Path: utzoo!attcan!utgpu!watmath!clyde!att!chinet!ptownson
From: ptownson@chinet.chi.il.us (Patrick Townson)
Newsgroups: comp.dcom.modems
Subject: Re: FYI -- PC-P Price "Increase"
Message-ID: <7354@chinet.chi.il.us>
Date: 2 Jan 89 17:21:19 GMT
References: <7342@chinet.chi.il.us> <824@kimbal.UUCP>
Reply-To: ptownson@chinet.chi.il.us (Patrick Townson)
Organization: Chinet - Public Access Unix
Lines: 83

In article <824@kimbal.UUCP> rick@kimbal.UUCP (Rick Kimball) writes:
>From article <7342@chinet.chi.il.us>, by ptownson@chinet.chi.il.us (Patrick Townson):
>> Still, even with the price increase -- even a 100 percent increase caused by
>> running a few hours over the allotment -- PCP is the best bargain in town
>> for long distance data connections. The cheapest rates you can get on direct
>> dial via the phone network is $7.55 per hour late at night on Reach Out
>> America. 12.5 cents per minute, compared to less than a cent per minute on
>> PCP within the thirty hour time frame. 
>
>Eric,
>
>Your missing the point about the price increase.  They are trying
>to charge premium prices for a service which is not.  If I could
>achieve the same thoughput over a PC-Pursuit connection as I could
>with a direct dial then it would be a bargin.  However, at 2400
>baud they best I could get was about 130 cps.  Also, with
>PC-Pursuit it is not unreasonable to wait an hour just to get a
>Telenet port in the city with which you would like to connect.
>When was the last time you waited an hour for a dialtone?  On top
>of that, wouldn't you scream to the FCC if the phone company
>started billing you the second you received that dialtone?  Well
>that's the way it works with PC-Pursuit.
>
>If they don't change their thinking on the pricing struture I will
>have to drop they service.  Currently I'm using about 50 hours a
>month getting a usenet feed at 1200 baud (2400 didn't work any
>faster).  That sure makes a Trailblazer look like a bargin.
>
>I think that PC-Pursuit was a scam dreamed up by some lawyer types
>at Telenet so that they could defeat the access charges that were
>being considered by the FCC.  They have no achieved their goal and
>now they don't care anything about the typical PC-Pursuit user.

I'm a little confused. I wrote the message you replied to; however Eric
Townsend (somewhere in Texas, I think) also wrote a message on this. You
quoted my message, then addressed Eric with your reply. Were you trying
to respond to me or him?

You say they are charging 'premium rates'. $1 per hour as of 2/1/88 and
pennies per hour over the past three and a half years are NOT premium
rates. Telenet usually charges $10-14 per hour to their mostly daytime
corporate customers.

Yes, they do charge as of the second they receive your valid ID entered
on line. But the days of 'waiting an hour for a dialtone' should be about
over, once the D-Dial people no longer keep a port tied up for 12 hours
per night and 60 hours straight on weekends. There are a huge number of
users who simply would camp out for hours on end. You should find the
network congestion is greatly reduced. In addition, Telenet is expanding
the capacity of the in/outdials, so that even if the line hogs stayed
around after 2/1/89 the traffic should move better than it has.

Rather than having been 'thought up by some lawyer', PCP was a marketing
decision made in 1983 based on the increasing number of personal computer/
modem owners who were calling long distance. I'll grant you their math
was incorrect, but there was nothing devious about their decision to start
the program. All PCP is, after all, is a restricted-use NUI (Network User
Identification) Billing Code which handles billing differently than a
regular NUI.

PCP was around long before the 'FCC dreamed up the access charges which had
to be defeated...'. Those access charges would have equally affected the
corporate customers on which Telenet bases the bulk of its business. In
truth, *all PCP accounts combined* provide Telenet only about 5 percent of
its revenues, but about 50 percent of its headaches where customer service
and administration are concerned. You would not believe the large number
of *stupid* calls to customer service asking questions like 'how do I hook
up my modem?'.....the corporate customers, who make up 90+ percent of the
traffic and are already paying $10-14 per hour don't give Telenet nearly
as much trouble.

PCP was 'invented' when some marketing types found they had a network which
was virtually deserted at night and on weekends, and that they could peddle
that unused capacity to personal users with no adverse effect on their 
bread and butter customers at all. As stated above, they got more than they
bargained on; sometimes at night and on weekends the network has as much
traffic as on an average weekday.


-- 
Patrick A. Townson
  ptownson@chinet.chi.il.us < > ptownson@bu-cs.bu.edu
  US MAIL: 60690-1570   Online terminal: 312-743-3333