On Mon, Nov 29, 2004 at 12:30:48PM -0700, Harshwardhan Nagaonkar wrote:
And I'm _paying_ for that service too.... (I'm just releived that they haven't got the idea to charge by per-MB internet access like they do back home in India... that would be so customer-unfriendly).
Exactly why is that? I pay for my water by the gallon. I pay for my electricity by the watt. I pay for my gas by the cubic foot. I pay for my telephone by the minute. Why then shouldn't I pay for my data transfered by the byte?
For most everyone on this list, ``customer-unfriendly'' translates to ``more expensive for me.'' The rest of the customer base subsidizes the heavier users, like ourselves. Why should we expect others to pay for our bandwidth?
Maybe if we actually paid by the byte, the telecom companies would not be trying to find ways to reign in costs incurred by the heavier users by locking down ports and other such nonsense.
There are differences between the types of resources that you mentioned. Gas and water are finite resources, and are time-independent. If I don't use the water, they can sell it to somebody else; if I cut back on my gas usage, another customer can use the same gas that I would have. I can also buy a whole truckload of water, and hoard it until an earthquake so I can price gouge all my neighbors. The resource is finite, and can be stored and sold, independent of time.
Bandwidth is a slightly different beast. Because it is time-dependent, if not used, it disappears. I'm sure some of the more mathematically inclined among us could come up with some nifty models, but because of it's time dependence, one can not aggregate bandwidth. It isn't feasible to "save" bandwidth for a rainy day, or to hoard it. Granted, when the system is saturated, bandwidth not used by one user can be transferred to another, but such circumstances are the exception, not the norm.
-Hyrum
-- Fruit flies like a banana.
http://www.hyrumwright.org
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