An offer you can't refuse

I've extracted this from your website:


Does MIR mean maximum (peak) information rate ?  If so, I think you should make the meaning of the abbreviation MIR clear.

On the outlink, with 20 sites sharing, the average long term bit rate per site must be no more than 25 kbit/s and uplink 6.4 kbit/s and possibly much less due to TDMA inefficiencies.

What exactly is your 'guaranteed level of service' ?  I can find no reference on your web site www.mmstrack.com   What fair access policy is applied ? Can customers expect some minimum throughput per hour, day, month, e.g. 2 Gbytes per month ?   What average bit rate (or Mbytes) is guaranteed per hour ?

Quote:


What CIR do you offer for $250 per month ?

I am not aware of any service provider selling "up to" bit rates that are not achieved as peak short term bit rates.   Of course with many people sharing the peak bit rate may rarely be achieved and then for only a few seconds at a time.  I agree there are sometimes discrepances due to IP packet overheads and exactly how and where the bit rate measurements are made - but generally if an outlink carrier is 256k bit/s information rate there is no doubt that the customer modem receives at 256k bit/s.

The problem I see is misunderstandings by naive customers regarding shared versus dedicated services.

Service providers offer services like:
"up to 512kbit/s down and 128kbit/s up, shared 20:1 for $250 per month."
I have no prioblem with that kind of description; the fact that the service is shared with 20 others is quite clear.  What is strictly not allowed on this web site is to claim that such a service is dedicated or that the CIR=512k/128k.  The price for that should be about $5000 per month, twenty times as much as for a shared service where 20 sites, each with 1 or 2 PCs, are each paying $250 towards the total cost.  A 512k/128k dedicated service would suit one business site with 20 to 25 PCs, all busy simultanously, or a customer needing 320k/320k for 20 VoIP phones, which might all be talking simultaneously.

Best regards, Eric.

I have been in Satellite Communications for near 40 years.  Yes I was there just after the beginnings of commercial Sat Com.

Eric has a correct analysis of your claim.  While yes, your claim is straitforward, your claim is also incomplete, and hence, no possible way to make a technical measured comparison to another provider.  Of course if multiple providers were to allow a perspective customer at the providers expense to set up several links and put a Firebird 6000 on them for say 168 hours and log the bit errors, well you get the idea. Same for a Spectrum analyzer to measure your C/N and fade margins and see how much and often you guys are saturating your bird.  It CAN be measured but the average small time operator likely doesn't have access to that level of equipment so its up to the providers to be 100% truthful and COMPLETE in their descriptions.

It is not misleading but  it sure doesn't give enough information, in my opinion, to spend money It's important in this business that customers must understand in detail exactly and completely the technical definitions and specifications they are purchasing.  Completely and exactly.  Again, of course that is my opinion.  Layman explanations are not worthy of monetary outlays.  Of course I wasn't there in the beginning of Sat Com so I certainly may have missed something.  Otherwise its just merchandising isn't it?

Scotty