mrvid
join:2007-06-19
Levittown, NY
4 edits | would it be better to just add $15/mo to everyone's cost...
Comcast says metering is not the answer cause, if I understand them correctly, it dosen't address excess use pushing the capacity of their networks to high congestion but the truth is, and again, my feeling, if Comcast sold the full triple play package to all their customers, they would have plenty of leftover do-ra-me to increase the capacity of their system to handle it.
Whatever the case, it should be understood that the cost of the whole line is concrete. Whether 10 or 50,000 services are sent over a coax or fiber line, that line still costs the same thing to maintain.
My point is, I see the internet going up if voip & iptv services are going to draw revenue away that normally help to justify the cost of maintaining it.
Example: suppose I were a provider and I extend a line to you, the cost of the line and all the services I can give you whether you take it or not cost me $75/mo/cust. If you take all my services, ill give you just about every innovation in the world cause I am going to make at least $90/mo (assuming $30/mo ea) from you giving me a $15 profit/cust. but if a voip service comes along and takes away my phone service to you, well now I am only making $60/mo/cust (that doesn't make the line to you any cheaper) and now i'm losing $15/mo/cust.
Well, I provide the line and I am not about to lose $15/mo/cust so what do i do.. hmmm, doesn't take a genious, raise the price of the net $25/mo (now ill make $10/mo/cust). You have to realize that line in this example costs $75/mo/cust to me no matter what. Dont want my phone service, fine ill just move the cost over to the net. I'm not going to deliver a service that I am going to lose money on.
Fact is, though, its not fair to raise every customers price, they don't all use the net to the same degree. Comcast has a different issue, they need a way to manage their network to keep it from getting congested but business sense wise- Time Warner has it right -- metered. People are charged by their usage on top of a base price, then forgiven it to encourage use of the net if Time Warner knows customers will take their triple play package. Time Warner's plan as far as I see is only to meter the net, I don't know if they would lift it upon customers taking all their services but I would hope so.
Is this why Time Warner wants to meter the net, maybe, maybe not but to me, it might as well be; someone has to pay for that line to keep it on & the same services still available to all.
So what is the answer -- well how about this - metering and caps but in the long run, my thoughts, Comcast, better dump the caps or they will lose all the bandwidth hungrier customers (remember, those are usually the ones to take the larger speed packages), do they really want to send them running.
The logical choice to me if the net has to go up -- metering, the logical choice to keep congestion down -- caps unless you would rather your provider just raise the net $15/mo for everyone to absorb the additional cost.. metering is a much more fair approach.
One thing to note here: This is just my logical impression of why I think it might be used, I am not saying it is definately needed nor am I saying it is meant to discourage viop or iptv. In fact, both services can still be fluently used. Metering to me is just a fair way to raise the price of the internet & caps like a faucet, a means to control network congestion during peak periods. |
