ISP Information

Mike asked:


Live customer support services are being utilized by almost every online business now! ISP’s are being heavily dependent on good live customer support services too, specially in UK.

At LiveAdmins, To provide good live customer support servicesfor online businesses, our Live Operators undergo training suitable for the roles they are assigned and completely act as employees of the businesses they are working for. Live Admins also supply Live Chat services to a site that provides ISP ( internet service providers). The job of Live Operator for this site calls for a very thorough and detailed training program to familiarize the Live Operators with the technicalities associated with the subject.

Website visitors want quick and the right kind of information and that necessitates the right kind of training. Our Live customer support Operators have all the knowledge regarding the product/services and the model of the businesses for which they work. When a Live Operator is not well versed with the product/service knowledge, then a delay in responding to visitors’ queries and providing incorrect information is inevitable, both of which succeed in losing potential customers. The right kind of education and coaching is, therefore, necessary for Live Operators to execute their jobs effectively.

In this instance, the Live Operators are trained in such a manner so that they can skillfully handle customers’ questions such as, “does the site provide mail forwarding service?”, “what are the connection charges, can you change the tariff?” or “what are the contract details, can the conditions change?”. To answer these questions, the Live Operators need to know the business inside out.

Our Live Operators are completely familiar with the services provided by the website and can confidently handle questions concerning these services. As mentioned before, the Live Operators need to familiarize themselves with all the technicalities associated with the subject for this job. Therefore, the Live Operator is someone who has more than a basic IT knowledge. This is so because Live Operators for this site are constantly asked questions such as “can the ISP set me up with my own domain name and provide web space on their server?” or “what security options does the ISP give?”. All this would be gibberish to a layman, which is why the right kind of training is essential.

Simon Wharton asked:


With so many choices, how do you compare and choose an ISP? (Internet Service Provider) After all, the end product is basically the same, regardless of which service you use being able to connect to the internet, download information and read and send email.

If you are trying to compare ISPs, there are several web sites which objectively evaluate the costs and features of different ISPs. A search for ‘comparing ISP service’ or similar wording will bring up several sites which compare costs, features, connection speeds and how they rate in customer service.

You can also simply go to the home page of each ISP where you can get an overview of their products, costs and services. Most providers have various ‘extras’ which you can access such as travel, entertainment, sports or lifestyle sections. Decide if you like the layout of the page and ensure that it is easy to use the home page can also often be ‘personalised’ with local news and events. Verify how many email addresses you are allowed, (most ISPs allow you to have several) and how easy it is to send, receive and sort email. Some ISPs will allow you a free trial run to use their service.

When choosing an ISP, perhaps the first decision you need to make is whether you want to access the internet by dial up or broadband. Dial up is usually cheaper, but can be notoriously slow and it also ties up your phone line.

Broadband is generally faster and has become increasingly popular and comes in two basic types via cable, or via a BT telephone line (also known as ADSL broadband). The area of the UK you live in may influence your choice of ISP find out whether your local cable network or telephone exchange is configured for broadband.

There is a big difference in price between the various providers, ranging from free service, to around 25 pounds a month. The more expensive providers tend to offer unlimited or unmetered access; the cheaper providers may offer what is usually called a ‘pay as you go’ service. There may be more restrictions or hidden charges and fees. When choosing between unlimited and pay as you go access, there are several things to consider. Decide what you want to use the internet for playing games, downloading music, research, email or chat and how much time a day you will typically spend on line.

Unmetered internet access is a good option for regular use, or if you have different family members who may need be on line at different times of the day. You pay a fixed amount for this service the average cost is around 18 pounds a month for unlimited access. You aren’t usually charged for the cost of the phone call to connect.

Check the small print carefully before making a commitment as there may be a minimum period for the contract anything from 3 to 12 months. Your credit card may be charged again at the end of the initial period unless you contact the ISP to cancel the service.

Pay as you go packages can be added to your phone bill and most of these make use of a 0845 number to access the internet, which is usually charged at the cost of a local phone call. Pay as you go may be ideal for people who go on line occasionally and don’t want a long term commitment.

The access charges may vary depending on the time of day you go on line just as with your phone bill. Some packages include free minutes which work in much the same way as the minutes on your mobile phone. Check that the provider doesn’t have too many hidden charges and fees, and that the terms are easy to understand.

On-line safety and security is important when comparing ISPs. Many offer a range of services that are included in the monthly fee and are usually easy and quick to download, such as email virus protection, anti-spam and ‘pop-up’ blocking software.

