|On Thu, 3 Apr 1997, Karl Denninger wrote:
|
|> On Thu, Apr 03, 1997 at 05:52:30PM -0600, Jonah Yokubaitis wrote:
|> > On Thu, 3 Apr 1997, Jordan Mendelson wrote:
|> >
|> > |
|> > |It looks as if USR has lowered prices CONSIDERABLY for their terminal
|> > |services. We just got quoted a price for a USR Total Control model with 48
|> > |modems + 2 pri for $14,352. This includes everything but a $250 fan.
|> > |That is about $295 per port.
|> > |
|> > |Now, I paid $11,000 for my PM3. It's a nice box, includes 2 PRI, but I
|> > |elected to only get 24 modems, but to upgrade to 48 modems it's going to
|> > |cost me $5,691 for a total cost of about $16,700.
|> > |
|> > |At the time we purchased the PM3, the USR was about $560/port. I guess
|> > |they are going all out to support x2. Is this the beginning of a price
|> > |war?
|> >
|> > USR is going for the balls. You can bet Ascend/cisco are in chaos
|> > right now.
|
|Is this under cutting of prices considered Unfair trade? What is the cost
|to USR for manufacturing a TC? I've heard that Livingston runs on a tight
|margin to ISPs, but still they have a positive markup...unless USR was
|seriously gouging on their pricing ( heh, whatever the market would bear I
|guess)
Bullshit. R&D is the biggest cost in the TC/PM3/MAX. The PM3 is a
486/66 with some very nice software in it :-) The DSP modem cards I
doubt cost more than $15-25/modem. The entire chassis costs livingston
< $1000 to build I would bet. Now, having an ENTIRE company to have to
back it plus all the R&D costs + ongoing R&D costs + + + +.
USR was GOUGING. I am no USR fan by any means, but there is a HUGE
demand for X2, so we are buying USR as well as PM3s. The PM3 is a
much more elegant solution, but USR has the only 56k out right now.
Livingston is a software company that loads their software onto fairly
off the shelf hardware.
This of course is a simplified explanation, but the analogy still
stands. I rather like the fact that livingston uses off the shelf
parts (like $10 486/66 cpus etc) because it will allow them better
profit for more R&D for BETTER products that beat those heat burner
piece of crap Ascend/cisco boxes.
now, a 10 PRI box with full duplex 100baseT would be quite nice :-)
Jonah
Jonah Barron Yokubaitis | Texas' First X2 and K56flex
President | Internet Provider
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