When the Giving is Over

Members of the ISP-Marketing list discuss a new post-holiday woe for ISPs: the second computer. Now that gifts have been exchanged, how many new computers are being connected to your network?

[January 13, 2001]

On the ISP-Marketing list in January, EA asked,

"Now that your subscribers have bought that second PC or Internet appliance, they probably want to go online. Do you allow both users to be online at the same time for only one subscription fee? Do you charge full fees for both? Or do you charge a lower fee for the second unit? Finally, do you have a system in place to identify the second login and prevent it?"

Most of the respondents advocated the second-subscriber-is-discounted model:

[BK suggested] "Personally, I think it should be handled like auto insurance, with multi-car discounts. More should be paid because of the added expense, but it shouldn't be as much as a full account, since having both systems up at the same time would be rare."

[CF agreed] "A 10-15% discount might be useful on the second account for dialup. I would take all the 'second' accounts I could get at 85% of retail. I wouldn't mind if someone signed up for fifty 'second accounts' if they paid the bill with one check and in a timely manner."

[WV explained] "We charge $10 for a second account in the same household. We are going to raise this to $15.95 next month. Our Radius server supports this by preventing two users from logging in under the same ID."

[TF noted] "If someone tries to use the account when it is already dialed in, the login request isn't authenticated. This is very easy to do with pretty much any Radius server. If the user wants to be able to log in simultaneously, we offer an additional login option (using the same account, we just change the number of allowed logins) for $15 extra per month, which amounts to about a 25% discount off our standard $19.95 rate."

CS noted that the issue changes with a broadband connection:

"The simple solution for broadband users is to network their computers and share a single connection. You may want to look into selling your customers a packaged networking solution. As an alternative, we sell a two-channel account (allowing two simultaneous logins) for $34.95. This is usually for people who are at two locations: kids dialing in from home and parents from work."

Other respondents suggested some alternative solutions:

[KC offered] "We allow for duplicate logins, but we charge a dollar an hour while the second user is connected."

[TNA countered] "The only solution I can see is moving to a bandwidth-charge model instead of a per-connection model. Or perhaps combining the two by capping bandwidth per connection and then charging a per-MB fee once that is exceeded."

—End