The biggest issue is maximizing revenue. We do that in 1 area and we aren’t 
achieving maximum revenue.  However, we do have a significant percentage of 
users so as prices go up, that will balance out.

Rory

From: Af [mailto:af-boun...@afmug.com] On Behalf Of Christopher Gray
Sent: Thursday, January 14, 2016 10:42 PM
To: af@afmug.com
Subject: [AFMUG] Metered Plans / Full Speed To Customer?

I had a conversation with a network professional who was very interested in the 
idea of a "metered" plan. His thought was to open up the customer connections 
to full speed and run fair queues instead of throttling bandwidth. Pricing 
would be based on usage, but with very low rates compared to cellular or 
satellite (e.g., 100 GB for $60). The three main thoughts were:

1) Knowing that speeds would be better in off hours (somehow promoted or 
advertised) could get users to operate outside of peak times thus reducing peak 
load on the network.

2) Customer prices would more accurately represent their load on a system.

3) Plan sharing would not be a significant concern, as usage would rise and 
cost would rise.

Now, I can see those benefits, but I have these specific concerns.:

1) If everything is opened fully today, network performance can only get worse 
over time as subscribers are added.

2) Variability in speed over the course of the day may cause customer concern.

3) Many video streaming services seem to suffer with variable bandwidth 
availability.

Any thoughts on this method of providing service? It seems very close to the 
cellular plans where speed is almost never mentioned, only data use.

I have some ideas to make such a service work, but I'd like to know others' 
thoughts and experiences.

Thanks - Chris

Reply via email to