've said it once and I'll say it again - they will not let their monopoly go. They will just bide their time until everything is so mucked up we ask them to take it back over (think, energy crisis in Cali.)
-----
Re:The Economics of Being an ISP (Score:1)
Re:Ah, paid advertising! (Score:1)
I think webhostingmenu.com [webhostingmenu.com] has some pretty good deals. I think the Thinkhost at $10/mn [webhostingmenu.com] is really good. I am a bit wary of the $5/mn of your-site.com [your-site.com] because that is so cheap.
Re:Ah, paid advertising! (Score:1)
Re:Ah, paid advertising! (Score:1)
Layoffs in the Broadband Industry (Score:1)
Internet Providers that last... (Score:1)
Re:Telco foot-dragging and Consumer Indifference (Score:1)
Telcos do like DSL though, but they see it as an opertunity to take the whole pie, and are pursuing that goal at the expense of the custoemr
Re:The fate of the local ISP (Score:1)
At this point there's no competition per se in Portland, where telcos are concerned. Some areas are covered by Qwest, others by Verizon, and that's the name of the game.
In terms of coverage, there are huge swaths of town that can't get DSL or cable: most of Southeast, Hillsdale/Multnomah, Northeast close-in, and most of North Portland (go figure). If it was low rent ten-twelve years ago, or if it's low-rent now, you're probably outta luck. Nor do the telcos display interest in setting up new POP's... and Multnomah County is waaaaayyy behind the curve on cable because of the lawsuit that was filed here a few years ago.
To the poster who was wondering who bought Pacifier and Transport, I can say that the next-biggest fish is Northwest Link. I haven't really bothered to find out who owns them (if anybody) 'cause my service has actually been pretty good.
Re:Economies of scale (Score:1)
If your ISP is purchased by EarthLink then I welcome you to sample the services. From the most reliable mail servers in the industry to full-service and online management for almost all account features. Award winning technical support and customer service are only the beginning.
Yeah, there's also spam friendliness that will get you blocked from various networks all around the planet, thanks to ELN's habit of only replying to complaints of abuse from their network when their supposed anti-spam stance (from back when they took Sanford Wallace to court, mind you, quite a few years back) is threatened with exposure, or they're threatened with a listing on the RBL [mail-abuse.org] (auto-ignorebots don't count as replies).
And, at least in Florida (where a good friend has first-hand experience), in the Tampa area, the solidity of their dialups is somewhat dubious itself, dropping connections at random intervals, and providing slow connect speeds even when the local copper is in good shape.
That kind of crap is why I dumped my Mindspring address (well, that, and TigerDirect [tigerdirect.com] wouldn't stop spamming my address, after repeated bitchgrams to both TD and BellSouth, their upstream provider). Funding spammers and/or spam enablers is not something that sits well with me. (This post, ironically, coming from a town where UUNet dialups, like the one I'm using, are essentially the only game, if you want access to the rest of the world via a modem.)
Re:Telco foot-dragging and Consumer Indifference (Score:1)
Oh how wrong you are. DSL is a royal pain in the butt to install. The line has to be qualified, the pair has to be rewired to a DSLAM in the C.O., the data service needs to be provisioned, sometimes in multiple pieces of equipment, and then there are the mystery lines, that just don't work when all of the work is finished. Trust me on this. Dial tone is waaayy easier.
sir (Score:1)
Peace,
Amit
ICQ 77863057
Re:The Computer Industry / ISPs (Score:1)
Darwinian supply and demand... (Score:1)
Many thought they could purchase enough unbundled network elements (UNEs) to steal away competition from the big names. This practice, much like purchasing UNEs to undercut long distance competitors, has caused the demise of many small telecoms. The added technological complications of DSL has made it even more difficult for small competitors to turn a profit.
However, I don't see the entire DSL supply chain imploding over this weed-out session.
Re:DSL sucks for the local ISP (Score:1)
Of course not! They have done the same thing with local telephone service. At least here in Texas, SWBell has been fighting tooth-and-nail to keep their monopoly on local POTS, yet they still want to offer out-of-state long distance service. They were finally forced to let in competition to their local service, but SWBell is not making it easy for them. THey will do the same with DSL.
Re:Telco foot-dragging and Consumer Indifference (Score:1)
It's not that way here in Texas! SWBell heavily markets DSL all the time thru TV, radio, and snail-mail advertising. Have been doing so for almost a year now.
