| Unmetered Electric It seems right now the "internet" is much like the power grid in it's infancy. People payed for a line and used power. Soon after, meters came into play for obvious reasons. Can you imagine, you pay electric company a $50 charge every month for all-you-can-eat power? Instead we pay access charges every month, then for every kilowatt-hour. Same with water/sewer; same with gas/propane. How easy would it be for data providers to do the very same. Likely the only reason it is not yet that way is because of competition. In fact, believe that is the case. Doubt not that every ISP wants it to be the latter of the electricity example... as I believe it should be. |
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| I see it a bit like this, but it's more like telephone service in the U.S. At that, it's like local service. No cost to make a call. Be on as much as you want. Even cell phone service is becoming like this as long as you're "in network" or in your "favorites"... Electricity is a bit different than moving bits around. IMHO. |
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| reply to Bell System
Umm, NO, it's not like electricty. Unlike electricity, there is no UNIT cost for data. It's just bits. There is no 'cost' to make a 'bit'. The ONLY cost is the physical infrastructure to move those bits. (and a VERY small electricity cost, which is so small it's negligible. Comparing something that has no unit cost is a bad comparison. Once the infrastructure is built, there is no cost to move data.
Sure, every ISP would LIKE you to think that it costs a lot of money to move data, but the REAL cost is close to ZERO, apart from capital cost. So, the 'by the byte' will never FLY, because there will ALWAYS be a company who recognizes they can STILL make money by charging for the capital cost + overhead, vs the greedy megacorps who WANT to charge 'by the bit'.
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Stick it to the MAN. Support your local torrent sites. Proudly providing 100mb of upstream for all your TV, Movie, and MP3 needs. |
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 espaethDigital PlumberPremium,MVM
join:2001-04-21
Minneapolis, MN
kudos:2
 ·Clear Wireless
1 edit | The power is certainly not negligible; this isn't little Linksys widgets sitting in a shack somewhere. You're talking about network hardware than spans anywhere from 1U to multiple racks, and power supplies from 300W (ie, Cisco 3550) - 80,000W (Cisco CRS-1). On top of electricity to directly power the gear you need to pay for cooling, hardware maintenance, and upgrades. You also need to pay a staff of people to operate and maintain all of that hardware.
You have to be trolling, right? There's no way you honestly believe what you just wrote. |
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| Data center hardware is budgeted to run at 100%, so the cost of operating those routers--full-time @ full power requirements--is already included in the "cost of doing business" (in each and every bill to each and every customer). |
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1 edit | reply to karlmarx
Um, YES, it's somewhat like electricity in that it's a utility. I qualified the rest if my answer for clarity...
How is what YOU said fundamentally different than what I said, Senor Marx? We're agreeing except you're saying that we said different things... |
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| I think it likely that he may have started his reply to the OP before yours was actually posted, and wasn't aware of your post at all before he posted. (I was going to say something similar to what he said--and a bit more--but he posted first, as did you, so I just bagged it.) 
Timing is everything. |
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