| Nothing new here.. Telcos have a LONG history of promising service they cannot deliver, under certain conditions.
Their model of service, circa 1996, is to provide enough service for some of the people, all of the time. They could NEVER provide for all of the people, all of the time. Before the dial-up Internet revolution, this worked out well for the telcos. Let's look at a typical central office of the time. Copper lines connect you, the subscriber, to a common point for your neighborhood. Those lines get trunked to another common point, and then run back to the CO. Once inside the CO, the lines run into a series of switches, where your call can be moved from one switch to another until it gets to the one that will take it to its destination.
The dirty little secret: there was not a switch available for each line going into the CO. There's maybe 1 for each 16-24 lines. Period. Why? Because, at some point, it was determined that x number of people would be using the phone at once at peak periods. The telcos built a little beyond this need (Mother's Day overwhelms the available switches). Business lines were more expensive during this time because their ratio was 1-in-8, necessitating more switches and of course, more bandwidth between the COs.
When 2nd lines became more popular, telcos built out their CO switches to the normal ratio.. not taking into account the advent of "unlimited Internet access". Suddenly, their ratios were way off because you had Junior surfing porn into the wee hours, instead of making a quick 5 minute call like he was 'supposed to'.
I've been out of the biz awhile, so I can't say for certain whether the advent of cheap digital switching has changed this mindset for the telcos, but given what I am seeing coming from these guys' CEOs, I'd have to say 'no'.
It would seem the cable companies are using the same model - pricing according to expected bandwidth usage across a large segment of population. Remember, that upstream capacity doesn't come free, they have to not only plan for that when they build out a neighborhood, but also have a budget for bandwidth usage outside of the cable co's network.
I wish Boardwatch Magazine were still around, I'm sure they'd have a lot to say about this topic.
M.O.
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