Path: utzoo!utgpu!watmath!clyde!att!osu-cis!killer!pollux!dalsqnt!usl!usl-pc!jpdres10 From: jpdres10@usl-pc.usl.edu (Green Eric Lee) Newsgroups: comp.dcom.modems Subject: Re: FYI -- PC-P Price "Increase" Message-ID: <158@usl-pc.usl.edu> Date: 9 Jan 89 08:59:18 GMT References: <7342@chinet.chi.il.us> <824@kimbal.UUCP> <7354@chinet.chi.il.us> Organization: Univ. of Southwestern La., Lafayette Lines: 51 Distribution: Keywords: Summary: Expires: Sender: Reply-To: Followup-To: In message <7354@chinet.chi.il.us>, ptownson@chinet.chi.il.us (Patrick Townson) says: >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. I have no problem with $1 per hour. I do have a problem with the rapidly escalating rates -- $4.50/hour, then $7.50/hour. I use PC Pursuit to call BBS's. I average about 60 hours a month. I'd be quite willing to pay for such usage, but not at rates that make Ma Bell look great. Getting a Trailblazer, Reach Out America ($7.10/hour after the first hour) and a limited personal newsfeed for myself would make better sense than using PC Pursuit after the first 30 hours. Apparently Telenet realized that, too, because they quickly amended their rates to say "you can now have multiple accounts." Yeah. Sure. But it's a pain in the #$%#$% >Yes, they do charge as of the second they receive your valid ID entered >on line. It usually takes me about 30 minutes of heavy demon-dialing to get through to a BBS.... >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. Obviously, Telenet needed to do something. Unlimited usage simply bred too much abuse. I expected them to set a cap, and hourly rates for usage in excess of that cap. I did NOT expect them to set those hourly rates higher than is available via AT&T. Note that since 70% is a good file-transfer throughput via Telenet, and because AT&T doesn't charge until after connection, if you're calling long distance BBS's AT&T becomes more economical after 30 hours even if you're stuck at a lowly 2400 baud (at 9600 baud, Telenet would have to charge around $1.36/hour to be competitive). I have heard rumors that Tymnet is now thinking about offering a competing service, now that Telenet has dropped the ball so badly. I hope that they carefully survey the market, and offer rates which a) accurately reflect their costs (this was PC Pursuit's big problem -- FairyLand rates) and b) are competitive with anything out there. -- Eric Lee Green P.O. Box 92191, Lafayette, LA 70509 {ames,mit-eddie,osu-cis,...}!killer!elg, killer!usl!elg, etc.