This took even LESS time than I thought. AT&T announced that it is now looking into Per Usage pricing. Instead of doing across the board upgrades, which only benefits certain users.
Of course, if the bandwidth and capacity were there, then services would launch and expand to fill the void, and then more people will begin to use this bandwidth. I.E. it will cause innovation and new business models, and new revenue streams. However the large Corporations are always the last to change, and this will threaten their business models. The cycle of Innovation, and Advancement that has always benefitted the Tech industry could be stunted for some time to come because of this. "AT&T Embraces BitTorrent, Considers Usage-Based Pricing Wired is running a story about AT&T's chief technical officer, John Donovan. He contrasts his view of BitTorrent and P2P in general against the controversial policies adopted by [0]other ISPs. Donovan also explains why AT&T is [1]considering usage-based pricing, citing the cost of network upgrades which only affect a small number of users. 2008/6/8 Jochem van Dieten <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>: > ** Private ** wrote: >> I'm not sure... but the concept of "we'll slow you down to make it fair if >> we need too" seems inherently a better plan than "we'll track you >> (regardless of how you affect other users) and start quietly charging you if >> you head over a limit". > > Quietly is never a good idea. But the thing is that there are applications > where slowing down equals breaking. Streaming, VoIP etc. can only take that > much jitter. And why should one not have the option to just pay more and use > more? > > >> Time Warner is going to have problems on their hands, I think: they'll need >> to track usage (of course) but I think they'll also be required to provide >> usage data to users. This really can't be done at the PC level (I've got >> four game systems, five PCs and a PDA sharing my connection) so it'll have >> to be done at the headend. They'll have to have a mechanism for dealing >> with challenges to their numbers, demands from customers for detailed >> information (your system says I used XXX but I was on vacation all last >> month!) People will move, and need to be tracked across zones, etc. >> >> It just seems like a logistical nightmare. > > It is trivial. All headends (or BBRAS's in the case of a DSL network) support > RADIUS accounting. Just configure it and at the server you get your > accounting packets that have a nice set of username, class, bytes in and > bytes out at the interval you configured. People moving, multiple computers > etc. is no problem at all because the NAS is aggregating it based on username. > > Jochem > > > ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~| Adobe® ColdFusion® 8 software 8 is the most important and dramatic release to date Get the Free Trial http://ad.doubleclick.net/clk;192386516;25150098;k Archive: http://www.houseoffusion.com/groups/CF-Community/message.cfm/messageid:261538 Subscription: http://www.houseoffusion.com/groups/CF-Community/subscribe.cfm Unsubscribe: http://www.houseoffusion.com/cf_lists/unsubscribe.cfm?user=11502.10531.5
