[Tfug] broadband opts

[tkilian at dakotacom.net]

I believe that the overall lesson is from Econ 101: TINSTAAFL.

People complain about service levels being low, e.g. Tech Support is busy or incompetant, the service breaks several times a month, the CPE stinks, or the software packages "destroy" hard drives.

People then sit around and demand 5 Mbps for less than $50.00 a month.  Well, that money comes from somewhere.  A *highly* regulated utility like Qwest, even in non-regulated services, has a bear of a time moving their resources around to fix a DSL line.  1FR can eat a tech for an entire day...and your DSL doesn't get done.  Cox has other problems, but it all comes down to the basic economics of you get what you pay for.  Things are improving as I see it, so keep on chuggin!

What is the end result?  A savvy user can go out and buy broadband relativly cheaply and have relativly few problems.  This is good!  Sure, once in a while a CPE will go bad, or there will be some strange issue that needs to be communicated to an inept tech support department, but usually things go well.  Even for *most* regular users, the process works fine.  Of course, the less savvy you are on the technical side, the more issues you have, but that's always the case with Internet service. 

If you want better customer service, you can pay a little more and go with a local provider like Dakota or The River.  You'll get more support than you will from Cox or Qwest direct, but you won't pay the same rate. It's up to each user to weigh their support of local business, tech support, and cost.  No matter what you decide, keep in mind how little you're paying for how much you get.  I'm not suggesting that anyone should expect horrific service and I encourage people to report bad service to their provider.  I merely caution to be realistic with expectations on a service offering bandwidth for $10/Mbps. :)

All of this is, of course, IHMO.