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 rchandraStargate Universe fanPremium
join:2000-11-09
14225-2105 | simple statement on neutrality It's not my fault that ISPs could not properly price their Internet access in the past. What they're basically saying is an Animal Farm-esque "your packets are more equal than these other packets." Assuming all the present billing models are flat rate per unit of time (e.g., month), why is it they don't think raising everyone's rates a very small amount is better than raising only a few big bandwith users' rates by a lot?
I thought the pricing model was for $x per month, we will move y bits per second to and from the Internet. It seems to me to be the same crappy argument as some ISPs that say they'll sell you an unlimited use connection for $x/mo., and then complain and cap and slow down and disconnect for "abuse" when we actually use the provided pipe. It's also not my fault when they promise to provide Internet access at a x/x or x/y rate, then they oversubscribe their interconnects so that they're unable to provide the speeds in the contract.
It wasn't that long ago that my former employer paid a certain 95th percentile fee, therefore if usage went up, the bill went up. It basically meant that bandwidth was the full T-1 rate, so a certain average usage was billed for, but it could always burst to full speed whenever needed. If that full speed were utilized constantly, the bill would be that much higher. Now it seems the connections are sold on strictly a $x/mo. fee, with no metering. With reasonable prices, I like this model. It lets me know my mythical business' costs up front, regardless of how much my connection is used. I hate the thought of having to pay on a bytes-moved basis, because so much of it could be traffic in which I have no interest in carrying (spam for example).
This seems to be nothing more than a poorly executed move from flat rate pricing back to the metered access of a few years ago. If the ISPs that want to charge more for these few dozen supposed bandwidth hogs, just change the billing model from flat rate back to metered, and be done with it. It would be perceived as a whole lot more fair than just saying we're going to gouge the bigger guys on the Net. Competition will determine who is and who is not willing to continue billing with a flat rate per unit of time pricing model.
Maybe without Net neutrality laws, ISPs could be sued for fraud or breach of contract instead.
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 BillPremium,VIP
join:2001-12-09 | Metered access is still used in business environments today. If you look for bandwidth inside a large data center, the prices are most likely going to be based on 95%. You may be able to find some providers still offering GB/TB plans, but most have moved to 95% to keep their billing simple and fair for their clients.
It'd be interesting if that model was implemented for residential internet connections. It would ensure those who abuse their connections 24/7 with P2P would be paying their fair share and not make the rest of us suffer with extremely low data transfer caps. It would also allow for the burst speeds to improve dramatically for end-users. We would still not see 100 Mbps connections since most ISP's networks can't handle several people bursting at those speeds, but it would be significantly higher than the 5 or 6 Mbps most providers are offering now.
Of course, the problem is the average Joe Blow can't figure out 95% billing and people will complain the price per Mbps is too high.
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