If the speed of your connection or download is important to you, choose your internet provider carefully. Some ISPs offering unmetered access have varying connection speeds, or have several different plans the higher the speed, the higher the monthly cost. If you plan to download a lot of music and film, a faster connection may be better for you; for general web surfing a slower connection may suffice.

Cost, connection speed and other features are all important - but so is being able to get help when necessary. For those of us who aren’t technically minded, it’s useful to be able to email or talk to - someone at technical support, any time of day or night. Establish that it’s a free phone call if there is a number to ring for technical help or customer service.

Sohail Ahmed asked:


Xeltek sensed the niche and committed to be the Industry Leader for ISP

Programmers market. For this purpose, SuperPro IS01 is designed to be the fastest ISP programmer available w/ built-in ARM9 32bit MCU. We are aware the usage complexity of high level ISP Programmers on the market, therefore Xeltek is presenting the most user friendly and compact ISP programmer: SuperPro IS01

Besides those high level ISP programmers, there are many other variations of ISP programmers. Some IC manufacturers offer very simple programmers at very low cost and there are many costing only a few hundred dollars. But, Xeltek SuperPro IS01 is designed to be used with an ATE or In-Circuit Testers. There is an ATE port available for this purpose. Also, we are planning to support all forms of interfaces as listed in the introductory article.

Since the main application is for industrial and manufacturing; Xeltek will

require providing extensive support for each user application, in order

to attach SuperPro IS01 to an ATE or In-Circuit tester. For this reason, Xeltek

plans to charge for each device used in application. So, we don’t envision

providing free device support like we are doing currently for our universal

programmers.

Our initial production for evaluation and testing, have been depleted. Next

batch should become available within a few weeks. SuperPro IS01 doesn’t

have standard list of devices to release at this time, but Xeltek is updating

devices upon customer request. Please let us know the list of devices you

want to get support for along with your purchase order.

As usual we care about your budget, and we are not going to charge

tons of money to let you own this one of a kind ISP programmer; the listing

price will be set at $1,195.00. And, we are accepting pre-orders

for evaluation at this time. For more information or placing an order, please

contact with sales@xeltek.com

Douglas Adams asked:


As a business you have a number of eCommerce needs that a person with a personal home page does not. And selling other merchants products has its limitations. Free hosting is fine but generally a poor choice if you’re going to generate your own transactions and sell your own products on your site. In addition, eBusiness services like customer wish lists, gift certificates, advanced search capabilities, gift reminder services, personal shopping agents, and one-click ordering are not normally available at the free hosting sites.

If you have dreams of becoming the next Amazon, the All-In-One hosting services will not get you there. You’re still constrained by the necessities of these types of hosting services. Sure, you can offer the products you want, take and process a credit card order, have an email account, and use your own domain name. But you need to take charge of your own destiny and build your own online store.

That kind of flexibility and credibility comes only with the control and design of your own site.

Your first task in selecting an appropriate ISP for your online business is to learn about ISP’s. You’ll find ISPs all over the map. To start locating an ISP check out Yahoo’s list of regional ISPs at www.yahoo.com/BusinessandEconomy/Companies/InternetServices/AccessProviders/NationalU_S/

Brian Shoemaker asked:


When deciding on which ISP plan is right for you, there are two main factors to consider: your needs and your budget. You want to purchase the most affordable plan that can handle everything you want to accomplish on the internet.

There are three main types of plans to choose from: Dial-Up, DSL and Cable. Each of these three plan types download internet pages and files at different speeds. The fastest is a Cable (around 1000 kilobits per second) connection followed by DSL (around 300 kilobits per second) and Dial-Up (around 30 kilobits per second), respectively. If you are planning on only using the internet for email and surfing web pages, a Dial-Up plan would be perfect for you. Dial-Up is also the cheapest of the three followed by DSL and Cable, respectively. However, if you are planning on purchasing a membership at a movie or music download website that lets you download unlimited movies or music per month, you will want a DSL or Cable connection so you can take advantage of the offer.

In summary, when choosing an ISP plan first decide on what you want to accomplish and second how much you are willing to spend.

Todd Grannis asked:


There’s really nothing like being in control - especially when you’re in business for yourself. But for facilities-based ISP owners that dream can slip away as the daily grind of technical challenges, rising operating costs, contract minimums, and customer support woes takes its toll.

