Broadband as a usage/metered , pay for what you use service

[RadiclDreamer]

Originally posted by: yuppiejr
What if we remove broadband from the discussion for a moment and talk about any other utility. It's obvious that a "pay for what you use" method is fair to all users and the utility provider when it comes to individual bills for gas, water, electricity, garbage/recycling pickup, etc... People who use more of these services pay more and there's really no argument that someone who uses 80,000 gallons of water in a month should pay the same as someone who uses 20,000 gallons.

The mindset that broadband providers should give their services away at a flat rate regardless of usage is nonsense. There is a very real and measurable cost to provide these services that can be fairly broken down into a "per unit" quantity to help figure out what people should be paying. People who can't see this for the most part represent the "mooching minority" who don't want to pay their fair share. Your home connection to the internet does not run on angel kisses and snowflakes - there are both significant capital investments (office/data center real-estate, hardware, cabling infrastructure, service vehicles, etc..) that have to be paid for as well as the ongoing costs to maintain and service the network (tech salaries, electricity, hardware maintenance, etc..).

Yeah and at the same time you dont have people hijacking your gas lines and installing gas stealing trojan devices. You also dont have your stove needing to do any self cleaning every 2 days (auto updates)

You also dont have to worry about your neighbor borrowing some gas because you dont know how to secure the pipes.

 

[adairusmc]

I propose charging $1 a mb for all torrent or other p2p traffic, and everything else can just be an unlimted plan.

 

[So]

Originally posted by: yuppiejr

Originally posted by: ric1287

Originally posted by: yuppiejr
What if we remove broadband from the discussion for a moment and talk about any other utility. It's obvious that a "pay for what you use" method is fair to all users and the utility provider when it comes to individual bills for gas, water, electricity, garbage/recycling pickup, etc... People who use more of these services pay more and there's really no argument that someone who uses 80,000 gallons of water in a month should pay the same as someone who uses 20,000 gallons.

The mindset that broadband providers should give their services away at a flat rate regardless of usage is nonsense. There is a very real and measurable cost to provide these services that can be fairly broken down into a "per unit" quantity to help figure out what people should be paying. People who can't see this for the most part represent the "mooching minority" who don't want to pay their fair share. Your home connection to the internet does not run on angel kisses and snowflakes - there are both significant capital investments (office/data center real-estate, hardware, cabling infrastructure, service vehicles, etc..) that have to be paid for as well as the ongoing costs to maintain and service the network (tech salaries, electricity, hardware maintenance, etc..).

except that the ISP's won't calculate the cost fairly. The low end user will be paying the same, while they get more money from people who actually use the service.

If a grandma uses <200mb a month checking her email, do you really think an ISP will charge her $5? Not a chance in hell.

You assume much.
When I buy cable TV packages I have options that start with $9.99 "basic" or I can go with the $150 a month / 600 channels + HD and premium channels package. I'm sure they can come up with a price that would accommodate a variety of service tiers and options just like they've been pricing cable TV for years.

My garbage collection has 3 tiers of pricing - even if I only toss out a shoebox worth of trash in a week I still have to pay for the minimum tier of service that covers up to 40 gallons of disposal. Again, there's a minimum cost to provide garbage service - and then add to that the actual "usage costs" that get tiered by quantity of usage. In broadband I don't think it's unreasonable to charge a "starting" rate to everyone for basic network access (say $20 a month with the most basic speed/data usage tier) and then put people on a sliding scale based on what speed tier and data transfer cap they select.

You're lucky. Cable around here starts around $50 per month.

 

[ric1287]

Originally posted by: yuppiejr

Originally posted by: ric1287

Originally posted by: yuppiejr
What if we remove broadband from the discussion for a moment and talk about any other utility. It's obvious that a "pay for what you use" method is fair to all users and the utility provider when it comes to individual bills for gas, water, electricity, garbage/recycling pickup, etc... People who use more of these services pay more and there's really no argument that someone who uses 80,000 gallons of water in a month should pay the same as someone who uses 20,000 gallons.

