rradina
join:2000-08-08
Chesterfield, MO | Metering Arguments Must Be Rational When arguing the necessity of metering by referencing other metered utilities, it's apples and oranges unless the utility lacks significant variable usage costs. Examples of utilities with significant variable usage costs are water, sewer, gas and electric.
Please note the significance of the term significant. We are all aware that network providers have peering relationships and backbone connection costs with a variable component. However, according to this article containing worst-case scenarios, it still only costs pennies per GB (including profit). It is therefore impossible to believe that the current metered costs of a such a ubiquitous service are set by typical market forces.
»blogs.howstuffworks.com/2011/04/···cenario/
We must also consider that network providers enjoy technological advances that magnify the efficiency of their networks beyond the imagination of other utilities. Ponder how cheap electricity would be if in five years twice as much power was possible from the same unit of coal and in 10 years, four times as much? How cheap would gasoline be if cars went from 30MPG to 60MPG and then 120MPG?
I'd argue that this kind of efficiency improvement would probably start a world war as it would completely destabilize OPEC and Exxon wouldn't be worth the paper used to print its stock certificates. |
