TBH, I don't think the US is that much cheaper for end users. I base this on competitive market, for UK webhosts to succeed they need to be able to compete with the US market.
I know that my company services are more expensive than say godaddy or 1and1 however the services offerred are very different, I think that perhaps the yanks have a better marketing strategy overall, they have managed to convince their userbase that cheapest is best.
99c hosting in the states did REALLY well, making overnight billionaires out of the CEO's, problem is, it couldn't be sustained and those companies are now no more.
Companies like 1&1 in the EU (de & uk) have a far better strategy, charging reasonable rates for good hardware and OK support. It's not ideal but it's a good step and their figures show this: over 5.1million domain names registered so far.
My only gripe is that proporationally, yanks can make more profit due to bandwidth pricing and peering costs being far lower over there.
Technically, to make the same profit we would be MUCH more expensive to host with over here but to stay competitive we must sometime make a loss.
|