said by DaDawgs:They will but you don't want those customers. WISPS don't have unlimited bandwidth. We resell what we have and we have to make a profit or go out of business. So... There is absolutely nothing wrong with charging a premium for a service like Netflix.
while admittedly, most of my experience has been in the wireline space -- i see a few potential issues with this statement.
saying that you have limited bandwidth has the connotation of sounding that no other type of delivery medium has this issue, which can be considered a disingenuous statement. when you look at traditional last mile access technologies, none of them (aside from fiber) have the "unlimited bandwidth" that you speak of. traditional xdsl access technologies are limited by the age of the copper in the ground and the amount of modulation and encapsulation that can occur in a few mhz of spectrum in the ground. cable access technologies are limited by the number of ntsc channels available for data services combined with the frequency spectrum supported by the plant. prior to d3 -- most cable providers had a few dirty upstream channels in the ~28-33mhz range and a couple of downstream carriers in the upper frequencies. each of this channels could deliver about 38megs of bandwidth to the end user.
as a wisp -- you're bounded by the availability of spectrum that you choose to use and the user density that you wish to serve within each sector/cell, etc. this decision is no different than the number of users served per node or rt -- its a statistical analysis question that can only be answered by some sort of derived formula or tons of trial and error.
now -- if your argument is strictly based on the availability of upstream throughput to your carrier -- then again -- your service, like all other carriers, does not have unlimited upstream capacity. what the larger providers are able to do is create an economy of scale and use the general size and aggregation of their network footprints to subsidize and purchase uplink capacity that creates a less oversubscribed network at the peering points. at the end of the day, this is a business and financial decision that must be made in alignment with your overall goals and vision for your network.
said by DaDawgs:Another way to think about it is this. I have ten widgits. I have ten customers. Nine customers want one widgit each. The tenth customer wants five widgts for the same price.
the question becomes -- how much are you charging those customers. if you say your payment can get you "up to five widgets", but people only take one because they only have a use for one -- then you're testing your fate. if you're only charging your customers for a single widget, and someone feels they should have five -- then absolutely, they are expecting too much. however, most internet connections are simply given as "up to {x}mbps" and the providers are lucking out that people don't need to drive their connections for long periods of time.
q.