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Index of Subjects Hi, -----Original Message----- From: ccn-ip-owner@chebucto.ns.ca [mailto:ccn-ip-owner@chebucto.ns.ca] On Behalf Of Peter Morgan Sent: Sunday, October 11, 1998 3:47 PM To: Christopher Majka Cc: CCN Information Provider Committee; Richard Rudnicki; CCN Board; CCN Technical Committee Subject: Re: Why we should all be concerned for the future of CCN Hi Chris, Comments throughout: >me to the belief that if we tried to up the cost for these to $400/annum >at least 4 of these would certainly opt out or move out (sports group; >student newspaper; research project & prof group). Finding $400 one-time >was a big enough shtick for them let alone $400 per annum. And/or they do not see a value in paying $400 annually. Where would these folks go? No one else that I know of offers VDN's for free. They would have to pay an annual/monthly fee for anything but a very small, advertising laden geocities site. $400/year represents a better value considering what we bundle with it. At some point in the future it would be nice to be well off and say: "Hey, IP, the best thing going is your own domain and we offer this for free." For now we need sustainable revenue. Most of them will probably go nowhere, however as Chris says, it is more than likely that the vast majorities of IP's will choose to go without a VDN >VDN's. They've all put a VDN on a distant back burner since they feel the >_current_ (one time) price tag is still too steep for them. I guess I gotta say that that is too bad, but we simply can't give away our resources (time/energy) >Aside from the fact that I believe the proposed price tier doesn't reflect >the (primarily) one-time set up costs, in any immediately foreseeable My experience as a consumer of these sorts of things is that sure, a few keystrokes, a bit of email and poof, like magic I have a domain. However, there are a whole series of ongoing issues. Mail account setup/deletion. Questions about web space, directories, cgi-bin, etc etc etc. To say nothing of the overhead to support all this: telephone lines, office staff. Actually part of this process is actually carried out by the IP themselves. They have to submit the application to CA Domain and then forward the reply/approval on to CCN on receipt of such. Also unless it's, again, something that's not widely advertised the use of "cgi-bin, etc. etc" is severely limited to no more than two or three generic scripts (Since a VDN is not also paying an individual fee we are providing a phone line which costs us every month -- $3/month in the case of the 20:1 PPP ratio.) And then hardware and software upgrades ... Yikes. Could you explain this a little more? I don't understand this "not paying an individual fee" >future I can't envision VDN fees (of the kind proposed) from the >non-profit IP sector forming any substantive revenue source for the CCN. 50 IP's times $400 = $20,000/year I'm sorry I really feel there's a lot of areas in the revenue collection process that need attention before we start trying to squeeze additional funds out of IP's. As I said before, I don't believe most if any IP's are approached to submit contributions on an annual basis, unlike individual users. This is where we are losing probably a not insignificant amount of revenue. Try collecting this first and see where it leaves us. If we're dead set on the $400/year tag, then we better make sure it is clearly outlined what an IP can expect to receive in return. It would also probably be a good idea to actually chart the benefits and associated fees against those of the ISPs we are competing with, and publish them for all to see. If the $400/year is to include a PPP mode of access through a direct line (that's not always busy), with additional E-mail accounts, use of custom, specific IP oriented, cgi script hosting, direct FTP access etc. then it may look more attractive. At present, however, I think most current IP's would see a VDN at $400/year an unnecessary luxury whose only visible benefit is to give them a URL less than three lines long. I agree wholeheartedly that CCN should not "go in the hole" to provide such services as VDNs, however I think it is a serious mistake for CCN to regard such things as a nice big cash cow, because unless it offers something quite outstanding or significantly cheaper than commercial ISPs then people are just not going to buy into it. It seems to me that what we are discussing here is a completely new angle in the way CCN is to think and operate, something markedly different from the ideals conceived several years ago. Yes I know times change, but we have to think very carefully before we decide that CCNs survival is based on us being in direct competition with commercial ISPs. I think there's a good chance we could significantly improve our cash flow with some kind of a corporate sponsorship scheme. If some of the big corporations were shown some details of the hits that CCN receives then it could be an easier sell than most think. Get 10 major corporate sponsors and the cash they contribute could well dwarf the amount CCN MIGHT receive from an expanded IP contribution scheme. Regards, Colin Prudhoe CCN Technology Editor and SCETTNS IP Editor
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