[LINK] The ISP business

David Lochrin dlochrin at d2.net.au
Wed Nov 18 12:18:40 AEDT 2015


My ISP has an email-server problem which results in outbound traffic from users in my domain failing at some point on most weekends and staying that way until they get to work again on Monday morning.

They're apparently not going to fix this.  Their suggested solutions are to get a Gmail or other free email account, or acquire a domain and pay another $11 p.m. for a _self-managed_ email service with them.  Paying a further $11 p.m. will give me a web server facility self-managed with the same utility, so it looks a bit as though they're chasing small business users.

However their rationale is interesting.

They claim the traditional ISP email service is no longer viable because it's evolved from simple text based messaging to a "package" service where users send all sorts of big attachments, and the cost of supporting a bundled email service is no longer warranted.  Furthermore, the cloud services provided by Microsoft's Windows Live are taking email in a direction where small ISPs simply can't compete.

Is this sort of thinking becoming more general?  Where is the ISP business heading?

David L.



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