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Dear ISPs: When Launching Value Added Services, How About Actually Adding Value?
from the just-a-suggestion dept
At the beginning of January, I thought it was amusing that Verizon was launching its own backup service for a stunning $31/month (with a limit of 50GB of backup storage). That seemed fairly ridiculous, given that you could get an unlimited backup service from Carbonite or Mozy for $5/month, or using JungleDisk with Amazon's S3 for exceptionally low prices as well (depending on how much you use -- but 50GB comes in at way less than $31). Now comes the news that Comcast is also launching its own backup service, with a few different price points, but starting at $5/month for only 10GB and going up from there. It's not a bad service to offer -- and, surely, Verizon and Comcast see these as ways to lock in consumers, since it now has possession of their backup data -- but it seems quite odd that these companies would offer "value added services" where the prices are more expensive than rolling your own, which doesn't come with the lock-in. And, as noted, with Comcast, using the service counts against their new broadband caps, so there isn't even a benefit there. These ISPs seem to be missing the point of these value added services. If you want to get people to use them, they should actually add value.