The mindset that broadband providers should give their services away at a flat rate regardless of usage is nonsense. There is a very real and measurable cost to provide these services that can be fairly broken down into a "per unit" quantity to help figure out what people should be paying. People who can't see this for the most part represent the "mooching minority" who don't want to pay their fair share. Your home connection to the internet does not run on angel kisses and snowflakes - there are both significant capital investments (office/data center real-estate, hardware, cabling infrastructure, service vehicles, etc..) that have to be paid for as well as the ongoing costs to maintain and service the network (tech salaries, electricity, hardware maintenance, etc..).

except that the ISP's won't calculate the cost fairly. The low end user will be paying the same, while they get more money from people who actually use the service.

If a grandma uses <200mb a month checking her email, do you really think an ISP will charge her $5? Not a chance in hell.

You assume much.
When I buy cable TV packages I have options that start with $9.99 "basic" or I can go with the $150 a month / 600 channels + HD and premium channels package. I'm sure they can come up with a price that would accommodate a variety of service tiers and options just like they've been pricing cable TV for years.

My garbage collection has 3 tiers of pricing - even if I only toss out a shoebox worth of trash in a week I still have to pay for the minimum tier of service that covers up to 40 gallons of disposal. Again, there's a minimum cost to provide garbage service - and then add to that the actual "usage costs" that get tiered by quantity of usage. In broadband I don't think it's unreasonable to charge a "starting" rate to everyone for basic network access (say $20 a month with the most basic speed/data usage tier) and then put people on a sliding scale based on what speed tier and data transfer cap they select.

Not when your/ISP's argument is that this will "benefit everyone", its a load of BS. All it will do is raise the costs for people who use the internet for things other than email and everybody else will pay the same rate. More money for the ISP, no change for average user.

It will also give ISP's reason to not upgrade shitty infrastructure: if there is now less strain on the system because of $200 bills to users, why bother investing/upgrading in new tech. IMO, this is a step backwards in terms of media. Say goodbye to every form of streaming media unless you enjoy paying hundreds for "metered" internet.

As was said earlier, decrease my speed not my limit. I'm fine with a 3mb line, I could care less about a 16mb line that runs at that speed 5% of the time.

 

[Brainonska511]

Originally posted by: adairusmc
I propose charging $1 a mb for all torrent or other p2p traffic, and everything else can just be an unlimted plan.

Or just stop advertising "unlimited" services, place a reasonable cap on the level of service and anything over that you charge a reasonable amount per GB over. Since when is it the ISP's business to know how I'm using their service? If they don't want to put the money into infrastructure improvements, they shouldn't b1tch when people are actually using their service and it overburdens the ISP.

Competition would certainly help this entire situation. Cablevision (OptimumOnline) had fairly mediocre service until Verizon started rolling out fiber in my area. At that point, Cablevision began to offer more "TriplePlay" deals and increase the speeds of the internet service they offered.

 

[DrPizza]

Originally posted by: So

Originally posted by: DrPizza

Originally posted by: scttgrd
So I guess we could drop everyone back down to 1mbit service and go from there. If we are being discouraged from actually using the connection for the broadband services available then why the hell have it. Having metered internet would cause alot of people to give up there service, that first bill would send most back to dialup. This simply will not improve the service or lower the cost, so what's the point?

See, I really think the concept of broadband is just like water supply. Imagine if supplying water to a city were a new concept. The pressure in the lines is low, and it just sort of trickled out of your showerhead. God forbid someone flush the toilet at the same time you're taking a shower. Then, the city got better equipment, ran better lines, etc., and could offer higher pressure to you.

Essentially, the service you get with the water is much higher pressure - you can download much more water in a short amount of time. If you need to fill the bathtub, it'll take a fraction of the amount of time. That water is available to you 24/7. And, originally, there weren't water meters - you simply paid to have the water connected to your house.

Unfortunately, the entitlement people think that it means they have the right to have the water on 24/7. They can fill their swimming pool on Monday, swim for 2 or 3 days, drain the water & refill it on Thursday.

And, that's exactly what people seem to think with broadband - just because it's available 24/7, they should be able to download and upload at the maximum rate possible the entire time.

Your metaphor is broken, since unlike water, assuming that the ISP builds enough bandwidth to provide all their customers with the promised service under normal conditions, the customer SHOULD be able to keep all the taps open at full, 24/7.

