Note: This column represents the opinions
of the writer and as such, is not represented as fact
At last,
the contents of Aardvark's "million-dollar ideas" notebook
are revealed for all to see!
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In recent weeks, IDG has carried several stories regarding problems with
Telecom's DSL service and there's another one this morning (see headlines
section).
Apart from being the most expensive DSL service in the OECD, it would appear
that Telecom's service is also one of the least reliable -- despite the company's recent
advertisements proclaiming the world-standard reliability of their network as
a whole.
Let's take a look at what's wrong with Telecom's DSL and why they're unlikely
to fix it any time soon...
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First-up there's the issue of price.
Telecom's DSL can bankrupt you -- plain and simple.
If it's not the massive per-megabyte charge for the data you download, it might
be the effect of some hacker trying to produce a denial of service attack by
flooding your connection with masses of data -- which you will pay for.
Let's face it -- if Telecom wants to charge by the megabyte then it has
a moral, if not a legal, responsibility to ensure that you're only charged
for the data you legitimately requested.
Then there's those micro-outages which so many people seem to be complaining
about.
It would seem that the problem has been acknowledged but the company is not
particularly interested in fixing it any time soon.
And why should they?
After all, micro-outages are great money-makers.
Average people downloading large files from the Web using the HTTP protocol
often associated with such transfers will find that a micro-outage probably
causes the session to abort.
If you've downloaded 100MB of a 101MB file then it could be that you'll have
to start all over again -- that's a lot of extra cash in Telecom's pockets!
Don't forget either that DSL is a product that competes head-on with several
of Telecom's far more expensive services such as its DDS offering. You only
have to compare the price of a 2Mb/S DDS circuit across Auckland city to the
DSL equivalent to see why Telecom might want to put off those repairs.
Hey, nobody can blame Telecom for wanting to extract the maximum revenues
and profits from its services -- that's simply the nature of business and
if it didn't try to maximise those profits it would be neglecting its
responsibility to shareholders.
However, it becomes damned hard for many Kiwi hi-tech, new economy startups
to compete in a global marketplace when they're being offered an unreliable
service that represents an open cheque to Telecom each month.
What do you think? Is Telecom's DSL service a rip-off compared to the service
offered by carriers in other countries?
And what about the prospect of getting a bill for several thousand dollars
if you're the victim of a massive IP flood launched by some malevolent hacker?
Microsoft Wimps Out?
Last week I challenged Microsoft to put Windows XP to the Aardvark torture
test. No response.
N'uff said.
Now, is there any Linux vendor out there willing to meet a similar challenge?
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