I've just scrapped my reply which I had already altered a few times before deciding there is something that doesn't hold water there.

AAISP seem good at tariff structures, barring the mistake they seem to have made on Jan 1 about the levels, as someone has already commented, but lousy at explaining things to anyone who doesn't already fully understand what they are trying to explain. ( Have I explained that clearly? ).

What seems to have happened is a (new) clear distinction being drawn between 6pm-midnight and midnight to 9am. Unless your usage charts had this split in the past?

I don't however see the need for the (6-12 Mon-Fri) against the 20CN evening. From what I think we have been told so far then it should just say (6-12). In fact I don't see the need for that line at all. Surely it is included in off-peak? It certainly seems the customer needs to add it to the off-peak figure.

The problem with that is that they seem to be rounding the byte counts on each line to tenths of a unit. If those are then added to get the total for the month, then the addition of two rounded amounts (within the off-peak tariff) is likely to give an incorrect result, possibly affecting the user by 5GB.

Adding the rounded amount for off-peak to the rounded amount for peak is legitimate. That is the declared policy and makes sense. It is the splitting of off-peak first and adding rounded amounts within it that worry me.

Edit - From Shaun's post the 2am-6am 1TB per unit slot is continuing past 1 April.

Edited by RobertoS (Thu 11-Feb-10 14:16:51)

I wish they would just go back to the allowances before the new tarrifs came in to be honest.
They obviously worked (for 20cn anyway).

This new move just screams of, "oops we made a mistake, and now you're going to pay for it"

I really like aaisp, but in the short time i've been here it's been pretty confusing lol.

In reply to a post by Eggplant0001:

[...[b]reducing our 20CN by half, yet increasing 21CN usage allowance?!

i have been trying to follow the discussion on their irc channel. Think I have got it correctly but no doubt a staff member will correct me if I am wrong.

It seems that 21CN and 20CN lines are in the ratio 50/50

Evening usage is higher on 21CN as well and hitting the top but its cheaper to maintain the necessary headroom on 21CN.

the page shot up before I thought to write down the difference in costings but they were very large indeed.

Someone has said that BT are possibly targeting the exchanges with the highest total users for upgrade which possibly means more businessess on 21 CN..

Interesting that 21CN evening usage is very high as well though yet their allowance has increased.

My crystal ball tells me that there are more alterations to come, seems this change to units has messed up them and us.

In reply to a post by RobertoS:

What seems to have happened is a (new) clear distinction being drawn between 6pm-midnight and midnight to 9am. Unless your usage charts had this split in the past?

I don't however see the need for the (6-12 Mon-Fri) against the 20CN evening. From what I think we have been told so far then it should just say (6-12). In fact I don't see the need for that line at all. Surely it is included in off-peak? It certainly seems the customer needs to add it to the off-peak figure.

This was explained in the status post of 7/2/2010 which said:
"Some time soon (probably next weekend) we'll start breaking down the usage metering in finer detail - e.g. how much is evening, night, and weekend. This is not a change to billing or usage per unit. It means we are collecting more detailed data on how people use the services at different times of day. It will also break down off peak by line type as we do for peak usage."

Seems pretty clear to me
Terry

Edited by TerryN (Thu 11-Feb-10 17:20:49)

I'll try and answer any questions.

1. The breakdown on the usage stats is not a change to tariffs. It gives more detail, If it is causing too much confusion I'll just make the report aggregate them again if you like. TBH I thought it may be useful!

2. The mix of the general off peak (all lines) and specific 20CN evening, 20CN night, etc, is just because the extra breakdown detail we added mid-month. So you have un-segregated use before and segregated after-wards. There is "weekend" as well, as you will see on Saturday.I did announce that, honest!

3. The 20CN being lower usage is basically that the change on 1st Jan was clearly a bit of a mistake and usage in evenings has rocketed. It may be related to the tariff change or other factors. We are trying to catch up on that and get back to un-congested (fast) links for all customers and that is taking a few days to get right. Sorry for the delay there.

4. The 21CN peak increase is really to make the whole lot fit better. We pay (more than) twice as much for 20CN as 21CN to BT. It is crazy. 21CN pricing has in fact improved a little lately so we are passing that on. Also evening usage is increasing so this may encourage more balanced usage.

We will always consider adjusting tariffs to make sure that things are sensible and that we have a sustainable business model.

In reply to a post by TerryN:

Seems pretty clear to me

We have the following statements:-

20CN night (12-9) - Rate 100GB
20CN evening (6-12 M-F) - Rate 100GB
Peak/Daytime usage is 9am to 6pm, Monday to Friday. Off peak is all other times.

We also have the following example in an earlier post:-

This month Bytes Rate Units
Off peak (all line types) 813,165,221 100GB 0.01
20CN night (12-9) 182,234,592 100GB 0.00
20CN daytime (9-6 M-F) 1,674,559,660 1GB 1.67
20CN evening (6-12 M-F) 76,835,201 100GB 0.00

The logic of the statements is that the 76,835,201 bytes and the 182,234,592 bytes are included in the Off peak 813,165,221 bytes.

The total usage by the poster so far is 1,674,559,660 plus 813,165,221 bytes.

That is absolutely clear. But is it correct?

Sorry if I'm confusing the issue RevK, but it does seem unclear.

If I'm right in what I said to TerryN a few minutes ago, then the confusion would go away if the 20CN (or whatever) evening and 20CN night came first, then a new "Other off-peak", then Total off-peak, then 20CN daytime.

The trouble with what you show at the moment is it seems two of the figures are part of off-peak, but the rest of off-peak isn't identified. Nothing adds up, therefore it is unclear.

It's hard to explain what I mean. Essentially I think I'm trying to say if you give a breakdown of a number, then all the items that add up to that number must be shown, even if one of the items is a catch-all as I suggest above.

Edited by RobertoS (Thu 11-Feb-10 18:38:40)

In reply to a post by RobertoS:

The total usage by the poster so far is 1,674,559,660 plus 813,165,221 bytes.
That is absolutely clear. But is it correct?

Yes it is.
Or 1.68 units

Trouble is that the culture of AAISP is to make as much information as possible available to their customers (everything from CSV files of usage stats to graphs showing radius blips).

Anyway, hopefully RevK's comments have made things a little clearer.

Terry

Ah, I suspect I have really [censored] ordering on that report. I'll see what I can do for that.
It was not meant to be confusing, honest!

What you are trying to do is great. Just the presentation to an outsider (ie prospective or newly-gained customer) isn't always as clear as it could be.

Writing a description of something you know all about, for someone who knows nothing about it, is one of the hardest things there is. So I'm not trying to cause trouble, just raise questions where things are unclear from the outside. (At least to me!)

Similarly, the normal ISP-hunter isn't going to be looking at your blogs and News Items where some confusions are resolved.