When I visited Chicago last October, I saw one of the same ads (on TV) for DSL that I had seen here in Ft. Worth several months earlier. Seems that SWBell owns the RBOC in Chicago, too!
my isp (Score:1)
infinet was then bought by large regional provider by the name of voyager [voyager.net] in either early '99 or '00. as of late, the company has switched hands yet again, now owned by corecomm [core.com], which swallowed voyager whole.
through the process, my email account never changed... the tech support got better, since it moved from a 8am-4pm long-distance number to a 24/7 toll-free number.... and my shell still works. not only that, but our homepage space has grown from 5mb to 20mb, and we can have up to three email accounts per subscription.
the coolest thing, for me at least, is the ability to use my isp all over the state, because there is a local number all over ohio. whenever kent state's internet goes down (which happens much too frequently) i can plug my modem into the phone line and get on at 56k.
i can understand the arguement against consolidation and such... but for me, the situation has been a winning one. gradually better, and more accessable tech support, more email accounts, more local numbers, more web space, et cetera.
DSL (Score:1)
The biggest problem, in my view, is that DSL is such a young technology (two years old or so, I believe). The DSL providers pile users onto shared lines*, pushing this relatively untested technology to the limits. The result is what I hear about every day from a lot of people I know who use DSL: a connection that's usually very unreliable.
For instance, a member of my family signed up for DSL in his area a year ago. It was fantastic for the first few months, but the providers kept piling people on in that area, and what does he have now? Weekly outages of a day or more (one time nearly two weeks), virtually non-existent support, and wildly fluctuating download speeds. He's actually going back to dial-up 56k, because even though it crawls, at least it crawls with some reliability.
I hear stories like this from my DSL-using friends more often than not. I know a grand total of probably two people that are truly pleased with their DSL service.
Don't get me wrong -- when DSL is done right, it totally rocks. I'm envious of the performance gains a really good SDSL connection has over my cable modem. However, my cable goes out maybe once a month, if even that, and usually only for a few minutes. Compare this to the nightmare stories from a lot of DSL users. I'd rather have the sometimes lesser bandwidth than risk having a faster (but crappy) line.
* Yes, despite the hype, many DSL setups are shared. Often times, three or four people will be put on one DSL line in a given area. So the "cable sucks because it's shared, so use DSL" argument doesn't always apply.
Re:Powerlines (Score:1)
Anyway, the concerns you raised aren't really issues, as the transmission of data over powerlines would be completely seperate from the transmission of power, just as your phone service isn't compromised by your DSL line.
Re:dead water (Score:1)
Re:Economies of scale (Score:1)
EarthLink's campaign to bail out the fragmented ISP market and provide a viable alternative to AOL/Time Warner is something that should be applauded. To begin with there are not many if any other players looking in this direction for new business opportunities. If not for ELNK's interest we would be reading alot more about situations like the recent Northpoint/Verio fiasco that left tens of thousands of people without internet access and established email addresses.
Sure there are always going to be those people who would have preferred anything but the inevitable, what can you do? Providing quality service with skilled technical support and customer service is not possible at a profitable level in today's market until you begin to divide your costs into the revenue that only comes from millions of subscribers.
The 'mom and pop' scenario functioned when a real income was to be had from advertising and investors were excited about the possibilities. That is no longer a reality and one should begin to consider the long term viability of their ISP before commiting to them.
If your ISP is purchased by EarthLink then I welcome you to sample the services. From the most reliable mail servers in the industry to full-service and online management for almost all account features. Award winning technical support and customer service are only the beginning.
By the way port 25 blocking is necessary. If you stop and think about it, why should any network administrator be asked to pay for your outbound mail to some spam server is malaysia or even worse those people who would log in to EarthLink's smtp server from another network. Nobody here likes recieving spam and I think we all know the amount of traffic and expense that can occur when one doesn't control the mail that is generated from their network. If you really are using your own mail server for business purposes then purchase a dedicated line and use it how you see fit.
By the way, EarthLink's slogan is best surmised by their Core Values and Beliefs. [earthlink.net] I do not know where you got the 10% better than AOL but its not accurate.
