 The magazine of the Melbourne PC User Group PC (President's Comments) George Skarbek gskarbek@melbpc.org.au |
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AGM Date
In order to comply with the law pertaining to the Incorporated Associations that state that the AGM must be within five months of the close of the financial year, this year's AGM will be held on Wednesday 1 November at 6.30 pm at the Pharmacy College, 381 Royal Parade, Parkville.
New Committee Members
Both Morris Tobias and Ash Nallawalla have resigned from the committee as they are spending too much time away from Melbourne. The committee has appointed two candidates to fill these vacancies. The new members are Stan Johnstone who most members will know. Stan was president for four years (a club record) and has been assisting the Internet team for many years. The other member is Margaret Brown. Margaret has been with the East SIG organisers for several years and has the interests of all Melb PC members at heart.
Free e-mail Proposal
As electronic communication is becoming more widely used, in the last month several users have asked me if it is possible to introduce a low cost, e-mail only service. The committee considered this proposal last year and as the manager of our Internet service I produced a report for the committee that stated that this is not a viable option. Since then, Telstra have significantly improved their free e-mail service making it even less viable for us to offer a cheap or free e-mail service. My report is reproduced below in a slightly shortened form.
Summary
Although it is technically feasible to offer free e-mail for all, it would require an increase of the membership fees by about $7 plus GST In addition the issue of support for the estimated 2,000 or more existing members who might take up this offer has not been resolved. Our existing staff cannot cope with such an increase in workload. Paid staff is an alternative but this would further increase the cost.
My recommendation is that this offer is not economically viable and we should not proceed with this proposal.
Details of the Proposal - Additional Lines
A minimum of 30 lines will be required if the maximum time per day is restricted to 30 minutes. This represents a capital cost of $20, 000 and an ongoing phone rental cost of $8, 000 pa. However the modem ratio is 2000/30 or 66:1 which is much higher than our exiting ratio of 17:1 and 1 feel that the service will be unacceptable and more lines will be required, increasing the costs.
Additional bandwidth will be used and even if we limit the mailbox to 2 MB rather than the 8 MB the fee paying members have, our costs may increase. This cost has not been factored in.
Support
We cannot distribute our existing setup disk as it will change the existing e-mail and browser setting to Melb PC. As 1 expect that the majority have a work related or other ISP this will cause huge problems. Either a new setup disk must be developed or other means found to support the new users. The general feeling is that most will not be computer literate in the communication settings area and will require considerable help.
Our existing help cannot cope with such a vast increase in adding new members, let alone their help calls. The Internet team ha. not been able to resolve this issue.
Costs
Assuming the minimum capital cost of $20,000, this will represent about $2 per member plus the annual phone costs of $8,000 or almost $1 per member. It is possible that about 10% of the full Internet members may decide to switch to the free m and news service and this will result in a to of $70,000 in the existing revenue. Even a 5% loss means $35,000.
Taking what I believe is a more realistic scenario, the salient points are:
- 45 modems. Capital cost of $25,000 an annual costs of nearly $12,000 for phon~ lines.
- Probable loss of existing Internet income of $35,000 (5% of members)
- Additional disk and increase in processing must be factored in as otherwise the exist service may deteriorate. Cost of disk, memory and bandwidth could amount t $5,000.
Although the e-mail only proposal is not viable, the committee and the Internet team are constantly evaluate proposals to improve the service to our members. One such improvement is to give "Bonus" minutes during the non-peak periods. This is in the final staff of testing and will be fully explained next month.
Reprinted from the May 2000 issue of PC Update, the magazine of Melbourne PC User Group, Australia
