HOW IT WORKS
POP-Depot is a pool of points of presence (POPs). A
point of presence consists of a telephone line and internet
connectivity. The POPs in POP depot belong to many different ISPs.
What those ISPs have in common is that they are all members of Rodopi
Club and they have all agreed to sell their POPs at certain fixed
prices. Your ISP can add its POPs to POP-Depot by joining Rodopi club
and using a simple form. You can choose to sell only some of your POPs
or all of them.
There are two ways an ISP can use the POP-Depot's POPs:
Hourly Roaming. This option allows an ISP to
offer its customers nationwide and international connectivity.
Customers will be able to dial into any of POP-Depot's 3000 POPs. The
ISP will be charged an hourly fee for that customer, and the owner of
the POP will receive a fee. Using Rodopi, an ISP can choose whether to
charge its customers for roaming or offer free roaming. Hourly roaming
has been successfully used for several years now.
Flat fee Roaming. An ISP can use flat fee
roaming to sign up customers that do not live in its area of coverage.
Using hourly roaming for this purpose may prove too expensive. Flat
fee roaming allows an ISP A to sign up a customer in an area covered
by ISP B (assuming of course ISP B has its POPs in POP-Depot), for
unlimited internet connectivity. ISP A will charge the customer, and
will provide technical support, customer relations, mail, news, etc,
while ISP B will provide phone lines and connectivity. ISP A will pay
a monthly fee to POP-Depot (Rodopi Clearinghouse), and ISP B will
receive a monthly fee. It should be noted that as opposed to hourly
roaming, where a customer has access to all POPs in POP-Depot Flat fee
roaming allows access only in the POPs of one ISP - ISP B. Of course
ISP A can provide its customer with access to its own POPs as well.
ISP A could also use hourly roaming to offer its customer connectivity
in regions not covered by ISPs A and B.
An ISP can sell access to its POPs only, buy access to
other POPs only, or do both. In either case Rodopi Clearing House will
keep track of the charges and payments, and send a check or a bill to
that ISP.
Here is a more technical
explanation of how POP-Depot works, explaining the interaction
between Radius servers and Rodopi.