R_V_Winkle
Re:Hmmm anyone want to do the trivial searching (Score:1)
It's simple economics (Score:1)
Re:Hmmm anyone want to do the trivial searching (Score:1)
Mindspring bought Sprynet and Netcom before the merger with Earthlink ever happened. I worked at Mindspring during both acquisitions. :)
the unbeliever
aim:dasubergeek99
yahoo!:blackrose91
ICQ:1741281
Re:People want fast access, but... [7 year payback (Score:1)
Re:People want fast access, but ..... (Score:1)
I really love it when someone quotes some band lyrics, like that.
I've been paying the same $19.95 a month for 4 years for Concentric dialup service, which is now XO. About 2 years ago they shut down shell accounts, rationale: It was part of our Y2K plan to decommission that service, since the hardware crashed anyway, we didn't feel like pulling them back up for a few months. The bastards.
If you haven't hear the "Charles Gaines, President of Megatelco" ads, consider yourself fortunate, as they are insulting to the intelligence of everyone.
The fact is customer service suffers from these things, other than decreasing revenue from reduced rates:
Overselling, too many customers, too little time to ramp up support
Lack of attention to detail, like putting a clear pointer to customer service on the home page, rather than buried out of site.
Boiler-room atmosphere customer service: get the guy off the line as fast as possible, even without a solution to the problem.
Extreme dilution of stock, through options, need to pay out a dividend and obscene executive bonuses.
The customer isn't as dumb as Radiohead would make him or her out to be. Each side of the scale has it's weight and we're heading toward balance. Odds favor those who went into the ISP business intellegently and provide good service. It's really tough to leave a company which provides superior service, unless the customer is suffering some hardship.
Where I once worked, years ago, we switched from AT&T to MCI to save some money, the crossover was a nightmare and service was horrible. Within weeks we were back at AT&T. I can't speak for either company now, but where the real bread and butter is is where you'll find if a company can provide the service. If your employer gets good service and that vendor provides DSL/ISDN, etc. use that inside information. If the vendor sucks, they're one less to look at.
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Re:ISP with 4300 employees local? since when? (Score:1)
Going down, down (Score:1)
Eaten Alive (Score:1)
It particularly made me upset because I'd carefully shopped for a small, local, geek-owned-and-operated service, and now I have a large, unfriendly service staffed by people who seem to know less about their service than I do (which is pretty scary)... I don't even dare ask these folks any Linux configuration questions, whereas previously, I'm sure Rhys in tech support (with the cool voice) or one of the other guys could have helped me out.
Wonder what happened to those gentlefolk... Sigh...
So there's more than one way for an ISP to become a flayed feline.
Re:DSL sucks for the local ISP (Score:1)
Actually, there's nothing consumers hate more than an upfront charge. Forcing people to drop $200 for a DSL modem isn't going to get you very far in a world with $.01 cell phones. Instead, people will take "Free" even if it means shit like DSL Winmodems and USB ethernet connectors.
noodle.port5.com (Score:1)
US phenomenon only? (Score:1)
What's the situation in other countries?
Maybe it helps that about 60% of the population can get dsl in Denmark? Also they are aiming for making dsl possible for about 90-95% of the population in a couple of years.
Re:Hmmm anyone want to do the trivial searching (Score:1)
These "giant" ISP's were far smaller than a corporation with 4300 employees! Now *that* is the tiny corporation being swallowed!
All industries go through this. A hundred years ago, there were as many car companies as there were cities with a population over 10,000.
Consolidation, with the accompanying layoffs, reduces costs overall for the consumer because, heck, there go 2000 paychecks a month that were unneeded. Rough for those cut (sort of, it is the computer industry after all) but costs are lowered.
Re:Telco foot-dragging and Consumer Indifference (Score:1)
A couple of years ago, at the same time, they were whining to the government that they should be able to charge extra money for long-hour local calls (ISP calls) because it was tying up too much of their system. Meanwhile, on the radio, they were advertising free installation of a second phone line for your computer modem!
Clueless is as clueless does.
Re:The Computer Industry / ISPs (Score:1)
> offered significant productivity increases
> (meaning, companies could fire a bunch of
> secretaries and force middle managers to type
> their own memos),
Yes, firing a secretary from a manager and his group of engineers made great economic sense, as people earning a lot more than the secretary now type their own stuff.
Let's have the engineers sweep their own cubes while we're at it, so we can save money by firing the cleaning lady.
It was Winstar -- here's the link (Score:1)
here's the link to the press release...
