On Tue, 25 Jan 2000, Jeff Mcadams wrote:
We don't monitor user-modem ratios...we just watch and as we start getting close to filling our lines we add more.
That's what we do here. And over the past few years, I've noticed that more-lines-time happens as the ratio approaches 8/1. 7-7.5 seems to be the sweet spot where nobody gets (unreasonable) busy signals yet there's good utilization of the lines. [when I talk about reasonable busy signals, I'm meaning that sure, they *occasionally* get a busy, but an *immediate* redial gets 'em in] Then again, we don't play that silly 'unlimited' marketing game where we say it but don't mean it. We set a soft limit of 150/hours per month; if they go over, they get another $10 tacked onto their bill (which gives 'em another 100 hour block. Cycle repeats at 250, etc). Sure, a (very) few potential customers don't sign up because we won't say unlimited, but in my experience they're the PIA's anyway. Most of 'em see the light when we mention that 150 hours/month is about 5 hours per day, every single day, and they realize that they won't use anywhere near that. And I get a marketing bonus as well. No extra charge for multi-channel use. Hook up that shotgun modem. Feel free to log on at work while your family is also connected at home...I don't care, each channel just adds to their limit (2channels for 1 hour == 2hours). No headaches for me policing simultaneous use, and I actually like it when people want to stay on 24x7. *grin* Not to mention that I don't have to have any strange clauses in my contracts which attempt to redefine what 'unlimited' means, or force my opinions on what constitutes a valid connection. - To unsubscribe to usr-tc, send an email to "majordomo@xmission.com" with "unsubscribe usr-tc" in the body of the message. For information on digests or retrieving files and old messages send "help" to the same address. Do not use quotes in your message.