gnu@hoptoad.uucp (John Gilmore) (01/01/89)
I just figured my PC Pursuit usage for the past four months, and under
the "new regime" I would have paid $292, $151.50, $102, and $592.50 for
monthly service. Under the old regime it cost $25. There are clearly
a lot cheaper ways to move netnews than the new regime. (I'm feeding
"alt" to four sites via PCP, "comp" and "sci" and a subset of "talk" to
one, and a bit of "fido" to one. And minor email to four other sites.)
I suspect that if Telebit offered a cut-rate deal to "ex-PC-Pursuit
subscribers" that they'd sell a lot of modems!
They are clearly trying to bias the rate structure for individual users
who mostly forget to use the service. I know from talking with people
that places like the Well and Portal make most of their money from the
monthly charges -- fully 50 to 80% of the customers never log in; they
just pay the bill once a month (it comes on their cretin card and they
may not even notice). This is the kind of customer Telenet would like
to have!
The fact that the new PCP costs more, the more you use it, means that
people will stop using it for passing third party traffic (netnews,
Unix mail, or Fido mail and echomail) because if a spurt of traffic
comes through, their bill will rise exponentially. Certainly smart
software could figure this out and fall back to cheaper means (long
distance costs $7.75/hr on the AT&T Reach Out America plan, and on a
Telebit you can move about 4MB per hour.) But such software wouldn't be
available by Feb 1 anyway, so people moving real data through it will
either cut off their PCP service then, or cut it off after they see
their first ridiculous bill.
Since Telenet is trying to drive off the people who are getting actual
service out of PCP, while retaining the drones who pay without using it,
our best tactic is to raise a big stink and wake up the drones.
Certainly I'll cancel my service, but that's what they want. What they
don't want is for me to tell all my friends to drop their PCP accounts
even though they don't use 30 hours a month. E.g. for people who spend
<4 hours/month on it, long distance would be cheaper and much easier.
Another interesting tactic would be to get several $30 PCP accounts, or
have several friends get PCP accounts. Just like the record clubs
where you get 6 records for $1, then pay $12.50/record later, you do a
lot better signing up new people than paying the full rates. This
would also let you call out to several dialers simultaneously.
I hope their customer base falls off to zero and they go back to having
hundreds of leased lines all around the country, idle all night. They
deserve it for this. It was a good idea and it worked for two years
(*and* kept the FCC off our backs once) but if they want to kill it, let's
kill it good and dead, not let it bleed a bunch of suckers for years after.
--
John Gilmore {sun,pacbell,uunet,pyramid,amdahl}!hoptoad!gnu gnu@toad.com
Love your country but never trust its government.
-- from a hand-painted road sign in central Pennsylvaniales@chinet.chi.il.us (Leslie Mikesell) (01/02/89)
In article <6141@hoptoad.uucp> gnu@hoptoad.uucp (John Gilmore) writes: >Another interesting tactic would be to get several $30 PCP accounts, or >have several friends get PCP accounts. This would obviously be the way to go if you consistantly use >30 hours of service. How can they even think about charging higher rates for increased use? Do they think the customers don't know how to add? Les Mikesell