Date: Thu, 5 Apr 2001 16:30:26 -0500 (CDT)
*** Winstar cuts 2,000 workers
NEW YORK (AP) - Winstar Communications Inc. announced the immediate layoffs of 2,000 employees, or 44% of its total work force, just hours after potential suitor Qwest Communications said it has no plans to acquire or invest in Winstar. Winstar also said it was halting expansion of its domestic and international network for the rest of this year, to focus on building business within its existing broadband infrastructure. That existing network consists of 5,400 buildings with a market of about 150,000 businesses. But Winstar said its announced cuts were "absolutely not" the result of Qwest's statement. "The release we put out today had nothing to do with their (Qwest's) announcement this morning," Winstar spokesman Kevin Cavanaugh said. Cavanaugh would not comment on whether Winstar has been in talks with Qwest, saying to do so would be speculative. Full article at: http://www.infobeat.com/fullArticle?article=40664
Re:The fate of the local ISP (Score:2)
Are there any options to avoid this kind of delay, either through using a different plan at Easystreet or through using a different ISP in Portland?
Alex Bischoff
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Re:The fate of the local ISP (Score:2)
Alex Bischoff
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Re:DSL ISPS are screwed...and the telcos want that (Score:2)
Re:Gross over generalizations (Score:2)
> the modems were filling up and/or if people had multiple connections who weren't supposed to. If the modems did fill up,
> it'd clear connections by bumping off people who owed us more than 2.5 months [which was basically to rule out
> prorated amounts + setup fee]. If it didn't get enough from that, it would bump off people who had been on more than 6hrs
> straight.
>
> We'd have people calling us at 7pm, begging us come down to the office to drop off their payment as they just got
> dumped 4 times in a row, only to check their mail to find the 'this wouldn't have happened if you paid your bill' message.
[F/X: this reader chuckling]
My long-term ISP, whom I've been with since late 1992, has always enforced a pay-in-advance policy. You forget to pay a bill, & he disables your account. One reason he can afford to keep in business. (The other is that he does all of his support via email -- that keeps the bottom 10% who waste 90% of his time away.)
If I ran an ISP, there would be no way in hell I'd let someone ride for free for two & ahalf months. Maybe a month if they positively swore each time they called the check was in the mail. Unfortunately, I know of at least one ISP who took a year to close accounts. (I know this because I was given use of this account until the ISP closed it -- & the original owner told them to close the account.)
The only reason people got away with this kind of crap was that ISPs were trying to build marketshare. Either that, or the owners truly were bad businessmen.
Geoff
What about wireless (Score:2)
The big problem with DSL is that pesky middleman that has a vested interest in seeing you fail. If wireless can be made to work then they are out of the picture and we have a vialble alternative again.
Let's keep our fingers crossed that the product can live up to it's hype.
Why FreeBSD is better than fish tacos (Score:2)
Re:Economies of scale (Score:2)
Caution: Now approaching the (technological) singularity.
Re:DSL sucks for the local ISP (Score:2)
That's how it still is, at least with my ISP. I've had Telocity for about a year now and I'm in Michigan, so my telco is Ameritech. Just recently a friend of mine signed through the same service and his installation went the same way.
I don't know about other areas of the country, and IANAL, but it does sound like you've got yourself a nice big lawsuit given enough money to fight them. IMHO, there is definitely some breaking of the antitrust laws here...big time.
Re:DSL sucks for the local ISP (Score:2)
As the former Baby Bells have gotten larger, customer service has gone down the toilet. Just ask *any* long-time Ameritech customer.
I love it. (Score:2)
People are losing their jobs, not because the stock market is failing, or because their company is losing funding, but because *their company is not profitable, and hence, not sustainable*.
Do I know you? (Score:2)
In fact, if this isn't someone I know, the story is even more scary, cause it means the same exact thing is happening to lots of once-traditional, once-local ISPs.
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Re:The fate of the local ISP (Score:2)
My PPPoE DSL is pretty reliable (and fast, over 1250 Mb/s down). The only delay is at the first connection - turn on the DSL modem, wait for it to sync, then it's up. (That's a common troubleshooting procedure, too.) After that, DSL is always-on, 7x24, never drops unless PacBell (rare), Covad (also rare), or Earthlink (sometimes) screws up. I think the longest my DSL line has been down was about a half day one time when Covad was mucking around (and I gave their technical support voice tapes some colorful manager listening material that time, you can bet).