We hear about this pain daily from prospective ISPs that have not yet leveraged a partnership with a quality Wholesale ISP. However, after a well-executed import of subscriber data, ISPs make more money while working fewer hours. Fixed costs are eliminated. Lost sleep and demanding technical challenges become a thing of the past.

The Difference Between Do-It-Yourself and a Wholesale ISP Partnership

Many ISP owners got into the facilities-based ISP business model during the mid-1990s before virtual ISP technology and server-based ISP software became a reliable solution. A facilities-based ISP owns its mail, DNS, and authentication servers, switches, circuits, and other infrastructure. As demand grew, the ISP owner had to purchase new circuits to keep up. This was a double-edged sword because as demand for dial-up declined, many ISPs have been stuck with termination liabilities on circuits they were no longer using.

A wholesale ISP or virtual ISP provider aggregates the volume of hundreds ISPs. Each ISP offers Internet Services under their own company name and sets their own prices, support policies, and manages their own branding. It makes sense to partner with a company, such as visp.net (http://www.visp.net), that is highly specialized in providing back-office software and services for ISPs.

For the facilities-based ISP owner, moving their back-office services to a wholesale ISP means that they can now pay for services on a per-subscriber basis with margin on each account. They’ve effectively eliminated fixed costs and replaced them with variable costs that provide a more sustainable business model in the highly dynamic Internet access market.

The shift to a wholesale ISP can be a significant upgrade of services because you are leveraging the multimillion-dollar R & D investment of your ISP wholesaler. The result: greater subscriber retention, and a service that’s more attractive to prospective customers.

Knowing When It’s Time to Change

While working with hundreds of ISPs over the past decade who have reached this crossroad, I’ve identified a few “Red Flags” that signal it’s time to partner with an ISP wholesaler.

Here Are My Top 5 Signs:

1. Unused circuits are ******* your profit margin dry. It’s the Catch-22 of the facilities-based ISP world. You’ve got just the right amount of subscribers and circuits. You’re finally in the black and begin to show a profit. Life is good. But just when you start making money, along comes that one additional subscriber and you either send the subscriber to the competition or sign a contract for yet another expensive circuit. On the other hand, you might have latent capacity on existing dialup or DSL circuits. Either way, profit goes out the window. By partnering with a wholesale ISP, owners pay only for services that they need and use. Nothing more.

2. If you only have one qualified system administrator your head is in the sand. The disastrous possibilities are real. We’ve worked with ISPs who’ve lost their administrators to death, accidents and…even Microsoft. You might not want to think about it, but it’s a cold, hard reality. A qualified ISP wholesaler has the resources to maintain redundant administration. Unexpected catastrophes are met with a team of professionals while you enjoy your vacation or rest peacefully in your bed.

3. Billing and administrative stresses make you want to pull your hair out. New ISP services require new management interfaces. Just when you get adjusted to one, subscribers start hammering on you about some new service. It can become overwhelming. A good wholesale ISP vendor offers a highly integrated solution that reduces stress. ISP in-a-box® management software from visp.net, for example, provides ISPs and their staff with a consistent interface for administration, billing, and management of all common ISP services, plus an interface that allows subscribers to easily manage their own services without bothering you.

4. If a mission-critical server blew up today you’d be in a world of hurt. You’ve heard stories of ISPs who’ve had a server go down, and lost droves of customers. Often, these ISPs never recover. In this business, an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. However, designing and maintaining your own highly reliable systems is very expensive and requires significant administrative skill. By moving to a wholesale ISP, such as visp.net, ISPs leverage existing engineering expertise and layers of redundant architecture. Every mission-critical server is RAIDed and mirrored to an identical RAID backup system. Typical uptime exceeds the carrier-class gold standard of five nines or 99.999%. That’s one less thing to keep you up at night.

5. There’s no future in simply maintaining or even losing subscribers. Growing your ISP isn’t as easy as it used to be. Competition is everywhere. You’ve got to be better, and potential customers need to know about you. As a local ISP you have significant advantage over national competitors, but when you’re busy managing everything else, when do you have time to grow your subscriber base? By partnering with a wholesale ISP, you can provide your subscribers with the quality of service offered by national competitors, such as 24-hour support. When you hand-off 24/7 administrative chores, you free up time to perform a much more critical function - growing your ISP.

In the end, the choice to leverage wholesale ISP software and technology is a business decision. As the ISP business has become increasingly dynamic, shrinking profit margins require ISPs to eliminate fixed costs. There’s no more powerful way to cut your overhead and improve your quality of life than by partnering with an experienced wholesale ISP provider.

