Who Do You Design Products For?

When you create your network, did you examine it from the consumer's perspective? Let me put it another way: when you design a website do you consider how a user will interact with it? How about a product offering? Is it something easy for you to offer or is there actually a consumer need?

[The rest of this might be a rant :)] All too often ISP owners argue about who has the best network, the best designed network, blah, blah. Layer 2. L2PT. ATM. MPLS. BGP. OSPF. Tunnels. Bridged. Routed. You see this often on listservs. Who did you design it for? If you want to sell to CLECs or Enterprises today, you pretty much have to be able to deliver Layer 2 and/or Ethernet. Even some telcos are figuring this out. (Look at all the Metro E offerings). I get lots of requests for FastE IP Ports, but the carriers can't deliver that, since they have legacy cards for TDM (DS3, OC-x).

EarthLink, NextWeb/Covad and Nextlink/XO are set to deliver wireless access to other carriers (cellular and CLECs). Are you offering wholesale Layer 2 access? If not, you might find one of these 3 building out around you to offer it. (Not just my opinion, cellular needs more access from towers and CLECs are losing wireline access ever day, but they don't want Layer 3, they want Layer 2 - in an easy hand-off.

So stop for a minute and think about whether or not your delivered service offering in the eyes of your customer.... Is it something he can easily use AND does he want it?