So, the water company provides enough water that all their customers can open all their taps, 24/7??? There really isn't much of a difference. You're promised water will be available to you 24 hours a day, 7 days a week at the pressure that you need. That doesn't mean that they should have to upgrade their system simply to accomodate leaches. And, it doesn't mean that the people who abuse the system shouldn't pay more than the people who use the typical person.

 

[Journer]

ill be broke :'(

 

[aldamon]

Originally posted by: DrPizza

Unfortunately, the entitlement people

Why is this such a buzzword for ISP shills? I say the ISPs are entitled to nothing. Fine. Fuck it. Let's all start at $0 or a minimum $10 fee on our bills like most other utilities and pay per GB. I may pay more but I don't care any more. My water company doesn't charge me $45 in advance. Hell, my natural gas provider paid to install everything and they don't charge me $45 in advance 12 months a year. How about that? The ISPs would change their tune quickly. 95% of their user base would actually be charged fairly. People would be rewarded for conserving bandwidth. This is 100% BS. All we have to hope for is a cap war, which is only inevitable.

 

[Modelworks]

I think a lot of the usage is going to be from all the streaming services that are starting up . From the ISP perspective I can understand the problems. There is Xbox, PS3, WII, Netflix, Amazon, Blockbuster, all are adding streaming more and more. The amount of streaming content has doubled in only 1 year. There is no way that the current backbones can handle the load. My biggest gripe is all the content that I will be forced to download, spam, pop up ads, etc. Just like having to pay for someone calling your cell phone, when you didn't want to accept the calls.

I think the only way I would be agreeable to it is if they added a tag to every single byte. In that byte put if it is prepaid or not. If the spammer wants to send me something then they have to prepay the bandwidth cost. It would be the ISP job to police those who don't follow the rules .

Doing it any other way would be like the post office charging you to deliver your mail every single day.

If I want to use something I will pay for it, but don't charge me for something I didn't want.

 

[SpanishFry]

1. Porn

2. What happens when regular people everywhere end up with 4 figure internet bills because a stranger logged onto their open Wifi??

 

[SpanishFry]

Now that I think about it, these are the major players in the consumers' side:

1. Porn industry - without a doubt, the inventors of the internet and all subsequent advances. These people invented HD, don't even try to deny their multitude of Jew scientists on staff to come up with this shit.

2. Apple - yeah, iTunes store, streaming, you get it.

3. Netflix - see streaming

 

[SparkyJJO]

I don't see how they could implement it, the web is so vast and people's browsing habits so diverse you can't really create packages too well, and it would stunt the growth of new sites.

 

[TheVrolok]

I'm not a huge fan of it because I use a lot of bandwidth. However, I do think it's going to happen no matter what, and I'll just have to pay a bit more for my usage. Oh well.

 

[DrPizza]

Originally posted by: aldamon

Originally posted by: DrPizza

Unfortunately, the entitlement people

Why is this such a buzzword for ISP shills? I say the ISPs are entitled to nothing. Fine. Fuck it. Let's all start at $0 or a minimum $10 fee on our bills like most other utilities and pay per GB. I may pay more but I don't care any more. My water company doesn't charge me $45 in advance. Hell, my natural gas provider paid to install everything and they don't charge me $45 in advance 12 months a year. How about that? The ISPs would change their tune quickly. 95% of their user base would actually be charged fairly. People would be rewarded for conserving bandwidth. This is 100% BS. All we have to hope for is a cap war, which is only inevitable.

I'm far from an ISP shill... I personally hate the choice I have for ISP's. And, I'm not saying that many people are leaches on the system, although as a tech forum, this place has a disproportionate number of them. I don't mean the people who download 50GB in a month, but there have been people here bragging about 100's of GB's in a month, while protesting that their ISP is slapping them down, and they should be allowed to download that much if they want to because that's "what they're paying for." And, it ISN'T what they're paying for.

