Re: Cogent

"Our price is low but we may at our discretion randomly and indefinitely 
disconnect you from large parts of the internet".

I guess you get what you pay for, except, my contract with Cogent said 
no such thing. Most of the other backbones are at Cogent's pricing in 
Gigabit quantity. Fortunately I had alternative (direct) connectivity to 
L3 but many people didn't and were screwed.

Your mileage may vary, but I'm 1 block from about 8 carriers, and 
history has shown that traffic can move very quickly from one backbone 
to another when they start becoming lame. Whereas oil is a commodity, 
backbone internet service is not and depends not just on price, but also 
very much on quality and customer service.

Cogent has their key customer segment of porn hosters and other 
commodity-hosting companies, and has a use as a backup circuit, but I 
don't trust them, and like I said before, they have done nothing in the 
past 3 years to try to earn back my trust. I got the "well we are just 
cheap bandwidth" line from them as recently as 6 months ago.



JC Dill wrote:
> Jawaid Bazyar wrote:
>> Their network may be great, but customer service is important too. 
>> And playing chicken with other backbones in a way which disconnects 
>> your own customers from Level3, as Cogent did, to then provide no 
>> credit to your own customers but to instead offer free service for a 
>> year to Level3 customers, is indicative of management that doesn't 
>> give a *** about its own customers. 
>
> Hmmm.  I don't quite see it that way.  IMHO, anyone who doesn't 
> understand that this type of policy is how Cogent keeps their costs 
> low and why your own price for their service is lower than the price 
> you would pay for the same service from other Tier 1s shouldn't be 
> buying Tier 1 bandwidth, or at least shouldn't be buying it from Cogent.
>
> Cogent's game of playing "chicken" with the other Tier 1s keeps the 
> Tier 1s from forming a cabal of sorts (TINC not withstanding) which 
> would ultimately up the price for all of us.
>
> Can you say OPEC boys and girls?  Yes, I knew you could!  The cost to 
> deliver a barrel of oil from the fields doesn't change much from year 
> to year, yet our cost to buy it has gone up dramatically in the past 
> few years.  This is because there is no competition, no alternative 
> but to pay the price the oil barons want us to pay.  As long as they 
> control the output and artificially keep the available supply lower 
> than the demand, prices go up.
>
> If we let the Tier 1s create a similar "lock" on backbone bandwidth 
> "capacity", services, and pricing, you can bet your bottom dollar 
> internet access rates will end up going up just like oil has.  Except 
> for their OWN subsidiary ISPs, of course.  Small ISPs are already 
> fighting (and often losing the battle) for fair rates on the last mile 
> to the customer, and fighting against TelCo ISPs that sell services to 
> customers for less than the cost of the bare copper to carry the same 
> services when they price the "line" to their competitors.  Say goodbye 
> to independent ISPs (which means almost everyone on this list) if 
> Cogent is forced to play by the rest of the Tier 1s' rules.
>
> jc
>

-- 
<http://www.foreThought.net> 	Jawaid Bazyar
President
[email protected] <email:[email protected]>
ph 303.815.1814
fax 303.815.1001
	Communications Simplified

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