Internet Security Not That Important To Many Companies

Internet Use In Egypt Grows With Free ISPs

from the still-growing dept

Sun, Sep 8th 2002 11:50pm — Mike Masnick

In what seems like something of an exact replica of a Wired article from a few months back, the Associated Press has an article about how internet use is soaring in Egypt, since there are no more ISP fees. You simply dial up to whatever ISP you want, and pay the telephone call costs (somewhere between $0.20 and $0.25 per hour). The government run telco takes 30% of that money, and the rest goes to the ISP you chose. So, now the various ISPs can't compete on price - so they compete on anything else, such as service level, speed, reliability, or what else they offer. Since the ISPs get more money the longer you stay online, they also have more incentive to keep you online, and therefore are promoting things like instant messaging programs. It's definitely an interesting business model, which I think could make sense for some other areas (such as music sharing, if the music industry ever stopped to actually think about things).

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msykes, 9 Sep 2002 @ 5:46pm

Techdirt
In case anyone's interested... Techdirt beat Slashdot to this story by almost an entire day! Okay, I know this is pointless, just thinking of a conversation Masnick and I were having recently. I still think there needs to be some kind of comprehensive statistic on this kind of thing...

msykes
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Mike (profile), 9 Sep 2002 @ 10:22pm

Re: Techdirt
Er...

(1) I don't care.

(2) If Techdirt's purpose was to post stuff faster than Slashdot, then you would have a valid argument. It's not. It's to post stuff I (and if any of the other posters ever post, them too) find interesting.

(3) I barely read Slashdot anymore. I skim it once a day to see if they happen to break any news that's interesting. If they do, then I'll post it here. If they don't then I keep posting whatever I want to post from wherever I find it.

(4) Even when I post the same stuff they do, I often have a different take on it.
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