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Comments on news posted 2007-09-13 14:50:11: [att=1214907,r]Yesterday, we discussed how some operators would like nothing more than to ditch the current flat-rate billing system and bill you by the byte. ..
|
 Asmodeus
join:2004-05-26
Spring Valley, CA | law of unintended consequences... if broadband isp's decided to charge by usage rather than a flat rate price, then a lot of people might decide that bundling isn't worth it and go al carte... since a lot of people use the net at work, then that's were they will use the net instead, at work, not at home... this will obviously create issues with employers and employees, which will reflect back onto the isp's and the employers... if the employer is charged by the byte, then he will pass that cost on to his customers or find another isp... this is a problem altogether simply because isp's have marketed their 'unlimited' usage and have penalized people for actually using their service in the unlimited way that they are paying for and how it was marketed...
either these isp's need to stop calling it unlimited and actually post what the caps are or they need change their business model... however, nothing will change in pricing due to public utility commission hearings nationwide take place wherever that isp operates and how their pricing structures will affect the public.
This won't be done overnight and because they are utilities more often than not, they will be subject to regulatory oversight... so if they try to pull the pay-per-byte nonsense, you as the public can fight back to stop it... | |
| | openbox9
join:2004-01-26
Alexandria, VA
kudos:2 | Re: law of unintended consequences... said by Asmodeus:this will obviously create issues with employers and employees, which will reflect back onto the isp's and the employers... No issue really. If employees don't produce at work and do their "home surfing" at work, the employer will simply terminate their employment.said by Asmodeus:if the employer is charged by the byte, then he will pass that cost on to his customers or find another isp... Most employers already have business classes of Internet access and therefor avoids this issue.said by Asmodeus:this is a problem altogether simply because isp's have marketed their 'unlimited' usage and have penalized people for actually using their service in the unlimited way that they are paying for and how it was marketed... Where is the unlimited jabber coming from? What ISPs nowadays market their residential services as unlimited?said by Asmodeus:however, nothing will change in pricing due to public utility commission hearings nationwide take place wherever that isp operates and how their pricing structures will affect the public. Last time I checked, Internet service wasn't regulated. | |
| |  viperpa33sWhy Me?Premium
join:2002-12-20
Bradenton, FL | said by Asmodeus1since :
a lot of people use the net at work, then that's were they will use the net instead, at work, not at home... I know a lot of people who use the internet at work instead of at home. Employers also place a lot of restrictions on internet access, video streaming is a good example. Internet at work is suppose to be used for business purposes, not pleasure. As someone said, as more people use it at work, the more restrictions there will be. Soon only a select few who are authorized will be allowed internet access. | |
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kd6caeP2p Shouldn't Be A Crime
join:2001-08-27
Palmdale, CA Reviews:
 ·Vitelity VOIP
 ·AT&T U-Verse
| what do ISP's pay their providers? All this talk of billing by the byte has me wondering, what do our ISP's pay to their upstream providers? For example my ISP Charter cable in this area has connections to both level3 and AT&T. I thought that an ISP merely ordered say an OC12 or OC48 connection to said networks and then they merely pay the several hundered thousand dollar a month per line cost to each provider. Is that not how it works? Are they also connected to them but on a metered plan? I guess that would explain why some ISP's are wanting to do traffic shaping, because the ISP itself otherwise will go over their bandwidth cap that they have with their provider, i.e. level3 and AT&T in my case?
Either way though, how are we going to be able to do such things as high quality audio and video streaming with awesome sound quality if we have to constantly worry about if we'll hit our cap. Me personally, if possible, I'd want a capped system to be uncapped speed wise, so that the only cap I have is what the networking itself can give me. Others who want flat rate plans, can get the speed capped tiers, not unlike how dedicated server folks do things, that works well in my view. | |
|  plkLil' Duffer Burger BarnPremium
join:2002-04-20
Ogden, IA | Something gotta give .......or will it I dont see flat rate billing going anywhere. They dont want to lower prices. They are going to have to down the road if they want to keep adding subscribers. For the most part, we are all about online that can be.
As for by the byte pricing. I dont see it that way. I do see them charging a little extra for over 100 gigs. Maybe an extra 10 bucks for every 50 additional 50 gigs or something. Is that really so bad? Hell, I'll pay and extra 10 bucks just to have the bandwidth.
