OMG The pound is now worth $2

[GordonH]

Which means that every dollar we bring into the UK is worth 20% less than it was three years ago.

We need to source more supplies in the US to compensate for it.

(The official exchange rate is still below $2, but the bank's business rate is 2.01 today).

[ldcdc]

The dollars decline hits a lot of people, including me.

Personally I find the US goverments policy to be selfish, not because they're trying to grow their exports and close their trade gap, but because they are basically doing it at the expense of other countries.

Europe's and Japan's economies at least, will be seriously hit by this sudden drop in the dollar's value and, unfortunately, they can't act effectively to stop the dollar's downward trend without help from the US authorities.

[GordonH]

Here is one of the problems it causes:

Mercedes are having to sell cars in the US market at no profit in order to keep a foothold in that market.
Those of us outside the US are then paying more for their cars in order to subsidise US consumers.

This is exactly what has happened to our domain name sales.
UK customers are paying what they always did, when prices should have dropped a bit.
This is subsidising our US operations.

Its not nice, but if we increase our US prices sales will drop there.
If we decrease UK prices we will lose money.

[GH-Mark]

Good for people like me in the UK lol

[GordonH]

Good for people like me in the UK lol

Not if you are selling into the US it isn't.
Every dollar you bring back into the UK is worth much less than it used to be.

[othellotech]

Good for people like me in the UK lol
Err, how exactly is it good for you ?
Now UK consumers are looking @ bucketshophosting.us rather than your service, as at a 2 for 1 USD/GBP rate, but a 1:1 technology cost, it's half price stateside.

[Bloory]

I suppose if he's buying cheap from the US maybe.

Note to self; not a good time to sign up for top spec servers in the US - when paying in GBP!

[GordonH]

The ultimate position to be in is to buy in the US and sell in the UK.
However, technology wise this is not easy.
Plus we can never match US prices because we have to add 17.5% VAT.

[Matrix28]

Hopefully the dollar will rise soon. I know alot of people based in the UK that are loosing because everyone works in $s.

[othellotech]

because everyone works in $s.
Everyone works in what ? $s - never heard of them - some sort of bartering system ? Is it similar to Euro's or something ?

:duel:

The world thankfully *doesn't* run on the dollar, or it's be out of gas half way round ... :wink:

[Brian S]

The world thankfully *doesn't* run on the dollar, or it's be out of gas half way round ... :wink:Not to incite a pissing contest but, yes, it does.

Brian

[reanncw]

GordonH, how is this not a good think to you? If you have operations in the US , own servers in US and have customers in US, i'm sure that your decrease in revenue will be offset by the decrease in expenses.

[GordonH]

GordonH, how is this not a good think to you? If you have operations in the US , own servers in US and have customers in US, i'm sure that your decrease in revenue will be offset by the decrease in expenses.

Please reread my post:

"The ultimate position to be in is to buy in the US and sell in the UK."

Its difficult to do technically because UK ISP's generally have quite poor US peering which can be unreliable giving you poor uptime. Plus you can never have your own staff on site so you are totally reliant on the data centre.

[Brian S]

Its difficult to do technically because UK ISP's generally have quite poor US peering which can be unreliable giving you poor uptime. Plus you can never have your own staff on site so you are totally reliant on the data centre.Wow, that's odd. Of all places, you'd figure the U.K. would have good peering with the U.S, and vice versa.

Brian

[othellotech]

Its difficult to do technically because UK ISP's generally have quite poor US peering which can be unreliable giving you poor uptime

ISPs traditionally Peer where they have their NOC's/POP's so yes, a UK based ISP would normally peer in the UK - the cost vs benefit of putting point2point links in between other countries, sending out routers and joining peering exchanges is not always worth it

However Peering has *nothing* to do with uptime - a box can be on and up 100% of the time and the isp doesnt peer at all (or simply cant as most hosts have AS#).

Good peering provides multiple pathways into your network, more reliability if a single route/transit goes down, and usually reduces the hops/latency etc - so might affect the *appearance* of availability, but definately not the uptime ...

:wavey:

[reanncw]

Please reread my post:

"The ultimate position to be in is to buy in the US and sell in the UK."

Its difficult to do technically because UK ISP's generally have quite poor US peering which can be unreliable giving you poor uptime. Plus you can never have your own staff on site so you are totally reliant on the data centre.

I see, i think i missed this. :wave:

[GordonH]

We have coinsiderable problems with UK customers who claim their US hosted site is down when its actually a problem with their ISP's US connectivity.
The ISP we use has also gone through phases of poor connectivity to the US doe to them running all their transatlantic stuff through one carrier who was unreliable.
Alos the number of possible points of failure is greater, so hosting anywhere that is a long way from your physical location is bound to be less reliable.

I should say that I have no axe to grind here.
We sell UK and US based hosting into the UK and make profit on either.
Given the choice I would have my site on a UK server if I was located in the UK.

[othellotech]

We have coinsiderable problems with UK customers who claim their US hosted site is down when its actually a problem with their ISP's US connectivity.

Usually accompanied by "we've tried *every* other website in the world and its just ones hosted by you that are down" - which translated actually means they can still get yahoo and google out of their local cache !


Given the choice I would have my site on a UK server if I was located in the UK.

Keep the data close to the target marketplace - quicker access, less places for faults to show etc leads to a better experience for the browser.

We get a lot of "wow it's so much faster/better/more reliable" comments from people who migrate from a US provider to a UK provider, simply beacuse everything has less distance to travel, less places to break enroute ...

What we're beginning to see now, due to the USD/GBP rates are even more UK schoolkids setting up as "hosts" with cheap managed.com boxes believing the hype that they're going to make millions in easy ca$h from their $50/month outlay ...

[GordonH]

Yes Rob,
The sad thing is that people are mugs for those sort of things.
We have domain registration customers who change host every few months, hopping from one of these kiddie hosts to another.