keith2468
Premium,MVM
join:2001-02-03
Winnipeg, MB
| Usage Surcharges Benefit Most Customers
If some people work for 40 hours, and other people work for 2 hours, and the people are all paid the same -- then the suckers who worked the 40 hours are subsidizing those who only worked 8 hours.
Same deal with DSL.
If Bob, Joe and Jane use 1GByte per month, and Terry uses 100GB per month -- and they all pay the same -- then Bob, Joe and Jane are subsidizing Terry.
And that is what useage surcharges are really about -- making those who use 25 - 100 times as much network capacity as the average user -- pay their own way.
Paying for what you use is fair.
Lobbying ISPs to get them to force other customers to subsidize your high use is unfair.
Even with DSL, after the lines are consolidated together (at the DSLAM cabinet or the telephone company office) a customer unexpectedly using 50 times the bandwidth of a normal customer will disrupt service to other customers in the sharing the service.
If the high-use customer makes their requirements known at the time of arranging installation -- then the extra capacity can be planned for and provided. The equipment can be re-configured, an extra router brought in, or an additional fiber brought into use, so the high volume customer doesn't hurt service to other customers.
And most high-use customers do this, do make their requirements known before hand, and do pay the extra cost of a higher volume service.
On the other hand, if an ISP were to cut off service without fair warning (meaning a few phone calls over a few days) because of excessive bandwidth use -- that would be an unfair intentional disruption of service -- possibly a malicious disruption of service.
Charging a bit extra for high-use customers is fair.
Cutting-off service without full and proper warning is not fair.
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