[YLUG] ISP Recommendations (Continued?)

[Matthew Bloch]

On Monday 19 March 2007 10:22, Alex Smith wrote:
> Hi.
>
> Sorry.
>
> I fail.
>
> I want:
>
> * Some sort of ADSL (>1.5Mbit?).
> * At least 30G a month transfer (not just offpeak)
> * At least 1 x Static IP
> * An upload over 256kbps
> * This to be cheap.
>
>
> Currently paying £24.99 with PlusNet, I get 8 IPs, about 2 meg,
> surprisingly good support, and enough transfer. I'd like for it to cost
> less. I'm thinking maybe £14.99 a month?
>
> I've seen similarish deals with people like Sky, but I've had bad
> reports from Sky, not only because their support is based in the
> Phillipenes, but because their IPs are dynamic, which isn't quite what I
> want. :)
>
> I'm sorry if I'm expecting you guys to do my work, it's more that I'm
> hoping someone has been in a similar situation.
>
> (FWIW - I've looked at ByteMark, and as wonderful as you guys sound, I
> just don't have the cash to budget for a service like that, yahknow?)

Hi Alex, no offence taken ;)  I'll break down what you want and show you why 
you might be disappointed with any product you take up that looks like it 
might match your criteria.

Your budget: £14.99 per month inc VAT = £12.75 ex VAT.  

BT charge ISPs £8 per month per line for their Max product (just to connect 
your phone line to your ISP of choice at "up to 8Mb") which leaves a budget 
of £4.75 to pay for the bandwidth you'll use.

At the most economical tariff, BT charge ISPs £1.5m per year per for a 622Mb 
line into their network over which the ISP pushes all their subscribers.  
That's £125,000 per month.

Now you would like a bandwidth allocation 30GB which, assuming you spread your 
usage evenly across the month, works out to a theoretical constant rate of 
about 100Kb - not even remotely likely, especially since you imply you're 
going to use your bandwidth the same as everyone else, i.e. in the evenings.  
So let's assume that with peaks and troughs in your usage graph that works 
out to a 95th percentile usage of 200Kb.

Therefore your share of that ISP's 622Mb line across the month is 0.032% - so 
your fair proportion of that £125,000 that your ISP pays for its line is 
about £40.  Therefore the total cost you incur your ISP, just for them to pay 
BT for the services you use, is £56.40!  That's before you factor in the 
profit margin ISPs make off customers who demand static IPs (because 
customers who want static IPs tend to be geeks wanting to run servers, and 
thus more sensitive to port filtering, bandwidth throttling and 
quality-of-service issues than regular joes checking their email, therefore 
they're likely to be demanding access to expensive senior technicians :) ).

But of course this is ridiculous, you might say, that means for a £15 product, 
my fair share is only 23Kb, less than a 10-year old modem.  And you'd be 
right :)  The truth is that somebody is paying for those "high" usage 
customers, so to cope with them the ISP must either 1) charge a fair rate for 
their use, which very few people want to pay, 2) allow the low-usage, 
email-checking grandmas to pay way over the odds to finance the high users or 
3) limit (explicitly or sneakily or both) or cut off high-usage customers.  
Usually it's mostly 2) with a bit of 3) where absolutely necessary.

This is all assuming the ISP is working on BT's economics - these days they 
are investing big bucks in bringing down those numbers by putting their own 
kit in exchanges, but due to the sheer amount of money needed to make this 
worthwhile, there isn't room for a lot of competition in this space.  So the 
services based on LLU kit are going to have to be either 1) wholesale (and 
nobody has really made a go of this yet, the major wholesalers still use BT) 
or 2) ultra low-margin consumer products.

So you will have to pick an ISP that has enough of a consumer base to spread 
your extra £40 per month cost across a large number of other customers.  But 
real mass-market ISPs don't care about routing static IPs because not enough 
people want them, so you'll be limited in your choice by that requirement, 
i.e. I can't see Sky or TalkTalk doing that for you.

Even if you do find someone doing what you want for that price, you'll have to 
keep looking over your shoulder for the bandwidth police - it's just not 
economical, and if you do find someone who tolerates your high usage patterns 
for a low price, you can't assume they'#ll keep tolerating it unless BT drop 
the prices dramatically.

It won't surprise you to learn we don't make much off ADSL but at least we'll 
give you a straight answer :)

-- 
Matthew Bloch                             Bytemark Hosting
                                http://www.bytemark.co.uk/
                                tel: +44 (0) 845 004 3 004