Sandra Prior asked:


With complaints about ISPs reaching new heights, it seems that more people than ever are unhappy with their provider, but unsure where else to go. If this sounds like you, then you need some strategies to help you out.

Keep Records

You may not think you’re getting the best service possible from your current ISP, but can you exactly say why? We do mean exactly, because vague thoughts like ‘sometimes it’s hard to get connected’, or ‘occasionally the speeds are slow’ don’t help you at all. What you really need are statistics – such as when you connect, how many times you have to dial before you log on, the speed you finally connect to, and so on.

Once you’ve been collecting this information for a while, you’ll find there are several benefits:

You can see when your ISP is least busy (which day, time of day and so on) and when you get the best performance. This helps you plan when to go online.

It’s easy to compare performance over time, so you’ll know for sure if things are getting better, or worse.

Do the same thing with another ISP and you’ll have a solid and reliable means for comparing the two.

Stay Informed

If you’ve been with your ISP more than a couple of months, then even if it was a good choice at that time, there’s no guarantee that it will be the best one available now. ISP performance can fluctuate considerably in just a few weeks.

Until ISPs get their acts together and deliver a more reliable service all round, there’s no real solution to this. You can manage the problem, though, by keeping an eye on other people’s Internet Experiences.

Making Do

What’s the most important feature of an ISP? Most people would choose speed above everything else, but it’s not the only factor; you’re likely to want a good email system, a reliable news server that carries lots of newsgroups, and perhaps a large chunk of free disk space for your web page.

Finding an ISP that gives you everything you need is difficult, so it might be easier not to even try. There’s a number of things you can do to get by:

Very basic ISPs don’t even provide an email service. You could use a free web mail service instead. Many support POP3 so you could still use Outlook Express to handle your email.

Even if your ISP has a news server, it may not be very good, perhaps not carrying the newsgroups you need, or expiring articles in just a few days. You’ll have to find lists of alternative, public news servers.

Beware Great Offers

While it’s great to hear the latest news about the launch of a new ISP, this can be a problem. The fantastic benefits offered in their advertisements are all unknown, which results in people signing up eagerly only to find that it does not meet their expectations. As a result, we wouldn’t recommend signing up for any new ISP until it’s been running for at least a couple of months, and you can hear what others have to say.

Hannah Miller asked:


Dial-up internet service is about the same connection speed regardless of which company is providing the service. Although some ISP’s offer accelerators, the connection speed still typically range from 20-50 kbps (kilobits per second) as a result of 1) the quality of the phone line, 2) the distance of the phone line source and the house, and 3) the type/quality of the dial-up modem.

Therefore, choosing a dial-up provider is important not because one is faster than another, but because the customer service, payment methods, terms of service, and other important features vary greatly from one company to another.

You’ve probably heard of several larger companies who provide dial up internet, like AOL, Earthlink, and Netzero. These companies have become a household name commonly associated with dial up, but they are not the only dial up providers. It would be easy to find and sign up for Internet service with these companies, but you could be making a mistake. Many larger dial up ISP’s have sent their customer service to outsourced call centers in order to save money. Some of them require you to sign up for a contract. Some charge fees for technical support or cancellation. You have to consider multiple factors when choosing the best Internet service, and this will take some research.

Fortunately, some of this research has been done for you. There are several websites that list the top rated dial-up providers, including the lesser known ISP’s who are more concerned about doing you a favor than making a lot of money. Here three websites who show the facts for a variety of Internet services:

ISPCompared.com Cheap56K.com

TheISPGuide.com



Of all the prominent ISP comparison websites, these have a wide selection, quality up-to-date information, and easy navigation.

These sites show all the basics at a glance—price, ratings, features, and special offers. They also link to reviews, which can be very handy when weighing your options. Wouldn’t you want to know what company has the happiest customers? What did an actual customer say about the ISP that interests you? Keep in mind that solitary negative (especially heated and derogatory) reviews could be an isolated situation that bears no relevance to the average user.

Another benefit of using an ISP comparison website is that most companies offer a discount to new customers, and these websites often directly link to that site’s promotional web page for easy sign up. You will not only find a satisfactory ISP, but you will also save money!

Choosing the best ISP may be a process of trial and error. These websites will help make the best choice the first time. They also provide some information about dial-up and Internet service in general if this is your first time choosing your own company.

There are many companies who sell dial-up, and just because everyone you know has Earthlink or you grew up on AOL doesn’t mean you have to be one of their customers too. Take advantage of a competitive market and find the service that’s best for you.

