I agree with you. Alexander ----- Original Message ----- From: Lon R. Stockton, Jr. <lon@moonstar.com> To: <usr-tc@lists.xmission.com> Sent: Friday, October 15, 1999 4:29 PM Subject: Re: (usr-tc) ISPCon/3Com Open Meeting
On Fri, 15 Oct 1999, Richard Lorbieski wrote:
You may think this is silly. But this is how I feel 3Com treats Total Control Chassis owners.
I've mentioned my theory of 3com's attitude on here before, but maybe time to do so again, working it into your analogy....
You see, this 3com Park ballfield really isn't designed for individual fans....a guy bringing a couple friends to the game is just rif-raf; troublesome whiners who always complain about dirty seats and always having to scrape their change up to buy a hot dog. At 3com Park, there's a new business model, y'see. There's a lot of BigTime companies who have vast amounts of money to toss around....companies who are quite used to (and even expect) expensive service contracts. And these companies aren't interested in four seats at a ball game, they are interested in buying blocks of seats for the entire season. Sometimes as much as a third of the entire stadium. And that's the market 3com Park wants to go for; it's more profitable than the pesky individual fans and their buds who got them to where they are now, whos' money built the new ballpark.
In other words, it's my theory that 3com is now more interested in big telcos. Integrating the TC and phone switches and stuff like putting ADSL and traditional dialup in the CO. $Billions is an understatement for their target here....imagine TC racks in every telco CO everywhere, all bought and owned by companies who are quite used to paying way too much for eqipment and service contracts, companies who have entire departments to keep all the proper paperwork straight. Companies who don't whine when charged $10 to go to the bathroom because they can just file for a rate increase to cover the operating costs.
So you can see the rapid loss of interest in ISPs who "only" have a few hundred TC racks...or especially those piddling little guys who only have a couple. If you can play ball by the BigTime rules, fine, you'll be put up with and used to beta test all the hardware they want to sell to the BigBoyz....if not, oh well, c'est la vie. Moot point really, because if they hit the target of selling to the telcos, most of those "small" players will be going out of business anyway.
Not surprising, really....I mean, consider how much NorTel would care about you if you wanted only one DMS-10 (or just one barebones DMS100). Or how much Boeing would cater to your wishes because you own just one or two of their airplanes.
[rant]
But it is sad. Unlike the other two examples, it's a case of turning their backs on the market that put them where they are today. NorTel didn't start by targeting the hobbiest market, USR did. That they are even a player now is directly due to the small BBS market and later the ISP market. I can easily remember a time, not *that* many years ago, when even a single-line BBS operator could call USR, identify himself as a sysop, and get a direct line to engineering. You could report a bug in your 14.4k Courier, and not only would they burn a new ROM for you and fedex it to you (even if it was alpha or beta code), but you'd be sincerely *thanked* for finding it for 'em and testing out the new ROM that you'd get the next day. It was this level of support which garnered them the BBS market, and then the consumer market (who needed the same kind of modem that their favorite BBS used). The BBS operators also started spec'ing USR stuff at their workplace, and then a good number of BBS sysops started ISPs, continuing the trend. At the time, a rack full of dual 28.8k Couriers was deserving of the pure lust it inspired in the hearts of people involved with dialup.
Once upon a time, us "small time" operators were USR's favorite children. 3com came in and pointed out that we've got red hair, freckles, and were actually a product of a previous marriage. Currently, I don't know of any other company that has made me feel so unwanted; it's like they're actively trying to chase me away.
My only wish is that I didn't pick up on this earlier....like when I was at the 3com booth at a convention, looking to purchase, and it was hinted that I was too small to talk to, and was directly told that I needed to go to a resellers booth for info. [funny thing was...the reseller they told me to go to told me I didn't want 3com, that I should buy Ascend]. Another funny thing is that the folks at the Nortel booth chatted with me for a good while about telco switches...and I told them directly at the beginning that I was small fry and had no immediate need to buy, and probably never would be able to.
The only saving grace is that at least in my case, I love my HARC and HDSPs....I'm running old code, but they still kick serious ass in my case. In the past year, one HDSP rebooted itself for no apparent reason, one modem hung up and needed a reset, and one HDSP suddenly decided that the D-channel was down (but a reboot fixed that...the D-channel was fine). The old code I'm running has problems with some old Rockwell stuff and other crappy no-name modems, but it doesn't have a lot of the problems I hear about on the list nowadays.
The other saving grace is this mailing list, and the handful of 3com people that populate it. I actually hesitate in bashing 3com on here because the 3com people that actually see it aren't the problem, and they're more deserving of praise rather than seeing stuff that'll just alienate them more and make 'em think I'm an ingrate. My biggest worry at the moment is that someday, some 3com exec will learn that support is being doled out on this list for *shudder* FREE, and order the other 3com employees to not participate here (or require a service contract to subscribe to the list where they do participate).
The thing is, it's not like my desires here are out of touch with reality. I want a *reasonably priced* service contract that gives me access to the code and spare-in-the-air replacement. I want the requirement that all chassis' I own be covered to be dropped (I own a spare, it's sitting in my closet...I resent having to actively cover it, especially since it's only there because 'spare-in-the-air' is about 24-48 hours too late for me). And by "reasonably priced", I *don't* mean 20 friggin percent of the purchase price per annum, either. I may even be tempted to buy support, if said support was better than my part-time theatre-major can deliver....even she can tell me to try rebooting the chassis. Give me a test or something, and give me direct access to support commensurate with my score. 75%, direct to level 2, 100% direct to eng. or somesuch. Leave your level 1 tech support in place for people like my so-called competition, who retired from the National Guard and started an ISP on a whim with no prior computer or networking experience.
[/rant]
Thanks, listpeople, I feel much better now. (:
Lon Stockton
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