[Sheflug] Re: [LBC] Slightly OT: Callnet0800

[Jason Clifford <nospam [at] uklinux.net>]

On Wed, 9 Aug 2000, French, Alastair wrote:

> Just in case any of you are / were with Callnet0800 as an ISP and were
> having problems connecting to them (I believe it is a corrupt CLI database).
> The Callnet0800 service is to be terminated. This is due to 'financial and
> market pressures'.

Given the very high cost for terminating 0800 calls I am not surprised. I
am rather surprised that anyone really believed that 0800 services could
be a viable business proposition - they are simply too expensive to run. I
worked out what it would cost UKLINUX NET to offer 0800 access based upon
extremely generous rates from Telinco (our Telco). We'd have to charge our
subscribers over 100.00 per month to cover our costs if we worked on the
same user/modem ratio we now use. To get it down to 10.00 per month we'd
have to run on a 50/1 user/modem ratio. Not a good way to do business I
feel!

> It will be replaced by Callnet1p, yep you guesed it it
> costs 1p per minute of peak and 2 p per minute peak. There is a 9.99 setup
> fee for new customers and for old customers that do not convert by a certain
> date. Given the relaibility so far, who wants to pay for a naff service with
> no (or severly restricted) news feed and mai lthat gets delayed by days or
> lost.

Alas, while we have to pay for transatlantic bandwidth for use by US isps
(you are aware that US ISPs do not pay for international bandwidth) and
our telcos are able to enjoy the benefits of virtual monopolies there
is no way that any freecall ISP can maintain a vialble business for very
long.

Personally I'd love to see reliable freecall ISPs. Currently I often use
an 0800 service during the day (more likelihood of gettinga connection)
but it's getting hard even when there are less users online and the
interconnectivity is not exactly great!

Jason Clifford

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