 HarddriveProud American and Infidel since 1968.Premium
join:2000-09-20
Phone Room
kudos:2
 ·Comcast
| Complete Per Byte Billing. i want to see a low 'base price' for having the service available. then be charged if i use any on a per-gig basis. make it just like my electric or water bill. the less i use, the less i pay.
but we know that will never happen.
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I've come here to chew bubblegum and kick ass and i'm all outta bubblegum. |
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| said by Harddrive:i want to see a low 'base price' for having the service available. then be charged if i use any on a per-gig basis. make it just like my electric or water bill. the less i use, the less i pay. but we know that will never happen. It won't happen because most users are too lazy to keep an eye on their usage(even if given meters to check it) and would rather overpay for a known set amount each month than pay for exactly what they use. Hence they will get usage tiers instead of straight per-byte billing. Consumers get what they deserve because they would rather pay more for convenience than expend some effort to cut their costs.
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 BF69Premium
join:2004-07-28
Camden, TN | reply to Harddrive
said by Harddrive:i want to see a low 'base price' for having the service available. then be charged if i use any on a per-gig basis. make it just like my electric or water bill. the less i use, the less i pay. but we know that will never happen. No it won't if ISPs do per byte billing. Prices will stay the same for the lowest of users and be much higher for everyone else. When ISPs say that per byte billings is "fair" for low users they are full of shit. There is no way a ISP is going to cut their prices in half or more to reflect the TRUE fairness they talk about. |
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 fireflierCoffee. . .Need CoffeePremium
join:2001-05-25
Limbo | reply to fAcEtIOUs
Those lazy users would pay more attention when they get inflated bills just like they do now if the cost of their electric bill becomes too painful. Those formerly too lazy to turn off unneeded lights and appliances will suddenly get off their ass to save a few bucks. The models used with gas, water, and electric would work for broadband but the ISPs don't want that.
The real reason it won't happen is because it would potentially take a chunk out of ISP profits or reduce their massive profit increases from implementing a fair model. ISPs and their ilke will try to spin it any way they can to avoid that realization among the masses.
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Tradition: Just because you've always done it that way doesn't mean it's not incredibly stupid. --despair.com |
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| If it were pure per-byte billing, then if I unplug my modem for a month, I should see a bill for $0 just like if I were to disconnect my electricity breaker box for a month. But this will never happen because ISPs know that the cost is in providing the connection, not in the amount of data that flows over it.
Another issue is that people don't think about how much electricity they've already used this month when deciding to toast some bread, because the incremental cost of usage is insignificant. The mere fact that users would have to watch a meter means that the overage charges are just complete punitive money grab. The incremental per-byte charge is NOT based on any actual cost. |
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 SLDPremium
join:2002-04-17
San Francisco, CA
1 edit | reply to fireflier
Exactly! That is why telecom came off the per-minute billing into a fixed monthly. Better to get people to overpay for usage as if it is free than to let them lower their usage to get the cost down.
Thus, the $3/minute average fee for cell phone use. People don't realize they're being ripped off under these pricing models. Of course, heavy users do better, but the average consumer loses. |
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openbox9
join:2004-01-26
Alexandria, VA
kudos:2 | reply to Michael C
said by Michael C:If it were pure per-byte billing, then if I unplug my modem for a month, I should see a bill for $0 just like if I were to disconnect my electricity breaker box for a month. Unless you cancel your service, there are still service fees and connection charges. |
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 RARPSL
join:1999-12-08
Suffern, NY | said by openbox9:said by Michael C:If it were pure per-byte billing, then if I unplug my modem for a month, I should see a bill for $0 just like if I were to disconnect my electricity breaker box for a month. Unless you cancel your service, there are still service fees and connection charges. Which by the published prices for bundles is about $5/month (The 'discount' you get for having two services not one). Note: I am talking about bundles where you pay full price for the services not those where you get a lower price for 6-12 months before going to full price. |
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openbox9
join:2004-01-26
Alexandria, VA
kudos:2 | Huh? Discounts aren't the service fees and connections charges sufficient to keep your service turned on. |
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RARPSL
join:1999-12-08
Suffern, NY | said by openbox9:Huh? Discounts aren't the service fees and connections charges sufficient to keep your service turned on. If I Pay $X for Cable, $Y for Internet, and get a $5 discount from $X+$Y if I have both, I fail to see why I should not regard the $5 as their stated cost for providing me with connectivity and as the bookkeeping cost of my account. Under classic accounting methods it is the incremental cost for the 2nd service. Looking it another way $5 is the FIXED cost of providing the service with $X-5 and $Y-5 as the cost Cable/Internet service (IOW: You only get hit with the $5 Account Maintenance and Connectivity Charge once no matter how many services you have).