If they try and charge by the meg, it will kill the net. Ads will be blocked, spam will be gone.....the net will be gone.
Its kinda funny in a way....the Bells and Cables have to keep building and can't really charge too much more. They would love to do away with net neutrality, but I think they know that would kill the net too.
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Thermaltake 2000a/Asus P4C-e/p4 3.4/ocz3500 2x512/WD.2x200g/raptor2x74 raid 0/ATI 9600/APC sua 1500/Logitech z-680/ Samsung 213t LCD/MX 1000 | |
|  hhawkmanPremium
join:2001-02-08
Port Hueneme, CA | I can't believe no one said this..... Byte me.
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| Reviews:
 ·Optimum Online
·Verizon FiOS
| don't feed the pigs even discussing the idea of billing by the byte is only to encourage feeding the pigs who are too stingy to give customers the QUALITY OF SERVICE which has been available to business for DECADES. there is NO WAY customers would get MORE for LESS under a by the byte plan, unless they consumed less, which gives ISPS the right to charge as high as they can get for the service, which in many parts of the country is udder SH*T. Imagine having a sub 3mbit service and BUYING your service by the BYTE... say goodbye to $10 unlimited 768kbit dsl plans, no.. it's $10 for every 4 gigabytes down/uploaded... your just ASKING FOR TROUBLE like this.. | |
| | openbox9
join:2004-01-26
Alexandria, VA
kudos:2 | Re: don't feed the pigs If you want the QoS that is available to businesses, purchase a business solution. I don't believe anybody has said that customers would get more for less with a metered service. That's not even logical.
I would actually love to only pay $10/mth for 4 GB of traffic compared to my current $55/mth. | |
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| | RE: what do ISP's pay their providers? Perhaps matching billing patterns with DS1s, DS3s, OC3s, et al, wouldn't be a bad idea. Pricing would probably go up, but it could stop the bandwidth caps. When purchasing a higher end line, typically you would pay for the loop (physical line), and port (the amount of internet on the line). Added in is the transport costs, and taxes, but the model has merit in that if you purchase a 1.5 Mb DS1 loop and full bandwidth on that loop, you can do what ever you want with that bandwidth. Given I would say average cost per Mb is about $45/month, but you are guaranteed that bandwidth reserved unlimited. And I'm sure some providers could also provider a 95th percentile for some customers if they prefer to pay on a per Mb basis. | |
| axus
join:2001-06-18
Washington, DC Reviews:
 ·Verizon Online DSL
| It could work if it were cheap enough Charging $20 for the monthly connection fee, and 3.125 cents per gigabit, you'd get 100GB/mo for $45. Or 1GB for $20.25. After that, providers could compete on connection fee and gigabyte cost.
But, you know that's not how it would go. In a non-competitive environment, it would be like the old telco bills. Higher connection fee, much higher $/Gb.
And, as people mentioned, billing is much harder, and billing disputes much harder, when you have to meter. The inefficiencies would add a lot to the monthly connection fee, that aren't in the current system. | |
|  telcolackey5The Truth? You can't handle the truth
join:2007-04-06
Death Valley, CA | It's all about "greed"? "greedy private corporations."
"Its all about greed."
"monopoly"
"need competition"
These messages will be regurgitated over and over until the inevitable day usage tiered billing is in place to address the obvious change in broadband around usage vs. max speed. When that day comes, all "cap" discussion will end as consumption will be funded.
