Hi Brent,
Thanks for taking the time to respond to my post, and clarify what
Eric said about your views on Alternet.
On 15-Dec-05, at 3:32 PM, Brent Frere wrote:
Alternet was really fast and reliable, especially for
connections
to the Luxembourg, because it was connected to the DataCenter
Luxembourg backbone. Now, Alternet is delivering connectivity
through the Tiscali (Belgium) network, so most of the traffic to
Luxembourg goes through Brussels before coming back to Luxembourg.
Your expertise in this area is impressive. How do you find out how an
ISP routes its traffic? How would you quantify the impact that
different routes have on the user's experience? I use PublicVPN to
encrypt my wi-fi connections - that means all my traffic is going via
somewhere in the U.S. I've notice the occasional slowdown, but I have
no way of quantifying it.
Two people responding to my post mentioned VoIPGate. What advantage,
if any, is there to this operation over Skype/SkypeOut/SkypeIn?
For the price, they are no more the cheapiest, since
Tele2 launched
its ADSL Illimité from 23 € 99.
I don't know how often you check the ISP's prices. As of my last
check yesterday, Alternet is matching Tango/Tele2 at the 1Mb and 2Mb
level, and only 1€ more per month at the 3Mb level. And they don't
require you to migrate your phone line to them. This business of
local service resellers (as I believe you can call Tele2, Tiscali,
MCI and Cegecom) blocking your access to cheaper long distance
options is a scandal. How are they allowed to do this? Isn't it
against the principles of deregulated, competitive telecomms policy?
I wonder if this happens if you sign up with Tele2 as a preselection
customer?
One thing I'm trying to get verified: A Tele2 rep told me today that
if I wanted to sign up with them, I had to pay 80€ to have DSL
installed on my analog line, as a one-time fee. (I understand it
could be higher - P&T has a published fee of 149€ to have a new DSL
connection hooked up.) Apparently, they were offering free
installation to the first 1024 subscribers. However, my discussions
with Alternet lead me to understand that they do not impose such a
fee. I strongly dislike the idea of P&T charging a fee to let me
allow them to make money off me on a monthly basis. Alternet takes my
money and forwards most of it to P&T to pay for their access to the
P&T network. Over a year or two, P&T stands to make a lot of money
from my DSL use - why annoy me with a fee, and an expensive one at that?
I agree with you on what a good ISP should do about up-selling and
blocking. If Alternet doesn't do any of that (I've heard about
Coditel blocking port 25, or other ISPs blocking ports associated
with BitTorrent. An even more pernicious thing I've heard of is ISPs
offering "flat rate" but then qualifying it with a vaguely defined
"fair use" clause. Which means it's flat rate unlimited until they
decide otherwise.
My current selection is (partially for historical
reasons and local
availability reasons)
[snipped]
Your "current selection" seems well thought out and worth looking
into. I wonder whether you'd recommend a shop selling the necessary
hardware? I thought I had a complicated approach to making phone
calls to get the cheapest rates with a local phone provider, one LD
provider for calling overseas mobile phones and a dial-around service
for the rest! I understand most of what you specified, but, forgive
me, what is "an analog DECT system"?
You mention CrossComm as worth looking at instead of Alternet. I was
looking very seriously at their offerings, as they have good prices
and I've heard a couple of knowledgeable people speak highly of them.
But the fact that they have still not responded to my email asking
about my DSL modem (I heard from Tele2 today, three days late!). I
think that if Tele2, Alternet/Tiscali, CrossComm, DSL4All (and for
slightly more, VoxDSL) are offering the same price, the best way to
distinguish them is a) good package extras and b) tech support/
customer service. CrossComm would seem to win on package extras - but
don't you think the customer service issue is a serious question?
On 15-Dec-05, at 8:02 AM, Eric Dondelinger wrote:
This is Luxembourg - we're quite happy not
to be limited to a
single provider charging 3x usual european rates any more.
There is still a
monopoly (do you know monopolies are illegal in
E.U. since years ?) and all ADSL ISPs are still reselling EPT
accesses (but locally for some of them, such as Alternet).
I think ADSL ISPs will always be reselling access to a common
network, in any country. That situation is not in itself a monopoly.
Building a parallel network would be prohibitively expensive.
Historically, building national networks is one of the main reasons
telecomm monopolies were allowed.
The monopoly aspect of it seems to be that P&T is allowed to directly
operate an Internet service on a network is owns and operates in
direct competition with operators that buy service on that network.
That's a conflict of interest. What Luxembourg should do is force P&T
to sell of its internet division, and maybe split P&T into a network
operator and a local/long distance service provider. But I've heard
that ludicrous arguments stemming from exceptional circumstances
affecting Luxembourg are allowed to stand as the "Luxembourg Exception".
Thanks for reading.
Mike G.