I'm in SoCal, but grew up in Portland. Is broadband access really as grim there now as you seem to suggest?
Re:Telco foot-dragging and Consumer Indifference (Score:2)
Not true. DSL takes time for the telco to provision. They have to circuit-map your line from their CO to your location, check for A/D-D/A converters in the link (these kill DSL), check the transmission footage, perhaps test your line for impedance, bandwidth, noise/static, phase-jitter at DSL frequencies, etc., install CO band-pass filtering on your line, allocate a DSL header, and document all this both internally and to your DSL provider. No wonder it takes a few weeks from ordering to get the provisioning done.
Any extra delays for third-party DSL providers are likely due to internal review, tariff checking, stamping regulatory forms, mailing time, and the DSL provider's own delays in handling telco provisioning paperwork.
Re:Hmmm anyone want to do the trivial searching (Score:2)
Beats me as to who got gobbled up, but I'll bet dollars to donuts that the buyer was EarthLink. They have bought ISPs by the dozen ever since the merger with MindSpring. Look at the number of ISPs they have now, under their banner..
Sprynet
Netcom
Sprint
OneMain
JPS
You can add Primenet (the dialup part of Global Crossing/Frontiernet/Globalcenter) which announced that they were handing over their customers to UrkStink last month.
Interestingly enough, an informal poll suggests that a sizable portion of the customer base hasn't received any notice at all; this may account for less than 100% fleeing ahead of the disaster.
Gross over generalizations (Score:2)
The biggest problems are late payers and line hogs. We solved this problems with a little program that would look to see if the modems were filling up and/or if people had multiple connections who weren't supposed to. If the modems did fill up, it'd clear connections by bumping off people who owed us more than 2.5 months [which was basically to rule out prorated amounts + setup fee]. If it didn't get enough from that, it would bump off people who had been on more than 6hrs straight.
We'd have people calling us at 7pm, begging us come down to the office to drop off their payment as they just got dumped 4 times in a row, only to check their mail to find the 'this wouldn't have happened if you paid your bill' message.
As for CLECs, they're hurting because of the ruling that the ILECs don't have to pay thm reciprocal charges for termination to ISPs, because the internet qualifies as long distance. So the ISPs can't get the dirt cheap PRIs anymore. [But well, like anything, that's gross generalization, as prices fluctuate wildly by market]
The problem with most of the ISPs is that the people running them may have had good technical sense, but didn't have the business sense. Sure, you could get a loan and buy lots of equiptment, but how quickly can you get a return on the investment? You can have great sales, and undercut everyone's prices, but again, you have ROI issues. Your best bet is to stay small, cater to the users, make sure that your service is better than everyone else's in the area, and just wait for word of mouth. Your first users will be people who were kicked off of their other ISPs for being line hogs, etc, but with some incentives [refer us to (x) friends, get a month free!] you can get them to pull in their friends.
It also rather helped us that we had USR racks, and so we didn't suffer from the 2 version of kFlex issues before v.90 was finalized, and all of our competitors were either running older modems [AOL] or Lucent/Rockwell modems. We also had enough outgoing bandwidth to handle a full PRI while some of the others were running a channelized T1 through a 56k frame circuit.
If you play your cards right, and have good service, you can hit the point where people may leave you, but when they're done with the mandtory 3-6 months they had to sign with with the other guys, they're begging you to take 'em back.
another chance... (Score:2)
ispmenu.com [ispmenu.com] allows you to search and compare DSL and dialup providers available at your address. If your ISP is going down you can find a new one, at least until all of the ISP's have been gobbled up and Earthlink and Verizon merge or something.
What's Going On? (Score:2)
See here [fuckedcompany.com] for numerous examples of this.
Re:The fate of the local ISP (Score:2)
question: is control controlled by its need to control?
answer: yes
Re:Economies of scale (Score:2)
This is the point of my previous post: the more things are automated (and at a national ISP, as much as possible is automated), the fewer people are needed to produce the same service. Also, the remaining people need more and deeper skills to manage the more complicated machines that replaced their ex-co-workers.
The future belongs to those who can tell machines how to manipulate data, or other machines, or people. Pretty soon everyone else will be flipping burgers.
question: is control controlled by its need to control?
answer: yes
another entry... (Score:2)
Make sure you add it! It's about the only really accurate record of the collapse of the IT industry.
