On Mon, 29 Nov 2004 14:50:08 -0600, Michael Halcrow <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > On Mon, Nov 29, 2004 at 02:33:19PM -0700, Hyrum Wright wrote: > > >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. > > ... > > Bandwidth is a slightly different beast. Because it is > > time-dependent, if not used, it disappears. > > I am willing to bet that, at the aggregated macro-economic level, > bandwidth and water do not look much different from the supply side, > in that marginal increase in maximum bytes/sec capacity correlates > with marginal increase in cost for the supplier. As the bandwidth cap > gets hit, the carrier has to dump money into raising the cap. In any > case, I think that ISP's will one day follow the model that the cell > phone companies currently employ. Give a quota for every month, and > bandwidth used during peak periods applies to that quota (with > ``unlimited bytes'' at 2:00am, for example, to give incentive for > people to grab their ISO's from a cron job so they don't stress the > network). Then charge for every megabyte used over that quota. Usage > of available resources will become more constant (i.e., the maximum > bytes/sec will go down), and hence more efficient, and > hence... cheaper (for the average user, at least)! If you find that > you hit your quota too often, then buy the higher-quota package.
But customers hate that model and that's why you _don't_ actually pay by the minute for your local phone calls, and cell phone companies are starting the cutesy add campaigns asking little kids to estimate how many minutes they'll want to play with the ball to tout the convenience of flat-rate calling. They are moving away from pay-per-minute because the customer is demanding it. Does anyone want to pay by the minute for TV watched? Nobody wants to whittle away their life counting minutes (or bytes) used. I think the type of commodity really does determine this too. Water, electricity, gas, those are all necessities, not largely used for entertainment or what is today considered mere convenience. As soon as you start charging someone by the minute to watch TV, he gets another hobby, now where is your business? In Croatia, where I lived for a couple years, all phone calls were paid by the minute. Croatians are the most talkative people I've met, but get them on the phone and you learned a whole new definition of the word terse. It was downright offensive until I learned the reason why. Which customers are demanding that kind of life? > Somehow, I envision something like that mitigating a lot of the > spyware/spam/etc. issues that currently plague home PC's and > (subsequently) the network. When double-clicking that attachment can > lead to real $$ on your next Internet bill, people will start behaving > more responsibly. As if by magic, spambots will be taken off-line and > general computer security will increase as computers become harder to > compromise. Mark my words. :-) Actually Bill Gates already had a similar plan if I remember correctly. It seems to make sense, exactly like the carefully terse phone calls in Croatia, but I just don't ever see the customers demanding pay-per-byte. Bryan -------------------- BYU Unix Users Group http://uug.byu.edu/ The opinions expressed in this message are the responsibility of their author. They are not endorsed by BYU, the BYU CS Department or BYU-UUG. ___________________________________________________________________ List Info: http://uug.byu.edu/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/uug-list
