Re: Northern Arkansas Telephone Company

["W. Curtiss Priest" <BMSLIB@MITVMA.MIT.EDU>]

  >Our ISDN prices are $17.90 for residential and $28.15 for business
  
  There is too much smoke and mirrors.
  
  I quote from the Feb. 12th Inter@ctive Week -- a letter from Michael
  Walsh, Partner, Lauginghouse Audio/Visual mrwally@liberty.com --
  
  "While Al Perlman's recent comments about 'Of Bandwidth, Bottlenecks And
  Anti-Web Backlash' (Jan. 29, page 17) may, at least on the surface,
  seem right on the money, you have to dig a little deeper to find that
  which fuels the frustration with using the Internet."
  
  "The World Wide Web experience from a modem does not suck quite as
  much as Mr. Perlman suggests.  While I would love to be
  spoiled with a T1, I connect every day from a 28,800-bit-per-second
  modem, and most days I am happy."
  
  "For my money, though, more important than modem speed is the transfer
  rate from the Internet, which can vary from around 300 baud at
  some site to around 2,100 at others.  As you can imagine, 300 baud
  is like death warmed over while 2,100 baud is quite comfortable."
  
  "Right now most of the online providers are just out for the money.
  They are pushing too hard for new subscribers without worrying about
  the capability of their own services, or the Internet, to handle the
  load.  This is why I left America Online forever, and why I recently
  left Netcom.  An online service is no good if you can't connect to it,
  stay connected, or access its features once you're on.  Online providers
  remind me of where the cable TV providers were 15 years ago.  I only hope
  it doesn't take them as long to get their stuff together." (p. 19)
  
  So this amazing low rate for ISDN.  Is this for the line and the
  Internet connection?  And, if so, when this telco gets fully loaded,
  what will be the actually through-put of the system?  300 baud? (The
  data bursts may, indeed, travel at 128 Kbps -- but what is the
  through-put?)
  
  Perhaps this rate is anticipating economies of scale when things get
  crowded, or perhaps they are behaving like these $19.95 Internet providers
  who provide "unlimited waiting" for Internet through-put (instead of
  the "unlimited access" that they promise).
  
  P.S. a quote from Perlman's article of Jan. 29th, "But, if you've been
  reading Inter@ctive Week carefully, you realize that widespread
  use of digital phone lines, a. k. a. ISDN, or cable modems are, realistically,
  a few years a way.  At best."  "If you disagree, here's my advice:  Hang
  on to those shares of Netscape you bought at $170."
  
              W. Curtiss Priest, Director, CITS
        Center for Information, Technology & Society
         Voice: 617-662-4044  BMSLIB@MITVMA.MIT.EDU
   Fax: 617-662-6882 WWW: gopher://gopher.eff.org:70/11/Groups/CITS