It looks like I'll be adding an entry myself in October...we're getting cutback from 30+ employees to 6.
I'm "guaranteed" a slot, but I have to say that our little corner of the IT world has been GROSSLY MISMANAGED.
if the truth ever comes out, this collapse has everything to do with COPORATE WELFARE SCAMS and nothing to do with the talented people at the bottom.
Re:DSL killed small ISPs (Score:2)
No more calling up and talking to the owner
You just reminded me of something, circa late 1995 or early 1996. This was when Erols (now a subsidiary of RCN) still had that local ISP flavor.
One night I had trouble with the news server. It wouldn't let me in. I had heard that CAIS provided the servers. Just for the heck of it, I sent e-mail to root@cais.com. I got an answer. One of their sysadmins politely informed me that Erols had just set up their own news servers. CAIS had locked out non-CAIS customers after that. Erol's hadn't told us, but I just took that in stride. After all, this was the internet. It wasn't like I needed it.
Not long after that, I actually worked at Erol's, starting out in tech support. One of the groups of people we used to make fun of were daytraders who called us up screaming in our ears telling us "MY BUSINESS DEPENDS ON THE INTERNET!!!". The very idea of any business depending on the internet was ludicrous. Assuming it was true, they were foolish not to have a backup provider.
After a while I got used to that idea. So did a lot of people. The entire economy has, in a very real sense, behaved just like that idiot daytrader. But, but, but... technology companies can't go down. "THE ECONOMY DEPENDS ON THE INTERNET".
Well, guess what folks. The internet is just as flaky today as it was in 1995. Worse yet, there doesn't appear to be any "backup provider" for the kind of sizzling hot growth that the internet spurred throughout the 90s.
Telco foot-dragging and Consumer Indifference (Score:2)
Example 1: Every phone bill I recieve has an invitation to order a bevy of calling services, such as call forwarding, and voice mail. Yet the only invitations I recieve for DSL service are from service providers themselves (Even though the phone ocmpany does offer DSL service directly.)
Example 2: If I call the phone company and order phone service, I'll have a service call the next day, but if I order DSL, it's going to take a few weeks. Yet a DSL installation is not any more complicated than a standard phone installation! They just don't care to devote any resources to it, since they don't own the whole pie.
Ok, final point, is there a solution? I believe the answer is in new forms of competition. In California, for instance, my home state, I believe the state could crack open the market by buying the powerlines from the utilities and opening them up to private firms wishing to provide high speed internet access. Solutions will vary state to state, but ultimately competition is the answer. Without competition, the telcos will be content to strangle their competitors out of the business, with just enough foot in the door to hold the cable companies at bay.
Normal pattern - nothing to see - move along (Score:2)
There's nothing happening in the ISP industry that has not happened 1,000 times before: its the normal ecology of business. New sector opens up; barriers to entry are low; multiple entrepreneurs pitch in; boom of some size, followed by end of boom, culling of unfit companies, and major scale vertical and horizontal mergers. Think: tulips, East India trading; motor industry; yo-yos, hula-hoops, skateboards.
Re:Hmmm anyone want to do the trivial searching (Score:2)
Sprynet
Netcom
Sprint
OneMain
JPS
This is just a very small sample... EarthLink owns, last I checked, somewhere around 20 different ISPs... And they just keep eating.
Re:The Computer Industry / ISPs (Score:2)
As a result lots of former big names sunk off of the radar. Others, like Apple, went extremely high end to chase profits.
The only thing that ended this downward spiral, was Windows 3, I hate to admit. While being totally crappy to it's core, it offered significant productivity increases (meaning, companies could fire a bunch of secretaries and force middle managers to type their own memos), assuming you had the fairly decent hardware it took to run it. Those late era 8086 machines were obsolete within a year. In the quest to get all of this shit working decently, we found ourselves in our current "3 Year Upgrade" cycle. As Internet applications came about, the rip-n-replace cycle only accellerated.
But, now it's been done. Nobody has any reasonable desktop apps which would convince widescale upgrades. All of the good ideas out of silicon valley lately are bandwidth-limited, and that's a fundemental problem that can't be solved by smart hardware/software people. Add in the big players (telcos, cablecos, big ISPs), and it will probably be a long time until we see the next big boom in the computing market.