Then 99% of all users will get a fast service at a good price and the 1% will start complaining about the next thing they want unlimited for free.... electricity. no. water. no. gasoline. no. wireless minutes. no. Air. (you can buy that in a can in Denver)
Opinions... yes the one thing we will always get for free | |
| |  KrKHeavy Artillery For The Little GuyPremium
join:2000-01-17
Tulsa, OK
·AT&T DSL Service
| Re: It's all about "greed"? said by telcolackey5:"greedy private corporations." "Its all about greed." "monopoly" "need competition" And those are wrong because..... ? | |
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| | dial-up no caps, use all you want, dial-in all you want, get kicked offline ever 4 hours, spend about 3 nights downloading 120 MB files with a download manager, i still live in those days now | |
| | | and, use about 2 to 3 GB a month if i'm on online games or doing a lot of websurfing, and 2 to 3 GB on dial-up takes an intense amount of time to use to, about a month, that could be done in about an hour on cable or dsl, and with fios and symmerial fiber, about 10 minutes  | |
| Reviews:
·Comcast
| pay per byte my a$$ I couldn't and wouldn't support this. I'm an online gamer so this would be out of the question, as with all the other 100 millions of others across the world. If my ISP did this i would drop all services, and i know a lot of others would to. Then you got business that would be hurt by this also, you know the debit cards and credit cards that are used. Now the big companies might get by but the smaller ones wouldn't. it would hurt online sales for companies also, cuzz now your limited to how many pages you look at cuzz your not going to compare the different clothes/price shop online with 5+ companies.
I think the people that want this are probably stock holders in ISP's so they see it as a good idea to milk us for more money. | |
| | dvarona
join:1999-11-29
Richmond Hill, NY Reviews:
·Covad Communicat..
| Re: pay per byte my a$$ If they're barely taking in enough revenue to support their employees, how can they incur the expense to expand their network? Running a company isn't always about greed. If it's a public company, they produce a report that shows how much money they take in, and what their expenses are, and how much the management is compensated.
Bandwidth equals money, despite flat-rate pricing. The problem is that they've told people it's unlimited, and bandwidth usage is going up because of sites like youtube and P2P. So in order to expand the network capacity, they need more revenue... where is that going to come from? It's a balance that's hard to strike, especially when you've poorly managed your customers' expectations. | |
|
 MarkRHPremium
join:2005-02-08
Oklahoma City, OK | Bad Idea.. What about all those bloated websites out there full of ads and other crap. If ISP's started charging by the byte, then technically couldn't all those ads be considered the same as say, unsolicited faxes, which are against the law. After all, it would cost you money to see their ads.
Places like CNN, ESPN, and so on would have to provide text only sites. Also, if I visited a business's website, I would expect them to cover all bandwidth costs while viewing their offerings.. I'm not going to pay for their poor coding and less than optimal image compression.
Also, what about all the traffic that's constantly in the background.. my firewall log is full of dropped TCP and UDP packets. I'm not gonna pay for that unwanted stuff.
I could also see user's trying to make companies pay for multi-megabyte software and driver updates, claiming that it's not their fault the company's software is broken.
This is regardless if it's setup as pay per byte or in blocks of however large GB. | |
| | dvarona
join:1999-11-29
Richmond Hill, NY Reviews:
·Covad Communicat..
| Re: Bad Idea.. I'll agree that web sites will need to start considering the bandwidth they require to visit them. If you're bumping against your limits then you'll visit them less often, and they get less revenue. You'll employ ad blockers or video blockers and they'll need to compensate.
The real problem is that bandwidth IS money, no matter how you slice it. Providers have been trying to hide this fact to attract customers, but they have too many customers for their networks and no financial incentive to provide more. As much as we talk about greed, running a company is about balance between revenue and expenses and without enough revenue you can't incur the expense of expanding your network and still feed all the employees and their families.
--dv | |
|
dvarona
join:1999-11-29
Richmond Hill, NY Reviews:
·Covad Communicat..
| Why doesn't this idea make sense to most people? Honestly, this approach is probably the best way to go. If you want unlimited bandwidth, you've got to pay for it. Make it cheaper for those who know they don't need as much, and make it clear when you're approaching your limits. The wireless phone companies already work this way.
The problem with the current system is that $29.99/mo or whatever it is does not support a constantly-downloading 10Mbps connection. If there are more people who are willing to pay for unlimited bandwidth, then the provider will have the financial incentive to expand the network. If you can't pay for unlimited bandwidth, then you don't get it, just like you don't get unlimited talk time on your cell phone.
The rates should be set within reason so that the caps increase with technology over time, and the lowest tiers still get to experience bandwidth-intensive stuff on a reasonable level. Of course, I'll bet that this will be the most contentious area, since the maximize-all-revenue approach of the company will be fighting the minimize-all-costs side of the consumer. Requires lots of marketing research I suppose.
--dv | |
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