[08] HOW MUCH DOES IT COST TO RUN SDF?
So you're curious? Well, hopefully you'll be more willing to
donate if you know what it cost to run SDF. I'm looking for
ways to make this information a bit more public so that it will
hopefully increase donations.
In the old days, when we had 9 telephone lines, the cost was
relatively high. GTE phone lines could be as cheap as $24 a
month, but SWBell lines could be $9.99 a month. How? Because
I stripped everything off even DTMF (touch tone) dialing! But
I still remember the nightmare of $380 a month phone bills.
ISDN was about $48 a month and would be later used to replace
two analogue lines (an analogue phone line could run over a single
B channel). No real savings with GTE, but nonetheless was tried.
So here are the rough numbers.
Old Old Days .. 1987-1989
Basically $0, as Ted's mother covered the cost of the dedicated
line (214-358-xxxx) and Ted got our first computer on his birthday
from ComputerCraft in Dallas in June of 1985 for $1065.95. A 5mb
hard drive was purchased in 1989 prior to going with UNIX, but
again other than the IBM XT running briefly running citadel BBS
Ted's mom covered the cost for the 386 20.
(See
http://sdf.org/?tour/1985/index)
Old Days .. 1990-1993 (when we went multiline):
Rent: $4200 a year
Phones: $1344 a year (four/five lines GTE)
Electricity: $180 a year
Network: $0 a year (thank you Eric, Doug & Roy)
-------------------------
Total: $6084
1994-1996
Rent: $5580 a year
Phones: $1320 a year (nine/ten lines SWB)
ISDN: $576 a year
Electricity: $200 a year
Network: $0 a year (thank you Eric & Aaron)
-------------------------
Total: $7876
1997-2000
Rent: $0 a year (thank you MALR)
ISDN: $600 a year (two phone lines GTE)
DSL: $3588 a year (768k/256k)
Electricity: $230 a year
-------------------------
Total: $4878
2001-2003
Rent: $14436 a year (includes circuit provision)
DSL: $3480 a year (1.5mbit/1.5mbit)
Electricity $360 a year
-------------------------
Total: $18276
2003 - 2009
Rent: $15300 a year (includes multi-DS3 circuit provision)
DSL: $1329 a year (DSL memberships)
Dialup: $2060 a year (Dialup memberships + POP lease)
Misc: $248 a year
-------------------------
Total: $18937
2010 - Present
Rent (SEA): $11832 a year (full cabinet and storage + network)
Rent (DFW): $1800 a year (4U + network allocation)
Rent (EU): $0 a year (1U donated value is 840 EU/year)
DSL: $1329 a year (DSL Memberships)
Dialup: $2060 a year (Dialup memberships + POP lease)
-------------------------
Total: $17021
Interested in helping out now? Try typing 'pledge'. Thank you!!
