I just got an email survey from our local monopoly internet service provider.
Will you recommend Comcast to a friend? Yes=10 No=1
This betrays a profound misunderstanding of the usefulness of that kind of survey, called the Net Promoter Score (NPS) survey.
Why is “will you recommend our lightly regulated monopoly to your friends” a stupid question? Well, my friends have no choice. So, I’ll not insult them by suggesting they switch to, I dunno, Charter. They can’t get Charter, so they’ll figure me for an idiot.
They obviously hired some fresh-out-of-biz-school nitwit to do this survey. The nitwit must have read The Ultimate Question by Frederick Reichheld, but missed the chapter about how NPS helps companies differentiate themselves in competitive businesses.
I suppose I could suggest my friends move to Fort Collins, Colorado. Their good citizens are running a community broadband service after defeating Comcast in a hard-fought referendum.
I’ve thought about trying to set up a neighborhood wireless grid system like Red Hook WiFi on a smaller scale. But it’s a lot of work, and the work would be better spent where it’s really needed.
5G?