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In the UK, most ISPs don't build from the edge out to their own core. Most ISPs use a shared wholesale network provided by Openreach & BT Wholesale (or Openreac

In the UK, most ISPs don't build from the edge out to their own core. Most ISPs use a shared wholesale network provided by Openreach & BT Wholesale (or Openreach & TT Business, or Openreach & Zen Wholesale, etc). Customer connections over that backhaul are typically billed at a fixed monthly rate for the line itself, and a separate charge which is consolidated between all customers for bandwidth. That bandwidth cost is one of the largest costs for UK fixed line ISPs that aren't building their own infra. Peering/Transit to the internet is very cheap in comparison. edit: and the ISP we're talking about primarily does not offshore support. It's all in house & provided by technically knowledgable people who don't just have a script - and they're in the UK.

Nullabillity 5y ago
> Customer connections over that backhaul are typically billed at a fixed monthly rate for the line itself, and a separate charge which is consolidated between all customers for bandwidth. That bandwidth cost is one of the largest costs for UK fixed line ISPs that aren't building their own infra. Peering/Transit to the internet is very cheap in comparison. Okay? So I guess the bottom line here is "A&A and Openreach both have pathetic pricing models". That's still not much of an improvement.
- minimaul 5y ago
  95th percentile is pretty much industry standard charging for B2B connections (although my understanding of how places like openreach charge ISPs is that it's a bit different to normal 95%) - but it does neatly map to 'you use more data, so you cost your ISP more money to serve you'. The shared wholesale model does have some advantages though - it means that we can have a wide selection of retail ISPs without having the pot luck of living in the right coverage area - there are cheap and cheerful options, and there are premium options aiming at a more niche userbase - it means ISPs can differentiate on what they do after handover, eg better peering/transit, provision of v4/v6 static addressing, better support, etc etc. It means they get country-wide availability basically immediately without the cost of trying to build out to everyone. FWIW, there are unlimited ISPs in the UK on the same model, but A&A seem to feel that it is not sustainable in their niche of the market.
  - tialaramex 5y ago
    Because A&A provide the best service. So you would obviously pick A&A since you're the person who constantly moves huge quantities of data over the network and you'll notice your outages or performance degradation more than most people. A&A are happy to have you: For a price that reflects their markedly increased costs.

Nullabillity 5y ago

> Customer connections over that backhaul are typically billed at a fixed monthly rate for the line itself, and a separate charge which is consolidated between all customers for bandwidth. That bandwidth cost is one of the largest costs for UK fixed line ISPs that aren't building their own infra. Peering/Transit to the internet is very cheap in comparison. Okay? So I guess the bottom line here is "A&A and Openreach both have pathetic pricing models". That's still not much of an improvement.

minimaul 5y ago
95th percentile is pretty much industry standard charging for B2B connections (although my understanding of how places like openreach charge ISPs is that it's a bit different to normal 95%) - but it does neatly map to 'you use more data, so you cost your ISP more money to serve you'. The shared wholesale model does have some advantages though - it means that we can have a wide selection of retail ISPs without having the pot luck of living in the right coverage area - there are cheap and cheerful options, and there are premium options aiming at a more niche userbase - it means ISPs can differentiate on what they do after handover, eg better peering/transit, provision of v4/v6 static addressing, better support, etc etc. It means they get country-wide availability basically immediately without the cost of trying to build out to everyone. FWIW, there are unlimited ISPs in the UK on the same model, but A&A seem to feel that it is not sustainable in their niche of the market.
- tialaramex 5y ago
  Because A&A provide the best service. So you would obviously pick A&A since you're the person who constantly moves huge quantities of data over the network and you'll notice your outages or performance degradation more than most people. A&A are happy to have you: For a price that reflects their markedly increased costs.