Modem problems / Crappy modems

Ron Long (rlong@sagelink.net)
Sat, 23 Aug 1997 17:23:41 -0500

I just have to throw my two cents in here. When my customers complain
about poor connections, our drill starts at "What brand of modem do you
have installed in your machine?" If they have some "crappy" modem, we
start the generic troubleshooting process and when that is exhausted, in
a very nice way, I simply tell them. We charge a premium price for a
premium service. We invest in state-of-the-art terminal servers to
answer your calls. As technology moves forward, your "crappy" modem
will continue to degrade in performance. At some point, you will need
to invest in "quality" equipment for your side of the connection if you
want all the bells and whistles you've read about in PC Magazine.

I keep modems in the office and offer them for sale to the customers.
This fixes the "crappy" modem issue and lets us add yet another source
of revenue. Now, sometimes of course we eat a little crow when they buy
a modem from us and they still have problems connecting, but then it is
ALWAYS the Telco's fault :)

This "crappy" modem issue did not begin with the 56K cards and the PM3's
it has been a factor for a long time. Our customers see the ads in the
magazines and want their 10$ modems to perform like a 249$ modem. Well,
you get what you pay for.

There may indeed be some bugs that need to be worked out by LE with the
current code but that will never replace the "crappy" modem on the
client side. I don't have anything to compare LE against, but I have
seen the hate mail about remote access products from other mfg's. I
think it is safe to assume that all ISP's, regardless of their equipment
(Cisco, Ascend or whoever) will continue the battle of the "Crappy
Modem"

-- 
Ron Long
WNSC