Groshan Fabiola asked:


Why online gaming will be the biggest casualty if ISPs prioritize packets

Synopsis

The debate over net neutrality1 has often focused on video as the dominant medium that made the prioritization of packets either crucial or harmful. However, video is not the offering that will suffer the most if net neutrality becomes a wistful memory. Rather, the users that are likely to be most materially disadvantaged are those that utilize the Net for interactive communications – particularly voice over IP (VOIP) and online gaming. Of these two finalists for the dubious title of “innovation most likely to be stifled to the detriment of everyone by loss of net neutrality,” gaming is by far the more irreplaceable and senseless loss.

Unlike video and voice, ISPs are unlikely to have or be able to obtain a viable material stake in the gaming business and have no replacement for the service. As a result, consumers stand not only to lose their choice of the source of this product, but the very value of the gaming service itself.

What Will Live

The battle over net neutrality is really a battle for latency (and jitter). It is unlikely that an ISP will make the mistake of repeating Canadian ISP Telus’ attempt at outright censorship2. Rather, the ISP’s gentle nudge towards the preferred offering or provider is likely to come in the form of slow and inconsistent network performance for services that refuse to pay what amounts to “protection money” to an ISP.

Contrary to popular opinion, latency will not kill online video. After all, while a video that buffers for a longer period of time (or requires an advance download) is an inconvenience, it is one with which we coexisted not too long ago, and does not prevent the viewer’s eventual enjoyment of the sought-after experience. In a fit of poetic justice for the converged content provider / ISP, latency and jitter may even drive users from semi-legitimate streaming services with some minimal respect for copyright (e.g. YouTube) to download-focused sources that publicly mock infringement notices (e.g. The Pirate Bay3).

This being said, latency and jitter will kill VOIP as we know it. While this is a Bad Thing for anyone not selling voice over copper, out of all the evils that can come out of the loss of net neutrality, it is the most easily remedied. Traditional means such as landline (including phone cards to reach VOIP networks closer to the backbone) or cellular will remain available, enabling voice communications to carry on, albeit at inflated rates. If the worst consequence of giving ISPs the leeway to abuse a monopoly power is several dollars out of our collective pockets, then we will have escaped easily.

What Will Die

What will be murdered with no fallback or replacement is the nascent market of interactive entertainment – particularly online gaming. Companies like Blizzard Entertainment, Electronic Arts, Sony Online Entertainment, and countless others, have built a business on the fundamental assumption of relatively low latency bandwidth being available to large numbers of consumers. Furthermore, a large — even overwhelming — portion of the value of these offerings comes from their “network effects” — the tendency for the game to become more enjoyable and valuable as larger number of players joins the gaming network.

With the permanent barriers that the removal of net neutrality will erect for these uses, the worst-case scenario includes three waves of change:

* One or more mainstream ISPs will introduce excessive lag that will effectively prohibit their users from participating in online games. The move will not be aimed at restricting usage per se, but rather to extract a fee from the game operator. However, as the Cablevision and YES dispute of 2002 showed us4, a fee disagreement between a cable company and content provider can effectively lock out the use of a popular service for over a year;

* As online gaming guilds, clans, and partners disappear into the rifts created in the Internet fabric, players that derive value from the community of the game rather than the playing experience per se will drop off. This vicious cycle of scarcity of users will lead to diminished enjoyment for existing users which will lead to still fewer users, until more games follow Asheron’s Call to oblivion5;

* ******** users will write strongly worded messages to their ISPs, who will classify them as unreasonable malcontents using more than their share of bandwidth.

For those who think this cannot happen, here’s a recent example: For years before the Web as we know it existed, Usenet was a core part of the Internet landscape. It was a factory for online discussion, exchange of ideas, and, ultimately, one of the better bulletin boards for content of all shapes and forms. However, as the Internet became mainstream, Usenet users were marginalized (typically with “cease and desist” letters citing excessive use of “unlimited” internet packages6). Their Usenet services were then unceremoniously dumped by their providers (AOL and Comcast being two of the more notorious).7

Where there was a substitute for Usenet through services such as Google or BitTorrent, there is no close substitute for online gaming. Killing off these blossoming networks, with their own economies (potentially taxable when converted into real-world cash8), would result in drastic, irreparable harm to consumers, technology developers, the economy and tax revenue – and even the ISPs themselves.

For more resoureces about Sourcing Advisory and more related subjects with Outsourcing Advisory please review this website http://www.ramprate.com