JPCass
join:2001-01-23
Denver, CO
| reply to G_Poobah
said by G_Poobah  :For those who don't get it, it's would be like Ford selling me a car that can only carry one passenger. I think that's the wrong analogy. It's more like the local transit authority selling you a bus pass, and then you using it to get to work, loaning it to co-workers to run errands while you're at work, going home and loaning it to a friend to get to get back and forth to his night shift job, and loaning it out on your days off as well. Or, you might say it's like putting a splitter on your cable connection, and running wires to your neighbors, and maybe even to a large screen TV in a public area. Or maybe like sending identical quintuplets in to eat, one at a time, at an "all you can eat" buffet.
Internet service providers have gotten away from early (mostly dial-up) charging based on usage, but their models are based on presumptions about average use by one household. If too many individuals push the envelope, their model to offer affordable service to the average consumer starts to break down. Metering usage adds costs, and they'd hope to avoid having to add those costs to mass-market broadband. I think they're in a quandry that has to be appreciated, and on the other hand they have gone ahead and advertised things like "unlimited" broadband.
Let's think of it in terms of the large majority of average users who have moderate needs for broadband at an affordable price. How do you serve the vast majority of users, without saddling them with the costs of a small number of users who use bandwidth approaching one or more magnitudes of order greater than average, or with costs of metering and monitoring to somehow handle those exceptional users? Is that more or less unfair in the net than trying to keep costs down by cracking down on the small number of people who try to push the envelope on the marketing offer of "unlimited"? |
