On Tue, 10 Aug 1999, Allen Marsalis wrote:
At 01:24 AM 8/10/99 -0400, Ed wrote:
3com not doing V.90 as well as Ascend's.....
We have tested and found it to be true that Ascend's authenticate and work at V.90 speeds much more often than 3com. It even happens when using a 3com/USR modem. It takes certain a certain situation for this to happen but it does happen...
Just wondered if others out there have noticed it or had their competitors using Ascend's have customers that say "Well I get 56K speeds on so and so Internet Service, why not yours?"
We have been 100% USR/3COM for 3 years and we recently received a Max TNT for eval to address the above problem.. Both chassis will be at the same NOC. 2 new PRI's for the TNT should be up this week.. I'll keep you posted as to the results and try to provide some statistical data..
Sorry for the length here, but I think it's a good read, eventhough I did write it myself :) We did some churn analysis for customers that are no longer active or no longer customers. We looked at at customers lost since March 1999 because of: a) reported problems connecting, staying connected, or poor performance b) unexplained non-payers/dead-beats c) customers cancelled but did not give a reason (and did not return our calls when we tried to followed up). We had 103 total cancellations for these reasons since March 1999. We had enough data to determine that 57% of these 103 had problems were directly attributable to connection quality. Of these 59 (103*0.57) customers lost: 50% of them had not established a connection in 1999 (many of them reported this trouble) 40% had a large number of <1 minute connections, and showed a pattern of having to redial when they did stay on longer than a few minutes 10% had connect speeds that varied more than a few "rungs" between 2400-52000 Let's see...If we had an alternate modem pool with a different NAS type, we might have saved these 59 customers. That's about $1000/month at an average revenue of $17/customer/month. We are still likely to continue loosing more if we don't take action. Alternatively Scot Desort <scot@njaccess.net>, wrote: "When all else fails, pull $35 out of petty cash and send the customer a Paradise Winmodem (LT chipset, PCI), for free. These things are GREAT, will save you hours of tech support headaches, and inevitably win you over a customer that, in the long run, is worth a lot more than the $35 you spent on the modem. We even offer to install it for free if they bring the box in. Let's remember that the goal is to KEEP the customer a PAYING customer. And nothing makes them more warm and fuzzy then getting something for free." This is interesting. Upgrading these customer's modems would have cost us $2065 in hardware and perhaps $400-500 in labor estimated to retain the $1000/month in revenue if this actually fixed the problem. I can see several problems though. You could get a considerable number of calls from unhappy customers like "my friend got a free modem now he gets 52K but I only get 42K or 28.8K. I want one too." The customer's computer needs to be sufficiently powered to run with a winmodem. How much time is spent explaining that only certain customers qualify and how exactly are those qualifications set? This also doesn't account for telco line issues. Many customers now can't even tell you what kind of modem they have or what processor they have, others may guess or argue that their's _should_ qualify for the free upgrade. For the program to not piss off any other customers, it needs to be made available to everyone. Otherwise trouble seems inevitable. On the other hand, although it takes some capital (not much with eq leasing and zero install PRIs) and increases network complexity a little, it's not that big of a deal for a reasonably clued provider to add another NAS and move PRIs over to them in a separate hunt or just install a couple new PRIs and gradually grow the alternate modem pool. But really doesn't add much cost to the operation in the long run and the customers are retained as well. Also: 1) it's available to everyone, 2) it only takes a minute to help them change phone numbers 3) and in most cases, if this doesn't solve the problem, they're not likely to be satisfied with anyone else and helps prove the problem is theirs, motivating them to follow your recommedations. The main thing that tweaks me is having to take this action in the first place. Not to mention that we've got 7 or 8 hdsps from quad trades and arc upgrades and such that we are paying for but won't be using this year now, depending on the demand for the alternate pool. Cost of doing business. Time to get a MAX on eval and give it a whirl. ============================================================================ Jeffrey A. Lynch | JORSM Internet, Regional Internet Services email: jeff@jorsm.com | 7 Area Codes in Chicagoland and NW Indiana Voice: (219)322-2180 | 100Mbps+ Connectivity, 56K-DS3, V.90, ISDN Autoresponse: info@jorsm.com | Quality Service, Affordable Prices http://www.jorsm.com | Serving Gov, Biz, Indivds Since 1995 - 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.