 

[SpanishFry]

Originally posted by: DrPizza

Originally posted by: aldamon

Originally posted by: DrPizza

Unfortunately, the entitlement people

Why is this such a buzzword for ISP shills? I say the ISPs are entitled to nothing. Fine. Fuck it. Let's all start at $0 or a minimum $10 fee on our bills like most other utilities and pay per GB. I may pay more but I don't care any more. My water company doesn't charge me $45 in advance. Hell, my natural gas provider paid to install everything and they don't charge me $45 in advance 12 months a year. How about that? The ISPs would change their tune quickly. 95% of their user base would actually be charged fairly. People would be rewarded for conserving bandwidth. This is 100% BS. All we have to hope for is a cap war, which is only inevitable.

I'm far from an ISP shill... I personally hate the choice I have for ISP's. And, I'm not saying that many people are leaches on the system, although as a tech forum, this place has a disproportionate number of them. I don't mean the people who download 50GB in a month, but there have been people here bragging about 100's of GB's in a month, while protesting that their ISP is slapping them down, and they should be allowed to download that much if they want to because that's "what they're paying for." And, it ISN'T what they're paying for.

any recommended programs for capturing wha you use in a month? it'd be interesting to know and have a poll on ATOT after a month to get an idea of general usage.

 

[her209]

If I'm going to be paying by the byte, I better damn receive a per connection/packet detailed bill.

 

[spidey07]

Originally posted by: TheVrolok
I'm not a huge fan of it because I use a lot of bandwidth. However, I do think it's going to happen no matter what, and I'll just have to pay a bit more for my usage. Oh well.

Yeah, it's going to happen but it will take a few more years. The all you can eat model at the current pricing just doesn't work especially since total bandwidth usage on average doubles in under 24 months.

The growth is huge but the current consumer pricing model can't work with this kind of growth. No provider can just forklift upgrade all their gear every two years. Greenfield installations aren't much of a problem but every network is constantly undergoing upgrades to try to meet the growth.

And it's totally insane to expect that the network should be built so that every customer can suck as much as they want. All networks (well there are a few that aren't) are over subscribed everywhere.

 

[spidey07]

Originally posted by: her209
If I'm going to be paying by the byte, I better damn receive a per connection/packet detailed bill.

That isn't hard to do actually and there are products now that can offer that detail. However your bill would be 10s of thousands of pages.

 

[Modelworks]

Originally posted by: SpanishFry


any recommended programs for capturing wha you use in a month? it'd be interesting to know and have a poll on ATOT after a month to get an idea of general usage.

I have been using this one for a bit and it seems to be the most full featured and free.
http://ispmonitor.be/be-en/software/#downloads

 

[her209]

Originally posted by: spidey07

Originally posted by: her209
If I'm going to be paying by the byte, I better damn receive a per connection/packet detailed bill.

That isn't hard to do actually and there are products now that can offer that detail. However your bill would be 10s of thousands of pages.

[Monte Burns] Excellent.

In other news, traffic to porn sites have dropped by 90%.

 

[JeffreyLebowski]

Originally posted by: vi edit

Originally posted by: rivan
I don't like it. I move photoshop files between my home and work at a couple hundred megs each every night/couple nights and my guess is that I'd be in the losing end of this.

A $10 flash drive would solve that and would likely be quicker.

My biggest concern is that the low bandwith users are subsidizing the network as it currently stands. Grandma and Grandpa...hell even me at 6 gig of data a month for $50 are covering the costs of the 100+ gig power users.

I highly doubt I'd ever see a price reduction based on my low useage. But if I could get service to the house for a $10 "hookup" fee, and then pay say...$1 a gig after that I'd be all for it. And it would be cheaper for a large number of subscribers.

But I just don't see that as financially viable for the ISP.

So then should home phone service be charged a tier rate for local calls? Ma and Pa that only use the phone once a month to call the fire dept to get the cat out of the tree are paying the same as Jills parents down the street, and Jill is on the phone all day long with her bff in high school.

If I go to the auto car wash, should the civic drive pay less to get his car washed than the pick up truck driver? The civic is smaller and needs less water to clean it.

 

[Anubis]

Originally posted by: adairusmc
I propose charging $1 a mb for all torrent or other p2p traffic, and everything else can just be an unlimted plan.

so people would have to pay a couple grand to download free linux destro ISOs?