If as you claim "Discounts aren't the service fees and connections charges sufficient to keep your service turned on" why am I being double billed for having more than one service by not getting the full reduction since there is no extra cost for supporting the second service (the connection is already there and paid for with the first service and the second gets a free ride)? |
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 nixenRockin' the BoxenPremium
join:2002-10-04
Alexandria, VA | reply to fAcEtIOUs
said by fAcEtIOUs:It won't happen because most users are too lazy to keep an eye on their usage(even if given meters to check it) and would rather overpay for a known set amount each month than pay for exactly what they use. Hence they will get usage tiers instead of straight per-byte billing. Consumers get what they deserve because they would rather pay more for convenience than expend some effort to cut their costs. I'm on "budget" billing with my various utilities. This means the bills are averaged over a 12mo. cycle. Even with this in place (to prevent shocks), I still keep track of the monthly usages. Most of the people I know, whether on budget billing or per therm/kWh/etc. billing also try to keep track of their billing bases.
If the ISPs want to go to per-byte billing models (thus taking a "utility" approach), they should have to provide similar billing models and meter viewability. Then again, "utilities" are, essentially, "dumb pipe" providers. If ISPs want to become "utilities", they should also have to remove themselves from content businesses.
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The trouble with the world is that the stupid are cocksure and the intelligent are full of doubt. -- Bertrand Russell |
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| reply to Harddrive
I want my flat monthly rate like i get now and i will settle for nothing less.
i do not want any capping of the net or this per byte krap.
my website has at least 50 gigs of legal downloads and it is my art and my life.i do not want these bigwig asshole ISP's screwing my life up by implementing their plans for milking us of our wallets cause it is little guys like me who will be screwed in the end.
and the rich won't care as usual. |
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fireflierCoffee. . .Need CoffeePremium
join:2001-05-25
Limbo | reply to RARPSL
That's a pretty good example RARPSL.
For the dumbass ISP CEOs out there, to simplify:
It costs X to run cable to someone's house and keep it functional (like the gas and electric companies currently do). There's your "base" cost. You want per-byte billing, add it to X while recognizing X is NOT equal to whatever bullshit base you think your service is worth (which is something stupid like X+$30) because it benefits your salary and your shareholders.
I don't see that happening unfortunately.
ISPs are ready to start at X+Y (where Y=whatever ISPs think they can screw you out of)
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Tradition: Just because you've always done it that way doesn't mean it's not incredibly stupid. --despair.com |
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 KrKHeavy Artillery For The Little GuyPremium
join:2000-01-17
Tulsa, OK
 ·AT&T DSL Service
| reply to fAcEtIOUs
That's disingenuous IMHO. Usage based tiers is what will be adopted because it is more profitable, not because of anything users do.
Sure, they want people who go over the caps to pay more, but they also want to make sure Grandma with her light emailing doesn't pay less, either. It's all about creating more profit, not giving users what they want.
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"Fascism should more properly be called corporatism because it is the merger of state and corporate power." -- Benito Mussolini
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openbox9
join:2004-01-26
Alexandria, VA
kudos:2 | reply to RARPSL
What's the initial $W cost before you start throwing in $X and $Y services? I have no desire to pay for TV, so what's the base cost to string and maintain coax to my residence and the support mechanism that goes along with it for me to receive HSI? My guess is that it's more than $5/mth. |
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HarddriveProud American and Infidel since 1968.Premium
join:2000-09-20
Phone Room
kudos:2 | per Verizon, when they were replacing their copper plant with fiber, it costs the company $90'ish a year to keep a copper drop going to a residence.
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I've come here to chew bubblegum and kick ass and i'm all outta bubblegum. |
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 rchandraStargate Universe fanPremium
join:2000-11-09
14225-2105
1 edit | reply to Harddrive
said by Harddrive:i want to see a low 'base price' for having the service available. then be charged if i use any on a per-gig basis. make it just like my electric or water bill. the less i use, the less i pay. but we know that will never happen. To some extent, this is merely an ideal. It's a great model, until real-world factors intrude.
