In the closing years of the last century, the stockmarkets and their
analysts treated an ISP's customers as a sort of capital asset. The
price paid per customer was seen as important, when an ISP was taken
over.

In those days, changing ISP was awkward. There were few alternatives to
using an ISP domain name, email, and web-hosting.

Today all these can be easily and cheaply obtained without any
involvement from your ISP. And with the new rules on MACs, what seems to
be the last general barrier on changing ISP has been removed. There are
still penalties on changing a service too quickly, because up-front
costs are being spread over several months of the ISP subscription, but
a few days gao between one ISP and another wouldn't lose me anything,
and nothing my correspondents see would change.

So does a customer paying, for instance, a tenner a month, have the same
value in 2007 as in 1997? OK, so interest rates have an effect, but has
the balance shifted?



--
David G. Bell -- SF Fan, Filker, and Punslinger.

On the horizon, a carrier task force of the Salvation Navy was
turning into the wind, preparing to launch Zeppelins.

John Naismith wrote:
When did it become possible to Migrate providers? I moved from
BTopenworld to PlusNet in 2003, although this was via the CBUK route
rather than MAC

""David G. Bell"" <dbell@zhochaka.org.uk> wrote in message
news:20070323.1329.108038snz@zhochaka.org.uk...
Yes.
usually the value of the company is based on "annualised revenue"

""David G. Bell"" <dbell@zhochaka.org.uk> wrote in message news:20070323.1329.108038snz@zhochaka.org.uk...
a rather difficult to sell one) and only started getting their MACs when BT
Wholesale stepped in, with Biscit's former V21 (eurisp supplied) customers
only just beginning to get macs after a deal to sell them to breathe was finally agreed :-
http://www.ispreview.co.uk/talk/showthread.php?t=23541

And despite the new rules some customers of other ISPs also still seem to
be having problems escaping:-
http://bbs.adslguide.org.uk/showflat...Number=2949312

John Naismith wrote:

Interesting, what had BTopenworld managed to screw up on that one?