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So is it ethical to charge more for less?
I guess dairy manufacturers get away with it when they flog skim milk, so why should an Internet Access Provider?
iiNet, an Australian IAP is normally slow to react to industry price changes however they have recently made some changes to their ADSL pricing. This is due mainly to some competition from Westnet but also to reflect some reductions in cost passed on from Australia’s main carrier Telstra.
Enough background. My major complaint is that iiNet block ports on the default retail accounts and make you pay more to get a “business” account if you want unfiltered access (which it’s not, but more on that later).
Yessirree, ports such as mail & web are verboten as iiNet want to create an artificial delineation so they can charge the consumer more to have all the ports left open.
I’m not ignorant of the need for a business to make money. I just think there are better ways of doing it. Why not open the accounts up so people can do as they please (internet access provider?), but differentiate on things such as voluntary content filtering for Nancy Christian-Lady. How about charging for support? Why not charge for the services that cost more to provide like news servers and mailboxes?
I’m no longer with iiNet, I’m just irritated at the attitude. There are ways to make money without jerking people off.
Then again, as an avowed capitalist and Libertarian I can’t help but feel like a hypocrite.
Oh, and the “unfiltered” accounts? Thanks to Nimda, iiNet now block certain types of inbound data even for business accounts. This totally fucks up my dshield capabilities.
They’re also forcing all web traffic through a transparent proxy cache.
*sigh*
