With all things opinion based it will differ between individuals. Certainly my entire family despises overseas call centres and the same applies to my friends. That would seem to support that artilce about the Call Center study awhile back.
Price will always override the call centre issue, but I certainly do consider it. I'm very happy with the 2d and Snap call centers, though I do wish they both had better hold music!
freitasm: The value I get is the non-shaped connection, the reliable service.
Ya, I guess it becomes a problem when you clearly can't provide that for a range of reasons. What do you then have left in the trunk to offer up?
freitasm: I like to see ISPs as bit movers, not content providers. AOL anyone?
ISPs have to do both. Hosting is a very important part of the business. When you put in a bit of 'cable' it will carry data in two directions. It's a two way relationship.
But I do agree with what you're saying to a point. There does have to be a focus in my view on the telecommunications company being just that, a telco, and not a content producer.
The TV3 freezone thing seems to have some value, but is it the right sort of content to be pushing and is it actually ISP value.
Perhaps my Debian suggestion is also not quite right, but it was suggested with a focus on a few issues...
* Current Deb Archive...
It's currently out of date, in fact it's 4 years out of date. It's taking up capacity on a machine that could be re-purposed into something else that is actually useful.
We complain about not getting value from providers. Providers complain that services cost money to deliver. Yet they've got infrastructure that is sitting there chewing power, that I'm paying for, doing nothing.
You would never see this in a good retail store. Every once of shelf space is well used or they pull the stock off it and re use it for something that does sell.
* Trashing the brand...
But what's worse here is that the empty shelf space is used to bring down the brand value. The domain should be debian.tesltraclear.co.nz
Currently it's "oh, yes, Telstra, ya, their repo is out of date, have you used debian.ihug.co.nz?"
* Healthy Content
It was interesting to hear the Telstra CEO called 'Mr Morality" last week, something I wasn't aware of. I'm told he pulled the companies 'smut' TV channels when he joined even though it's a big earner.
FLOSS content is very healthy content because its got the potential to be very educational.
I know I'd much prefer to have my son downloading some FLOSS and having a play with it than watching a rerun of Home and Away.
* Content of Single Source
"Home and Away" On Demand in the Free Zone, does have some value to some customers, I won't disagree. But I can get that content a number of ways and interestingly, I can't get it on my TV via my internet connection with out quite a bit of hassle.
I could just program a PVR (not a T-Box obviously, they don't seem to work) to catch all of the 'catch up content'. Or I could use the tuner card that came with my computer... the list goes on.
FLOSS is not content that I can just pull out of the air the same way I can do with Home and Away.
* Customer Service and "you could have just done it by now".
Telstra does have some smart people who can do stuff fast. But it seems that management is not letting them get on with just adding value.
In the combined time that has been spent by Telstra staff just reading this thread, they could have spun up a VM on bit of spare space on someones desktop, dropped a public IP from the freezone (or reverse proxey'ed it in) and set it to pull from an Australian mirror.
This is the kind of service I'm getting from other providers I use now.
Promote New Zealand - Get yourself a .kiwi.nz domain name!!!
Byrned: Do you really think that overseas call centers are a major decider for ISP provider?
I know when I was tossing up who to go with I don't think I really considered it. And most consumers in my experience are more decided by shiny bells and whistles than rational things like where a call center is based.
Yes, it does make sense for a "smaller" ISP to have a local call center, and for your marketing you always look for points of diference to your competitors.
This thread is about content and Geek things that add value for you.
You have made your point that you would like a local call center, if you want to discuss the ins and outs of that issue then please take it to the other thread where you will find many of the points you have made have already been made :) :) :)
Promote New Zealand - Get yourself a .kiwi.nz domain name!!!
Byrned: Do you really think that overseas call centers are a major decider for ISP provider?
I know when I was tossing up who to go with I don't think I really considered it. And most consumers in my experience are more decided by shiny bells and whistles than rational things like where a call center is based.
Yes, it does make sense for a "smaller" ISP to have a local call center, and for your marketing you always look for points of diference to your competitors.
This thread is about content and Geek things that add value for you.
You have made your point that you would like a local call center, if you want to discuss the ins and outs of that issue then please take it to the other thread where you will find many of the points you have made have already been made :) :) :)
Wow, really? I thought I was just joining the discussion about value and the direction it was heading was what is of value to people.
Oh, and the discussion that you linked to is about Helpdesk coming back to NZ, and not what is of value to the customer. Suppose I can't risk taking that discussion somewhere as well...
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