Re:Telco foot-dragging and Consumer Indifference (Score:2)
That's odd, Bellsouth advertises their FastAccess DSL service very heavily in every medium I can imagine. They even have space in the pre-movie slideshow at all the local theatres, as well as the usual billboards, prime-time TV, and print ads.
Example 2: If I call the phone company and order phone service, I'll have a service call the next day, but if I order DSL, it's going to take a few weeks. Yet a DSL installation is not any more complicated than a standard phone installation! They just don't care to devote any resources to it, since they don't own the whole pie.
Actually the impression I get is that a DSL installation does involve a bit more, especially in a new market; if you order phone service, odds are it will involve nothing more than tapping some commands on a Telco computer to establish your connection. If your installation is brand new they might have to send a lineman out to punch down the line from your house in the local distro box.
With DSL, doesn't someone have to visit the CO to physically establish your connection? I am pretty sure we aren't all prewired to the DSL headers in the way we are to the standard telco equipment. Perhaps someone can enlighten us on this.
I ordered the self-install kit, and it took about 2 weeks to arrive; but then it had been custom packed with my installation info, a process which might not be do-able until the DSL header installation is made. In any case I was online with DSL within a few hours of the arrival of the package. (Would have been quicker, but I am sharing the connection with multiple machines.)
Bellsouth's service has been a tad impersonal but efficient -- rather like their phone service. Oddly, I have had the actual phone go out a couple of times while the DSL continued to work.
I get the impression that they want my business very badly, probably to head off the invasion of the cable modems. They did a very clever thing in New Orleans; while Cox Cable was busily wiring up the highly populous parish of Jefferson, BellSouth did an end-run and wired up the more affluent and rapidly growing suburb of Mandeville, where the percentage of people capable of affording broadband is almost 100%. Now that cable modems are coming to Mandeville DSL is firmly entrenched and most folks are happy with the service. Meanwhile, Cox has a miserable service record in Jefferson, which BellSouth is now exploiting to compete with them there.
Warning: Goatsex Link (Score:2)
People want fast access, but ..... (Score:2)
-Henry
Re: Economies of scale (Score:2)
Worked fine for me.
http://help.earthlink.net/port25/ [earthlink.net]
--
The occasional poster formerly known as jihad23
DSL killed small ISPs (Score:2)
Then came broadband. DSL first, and it didn't look too awful. The local CLEC (Covad/Northpoint) would sell you a T1 to mux your customers on. You wouldn't make too terribly much margin but it was a little extra dough so whatever. But then the installs ... the two guys you hired to answer the phone ended up spending half their day on the phone with your CLEC. You noticed your support starts to slip and your customers are bleating for broadband, the same service which is starting to drag you down.
Then the big trouble starts. The CLECs decide T1s aren't worth their weight in gold so they force you to buy a T3. That's big time $$$ monthly compared to what you're used to so you try to hold the fort with the T1 you've got. Fortunately you're under contract so they leave you alone. As for business ... sure, some dial customers are happy where they're at and/or can't get DSL at their houses so you try to focus on them. But broadband is catching on and the Free ISPs are starting to pop up. You're down a $k or two in monthly revenue.
Now the LECs are in the DSL business. A T1 or T3 to them to resell DSL? Forget it ... you can only make $10 margin on an ADSL customer because the LEC is price gouging the industry looking to kill the CLECs and, therefore, you. So you cling to the CLEC and the T1 you started with but the contract's done now and they're tired of your righteous yelling ... you don't offer DSL anymore. Your customers are leaving dial in droves, the two guys who used to answer your phones have graduated and that ole dual Pentium Pro that runs your services needs upgrading. With all this beating on your mind, on the first sunny weekend in the spring, you spend your weekend piecing your webserver back from backups because a bunch of 13 year old IRC geeks have taken you down with the latest Trojan that you were a bit too slow to implement. You turn the lights off and decide to get a real job.
DSL ISPS are screwed...and the telcos want that (Score:3)
And then the telcos can acquire the DSL services (that are already partly theirs anyways and they have all the technical know-how to manage, even if not the customer support), AND (more importantly) a set of customers already...
When they consolidate 2 or 3 different DSLs using their own service, they become a DSL powerhouse with an income stream that's unstoppable...allowing them to increase the pressure on the remaining DSL types still "leasing" their services until they too are ripe for acquisition...
bastards...
