A&A Increase Prices

[Tacitus]

Andrews and Arnold to increase prices.....    http://aa.net.uk/news-2011-10.html

Some background on RevK's Blog   http://revk.www.me.uk/2011/09/putting-up-prices.html

I wonder if this is the start of a general trend or is A&A specific?  RevKs Blog would suggest the latter

[Rik]

I suspect many smaller ISPs are faced with the same challenge, Tac. As their businesses expand, they need serious capital investment, and BT is putting an upward pressure on prices. There's only one way left to increase the revenue stream.

[Athena]

Sweet merciful...

I just calculated the package I use on here using their pricing system. What the hell are they offering? 1:1 contention for that kind of fee? My own DEDICATED pipe to the LINX?

The monthly fee alone would allow me to fund my own leased line. Yeeeeaaah no. No thanks.

[Rik]

Yet many people seem very happy with them.

[Athena]

Happy with what? The world's fastest broadband but the catch is you're going to pay £1 every time you want to watch Rebecca Black sing Friday? If my Steam Updater kicks in during the daytime that's going to result in some fairly brutal costs.

Eeesh. For the kind of money they're asking I'd just ring up a Tier 1 provider and ask them what it'd cost for them to plug me into their network...

(Granted charging £1 for having to deliver that monstrosity to anyone's PC is probably a good business plan, but still).

[Rik]

Oh, I'm not disagreeing with you, simply saying that for some, they represent VFM.

[Athena]

VFM? Don't you mean MMTS (More money than sense) ?

[Rik]

 

You have a point.

[kinmel]

I pay A&A £1 a month more than I did to Idnet and never incur any extra charges, for that I get 24/7 line monitoring and the ability to directly access the data on B.T.s line management..  I can see for myself when my profile changes, why it.
changed and who changed it. Add in seeing the messages passing between A&A and BT and you have excellent Support for the money.

Peak is 9am to 6 pm and not 18hours a day like some others.

If A&A prices move out of line with the other high value ISPs then I will move again, possibly back to Idnet (if they would have me )

[Rik]

I could put in a good word for you, Alan.

[Tacitus]

............I get 24/7 line monitoring and the ability to directly access the data on B.T.s line management..  I can see for myself when my profile changes, why it changed and who changed it.  Add in seeing the messages passing between A&A and BT and you have excellent Support for the money.

There's an interesting post from Timico's CTO Trefor Davies regarding the way in which their new support system will, ".....also have significant hooks into BTs back office system. This includes automated provisioning, fault reporting, line testing and status alerts and updates that will automatically filter though to Service Now".  Note Service Now is their new support system.  Key thing is that it will also be visible to customers.

This sort of system looks helpful, particularly as it gives some insight into BTs systems, but as RevK says in the Blog post, this stuff costs money which it is becoming clear only the larger, or more profitable companies can afford.

Trefor Davies post here- scroll down to the bottom of the comments:--

http://www.trefor.net/2011/09/27/what-do-we-want-service-when-do-we-want-it-now-itil/#more-5708

[Tacitus]

I suspect many smaller ISPs are faced with the same challenge, Tac. As their businesses expand, they need serious capital investment, and BT is putting an upward pressure on prices. There's only one way left to increase the revenue stream.

I think that's right Rik, but it's interesting if you look at A&A, Timico/Newnet, they all offer less bandwidth than either iDNet or Zen and, in the case of Timico on a 24month contract.  Makes you wonder......   

[kinmel]

I think there are plenty of people like me who are quite prepared to pay for excellence and equally prepared to depart when that excellence diminishes, no matter what the cause.

My AAISP charges will go up by £1.00 a month, but it gives me 25% more bandwidth per unit between 9am and 6pm.   I can live with that, because I want my ISP to remain successful while meeting my expectations.

[esh]

As it stands I think IDNet provide a good quality:price ratio. On one hand it would be very cool to see all the nitty gritty details about your line in a control panel and change various things -- f2s used to have similar a long time ago -- but I would also say I could probably bite another £10 increase max on my current IDNet package before I had to seriously consider regrading or moving.

Oh, and more e-mail space would be nice. But I think I mentioned that a few times before 

[Simon]

I could probably bite another £10 increase max on my current IDNet package before I had to seriously consider regrading or moving.

Don't let them hear you say that!   

[Tacitus]

As it stands I think IDNet provide a good quality:price ratio. On one hand it would be very cool to see all the nitty gritty details about your line in a control panel and change various things.......

I think that's right; iDNet score highly on the value for money chart.  However, I don't feel this is necessarily about being able to tweak things in a control panel, it's more about tracking faults and allowing the customer to see who's doing what at any given time.  How many people on here complain, 'support said they would contact X and Y would be getting back to me and nothing happened".   With a system such as the Timico one and presumably A&A you can see exactly what is going on.  If they've contacted BT you can see it and their response, so you know precisely what has happened.

Certainly Timico and, I suspect A &A, have significantly larger customer bases, which makes these systems essential. 

Of course the one thing nobody mentions is that if your broadband is totally dead then the whole thing is useless.......

...I would also say I could probably bite another £10 increase max on my current IDNet package before I had to seriously consider regrading or moving.

Best not to encourage them     However, if they did say we are implementing X & Y to improve our service, they might get away with it, although they would lose some people.

[esh]

Well I would actually get considerably more value for about the same price if BT decided to eventually give me ADSL2. But I currently have no choice in the matter.

[pctech]

I did consider at one point giving A&A a go but I really think their pricing is a bit much.

As you say there seems to be a lot of self service tools but then I'd have thought this would bring the costs down.