Billed By The Byte > Perhaps if they offered a two tiered model.....

reply to Warez_Zealot

Re: Perhaps if they offered a two tiered model.....

Well they are secluded countries w/ relatively low populations where most of their fibre is run underwater.. What's the USA's excuse?

What does that have to do with your comment about backwards countries and metered Internet access?

reply to Warez_Zealot

Uh, yeah digging a hole? How many ISP's even have metered inet in Britain? I'm sure they aren't really any ISP's charging by the byte in London, Glasgow, or the other larger cities. I unless they have a ISP monopoly where you have the choice between cable, 1 telco, and a few resellers..

I heard that NZ, AU, and Argentina do, but that's because they are cut off from society, and the cost of running fibre cost a lot, so they charge up the ass to avoid upgrading.

Charging by the byte is going to halt the evolution of the internet in USA, Canada, not develope it quicker.

NZ and Au do charge by the gigabyte, but they have capped plans as well, just not that same as the North American ones. What they do over there is slow your internet down when you exceed your data limit for the month.

Bandwidth costs in Au/NZ are nearly 100X more than what you would pay for it in the US, primarily because of the fact that most of the bandwidth is controlled by a monopoly, or duopoly, and of course the bulk of the data is overseas, and therefore run through expensive underwater fiber/fibre.

That being said though they have access to pretty innovative technology such as ADSL2+/Annex M and most people can get 8Mbps dsl even in rural areas. So it doesn't necessarily halt innovation, but can actually drive it.

Compare that to say a place like the GTA in Canada. You'd be lucky if you could even get 5mbps DSL, with most people syncing at 3mbps...if lucky. And don't even start about the oversold Cable (Rogers) where they throttle everything including torrents,voip, so the extra "bandwidth" is a mute point. Of course they also have invisible caps, which Bell Sympatico also now openly admits (check out their plans). Also no residential FTTH providers like Verizon, so in that respect the US isn't that backwards.

reply to Warez_Zealot

Wow, keep trying. The fact is, there is a generation of people from 14-25 who would never go on metered broadband knowing it's a scam unless it was their only option.

If you can't see that, I feel sorry for you.

P.S Are those the only 2 ISP's in all of Britain? lol... I'm sure their clients are the equivalent to that USA AOL subscribers..

Your not making any sense. Sure they may or may not be paying for inet now -- which is un-metered (by that I mean no surplus fees). One day those kids will eventually move out, and will not buy metered internet where you pay by the bite.

Either you are in China (where generations of families live together) or maybe you have nice parents who will let you live at home for the rest of your their life. If that's the case great for you. Just run up that pay by the bit internet cause they pay for it; but where I come from 99% of most parents kick their kids out by the time they hit 18 -19 let alone 25...

90% of the problem didn't even start until the cable dsl bandwidth wars. Who can bring the most to your door for the least.

If cable and dsl companies would sell reasonable packages, at a price they need to charge, this would mostly end. If 512 would be in the $20 range, to replace dial up. $30 to $35 for 1.5 and in the $60 range for 3m. This would solve a lot of problems. If 99% of their customers are not bandwidth hogs, they could live easy on the lower speeds.

I have throttled my router to 512 to see what it would be like, and one can surf very comfortable. Just some longer movies on news sites and Utube take longer.

The bandwidth war was a dumb idea and now it's back to bite the consumer. Sad :@(
--
| Speedstream 4200 Modem - 3m/384 plan | W98-W2KSP4-XPSP2 - All AMD | Buffalo WHR G54S with OpenWRT WR0.9 | 2 downstream switches feeding 5 total clients (no wireless) | Including the Data port on the side of my neck |