Economies of scale (Score:3)
It's ironic that, as promised 50 years and more ago, machines and computers really are labor-saving devices, just not in the way we hoped. Machines don't save you from doing more labor, but they save your company from paying for more labor. As more dataflow gets automated, and as hardware and software get easier to use, less human intervention and ingenuity is required to keep things running (less in aggregate, I mean, not in depth).
The ISP apocolypse is similar to what has happened in nearly every other industry: start off with thousands of little operations which compete fiercly for customers and market share. Eventually only a few will be left. After a while the service stops being differentiated from company to company and they compete on price. Once that happens, the company with the best economics - the most efficient - wins.
Look at Earthlink; their slogan is, "We're 10% better than AOL." For most people that's enough. Sure, people reading this comment probably want shell access on a *nix box for their $20/month, but Joe Sixpack just wants something that's easy to use (i.e. limited in options and functionality so it doesn't confuse him).
Yes, it's very sad that so many good ISPs are going away. My personal favorite, Teleport [teleport.com], was based in Portland, Oregon for years. They were reliable, responsive, and hacker-friendly. The got bigger, got inhaled by OneMain which was promptly inhaled by Earthlink. My service went from "shell access to pine" to "pray that 50% of my mail makes it through" in less than a month. And now I'm stuck with Earthlink's port 25 blocking [earthlink.net].
I just signed up with another local ISP [hevanet.com]. Hopefully they won't be bought too soon.
question: is control controlled by its need to control?
answer: yes
The fate of the local ISP (Score:4)
It's already blindingly obvious that the cable modem market in the US will never allow a local ISP a share of the market, which is one reason I prefer DSL: I can get my service from a local ISP. Sure, the line still comes from Verizon, but it's better than nothing.
But the DSL market is going the way of the cable modem market. Companies like Earthlink, the ISP-eating monster [earthlink.com], are rapidly buying up the small town ISP as they find themselves unable to compete with the budget of national companies, regardless of the quality of service.
So, that's my bleak outlook on things. Last year, there were no less than 7 ISPs in my area offering DSL service. Since then, two have gone out of business, two have been purchased by national companies, and a couple others are fledging. One remains in high standing, and that's the one I'm with.
The Economics of Being an ISP (Score:4)
In short, unless one was running an ISP as a hobby, the present day of reckoning was bound to come.
Add to this the fact most competitive local exchange carriers (or CLECS) are likewise bleeding red ink -- & all of the telco suppliers like Lucent were depending on increasing their revenues by selling to these ISPs, CLECS & DSL providers (sometimes at give-away rates), & it's obvious that we haven't seen the bottom of the crash in this market.
My hope is that 10 years from now, we aren't right back to where we started circa 1980: one beauracratic corporation providing access to 80% of the US, & several equally unresponsive smaller ones servicing the remainder of the market.
Geoff
Re:People want fast access, but ..... (Score:4)
The truth is, the differenct between ISP's ~really~ isn't that big (not for the major ones, at least) So if someone can get their internet for $1 cheaper at the next company down the road, they usually will.
Unfortunately, this creates a problem, because now companies are competing for customers by price, rather than quality of service. It's a harsh reality, but to quote Radiohead "you do it to yourself, you do. And that's what really hurts..."
We can't have it both ways, and it seems that people who know what they're doing are a minority. Meaning that the trend is going to continue, because the average person only cares that ~their~ internet only costs $7/mo. and really, how much of a network can you build w/ a customer base paying $7/mo?
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DSL sucks for the local ISP (Score:5)
Make no bones about it, the Telcos are not going to give up their hold on DSL without a fight.
On our side, we've basically shifted our focus. We still provide the best dialup service you can get, but we're targeting businesses now for Internet service. Most businesses need T1s, and with contracts, we don't have the same volatility. Unfortunately, most ISPs seem stuck on the on the dialup model, which was never a real big revenue generator anyway, what with AOL and the increase in cable modem usage.
Mom-n-pop ISPs are going to go under, unless Mom and Dad are smart business people, and realize that they need to get off the sinking ship that is dial-up and DSL and move onto more stable revenue generators (such as business broadband and outsourced services). Of course, it sucks for the residential consumer, because what's left are giant companies that can afford the low prices that consumers are demanding through mass equipment purchases and rollouts. Those companies also have stronger revenue streams coming in from other subsidiaries, to make up for any short-term losses generated by an almost saturated dial-up market.