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axus
join:2001-06-18
Washington, DC Reviews:
 ·Verizon Online DSL
| bad ideas Youtube et al already get "taxed", they have a high bandwidth bill. They are paying for their connection to the backbone. The residential ISPs are also paying for their connection to the backbone.
The problem is that residential ISPs are selling an unlimited service priced like a limited service. Or rather, priced for the average usage.
The backbone shouldn't run out of bandwidth, they can make more and sell more, or a new company will. What company doesn't want to grow? If they run short, they just sell less of it, and Youtube/ISPs control their own usage. Worst case scenario, they put up an "out of bandwidth for the day" sign and the world goes on.
Back to the real problem.. ISPs could switch to "pay per byte", but their profits would go down because the average person doesn't use many bytes, and would only be paying like $10/mo. The people who would be paying $200/mo will cut back their usage to $100/mo. And the per byte cost of bandwidth would keep going down, taking profits with it. See what happened to long distance phone service with a little bit of competition for an example of the unpalatable business model.
The real solution for the ISPs is continue making lots of money off their internet business like they are currently doing, and if the backbone stops selling more bandwidth, then set a high cap that is well advertised. | |
openbox9
join:2004-01-26
Alexandria, VA
kudos:2 | The problem is that some people continue to purvey their service as "unlimited" when in fact it isn't. And a majority of users that come close to, or pass, the limitation know exactly what they're doing.
Why would you expect that the average user will only by paying $10/mth? When bill-per-byte comes along, I expect it to be similar to that of mobile phone plans, e.g. $39.95/mth (regardless of use) for 50 GB and $1.99/GB extra. | |
axus
join:2001-06-18
Washington, DC Reviews:
·Verizon Online DSL
| I don't expect plans to come out as "per-byte", but if they did, most people would have low bills.
I might be too optimistic, but I think we'll stay with "all you can eat" because of Comcast, Cox, etc. Cable TV is used to the "all you can eat" fixed price model. @Home was the first real broadband provider, and coming from a TV background they went with that model. DSL is controlled by telephone companies, who have bought the wireless providers and are used to the model you are expecting. But when they have to compete with cable, they must use the system that consumers like better.
It is more likely that someone will try to introduce the "overage" model than a radical switch to "per byte", but with healthy competition it would be beaten back into the prevailing "all you can eat" model. | | |
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