xrobertcmx
Premium
join:2001-06-18
Sterling, VA
clubs: 
 ·Comcast
 ·EarthLink
| I can see it now
Per Byte or Per Gigabyte billing. I would be fine with this except we all know that the minute they implement something like that it will be on top of the current flat rate structure.
So the bill will be something like $39.90 per month + $1.00 per Gigabyte over 5 Gigabytes per month.
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Retaking our country one election at a time. |
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RR user
@rr.com
 from:
dodgetech2 
| Exactly. The base rate will be what you pay now and will likely include some magic number of Gigabytes of transfer the ISP believes is adequate for most users. Then additional usage over the included limit will be extra, and likely something along the lines of $1-$2 a gigabyte.
There are two problems with this structure.
1. What constitutes average/adequate included bandwidth is constantly changing (constantly increasing over time) If 10 GB included is determined to be adequate today, only a year or two from now that number would need to be raised significantly.
2. The cost per gigabyte of wholesale bandwidth is constantly changing. If ISP's really want to start charging for bandwidth consumed, then they should only be allowed to charge for a gigabyte what it costs them wholesale for that gigabyte. And these days, a gigabyte of bandwidth doesn't cost the $1, $2, or even $5-$10 dollars that ISP's insist it costs... A gigabyte of transfer today is literally just a few cents, 5 or 10 at the very most. If the ISP is already charging a base charge for the service, the profit is already figured in. If they charge $1+ per gigabyte on top of that then they are just making a profit off of every file you download, and then what's to stop them from trying to get you to download everything you possibly can? Hell, they would probably try to send out viruses out on their network to infect computers to raise the data usage of all their customers.
So like I said, they can charge for bandwidth consumed, but it has to be at wholesale rates. So that 100 Gigabytes you downloaded this past month really only cost the ISP a few bucks, which was just trimmed off the profit they made from that portion of your bill. It's really only the people who download 500-600 gigabytes that really affect the ISP's profit margin, because that amount of bandwidth essentially eats up all the profit they make on a $40-50 dollar broadband account. 500-600 gigabytes works out to around $20~30 worth of bandwidth. Thus why Comcast cuts off users who go over that magic line in which they become unprofitable. The actual data usage that Comcast goes by most likely varies from market to market because the cost of bandwidth can vary from market to market.
For what its worth, I consume in the neighborhood of 60-100GB per month. That's shared between a whole bunch of computers and people on a home network. If my ISP started charging some rediculus rate of $1+ per gigabyte I'd drop them so fast. But if they only charged what they actually pay for the bandwidth (about 5 cents a gigabyte or less) I wouldn't have much of a problem paying a couple dollars extra at most a month for my usage. I'd just hope that if the base package is still $40 a month, it includes a minimum of 60-100 gigs. Because we all know that most any ISP makes a pretty good profit even off the people that do 100GB per month regularly. It's mainly the extreme cases that really matter to them. |
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plk
bo may sleep in loft
Premium
join:2002-04-20
Ogden, IA
| reply to xrobertcmx
This ties in to the Net Neutrality debate.
I think sale by the megabyte is in the future regardless if the Bells etc can charge the big providers. Their not going to take that extra income and build a better faster internet as they claim, they will only buy servers to limit the bandwidth they have now.
What they will do, is charge per gig for web sites they do not partner with and not limit content of their own.
This will force folks to use only their services and content and partners quickly killing off the vast majority of other providers and small upstarts.
Real BROADBAND content will be provided by a small hand full of providers looking more like cable TV.
And like others mentioned... service will still start at 39.99 a month with the first 5 gigs for free. With 3-4 providers this wouldn't last....but with Neutrality in place, least we will have a better chance of keeping the Internet we have. We will have better control of what we get if we control where we go and what we want.
Anyway you look at it, YOUR going to pay for the improvements to the Internet to come. From my prospective, price per gig might be a better route then what may become of the Net if we don't keep the pipes dumb.
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