It's kind of like socialism in this way: I think it's good conceptually, in that socialism helps out everyone, and it means those in unfortunate circumstances get some help from everyone else. However once real-world factors intrude, the whole thing begins to unravel, namely human nature. The incentive to produce declines as one observes that those who don't produce are taken care of anyway...so what's the point of producing when one can receive for doing essentially nothing?
Similarly, the real-world factor that intrudes on usage-based billing is, noone can control completely what data are delivered over one's link. If I decide I don't care what it costs me, I could (flood?) ping you, and even if you never reply to a single echo request on your end, you would still be paying for all the data I caused to go down your pipe. The only completely fair way to implement that is if you had control of every single Internet host, if you were able to "firewall" at the source. If you could even firewall on the other end of your link to your ISP, it wouldn't be fair to your ISP or any of their upstreams because they would be paying for the traffic being sent to them that you didn't want. It's a bit along the lines of what's described at lartc.org, about how one cannot control the rate of the receive end, only the rate at which one transmits. Yes, this indirectly affects reception because most higher level protocols (think "TCP") regulate bandwidth transmitted based on what's received (transmission is not supposed to go beyond the ACK window, but there is nothing absolutely preventing that).
To borrow another analogy at lartc.org, you can't control how much postal mail you receive. You can influence it by asking to be removed from mailing lists, you can never send out anything that would cause someone to reply, but you're not going to be able to stop every single mass mailer; there is nothing in the postal system to reject mail at the source. And once a mail piece is in the postal system, you can't refuse it at least until you've received it.
...which goes full circle to the point. In virtually all commerce, one plans for expected average demand. Based on trial and error, and previous experience, some quantity of "stuff" is produced, a lot of it (sometimes all of it) is sold, and many times there is stuff left over. In the case of a sellout, there is unsatisfied demand and potential profit is lost. In the case of overproduction, either usage of space to store the overproduction for later sale causes loss in profit, or if the stuff is perishable, it is simply destroyed. For example, the power company you mentioned doesn't know ahead of time precisely how much electricity you will consume in a given month, but it has a pretty good rough estimate, so it will go and purchase approximately whatever oil, coal, nuclear fuel rods, or whatever to meet the demand they expect from you...and it won't always be right, and maybe on rare occasions not even close.
So too I have to believe it is for ISPs. They estimate that for some forecast period (say, the next year) they will have to carriage X bytes from point A to point B, which will require Y in electrical purchase, Z fibers to be laid, XX in real estate to lay that fiber across, YY in personnel to set up and maintain the equipment, and so on. They don't go laying another fiber from me to Canonical so I can download a copy of an Ubunutu DVD this month, then take it up after I'm done. Nor would they want that fine-grained procedure to satisfy that demand; it'd be too expensive. No, they provide some reasonable capacity that I pay some fairly reasonable fixed fee per month for, and the world is mostly happy. If I want more capacity (as in, greater amount of octets carried to/from me per unit of time), I can ask for and pay for that additional capacity.
It just so happens that that we don't typically pay for and measure in the same intervals; we tend to measure capacity by the second but only bill and pay for by the month. Still, in most other industries, they manage to survive and even thrive on the same estimate, produce, sell, repeat cycle. I personally don't see why ISPs can't continue to do that.
Edit: One thing that ought to be considered very carefully is that there will be increased costs in installing and maintaining metering systems. Today it is very simple: in my case $41.95 goes from me to TWC every month, in exchange for a 10/1 M/s connection (and no caps or other technical limitations as far as I know). Anything more complex than that will require expenditure to implement, and I don't quite see how it's so necessary (in essence to change the operational and economic model). |
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openbox9
join:2004-01-26
Alexandria, VA
kudos:2 | reply to Harddrive
Is that purely maintenance of the loop or does that include the requisite customer service that goes along with establishing a service? |
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HarddriveProud American and Infidel since 1968.Premium
join:2000-09-20
Phone Room
kudos:2 | 'everything' involved in maintenance of the line. |
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openbox9
join:2004-01-26
Alexandria, VA
kudos:2 | Ok, so base price of actually providing a VZ service to a residence is somewhere north of $8/mth...without factoring in VZ's profit. |
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