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What are the chances of "pay by the byte" internet?

techs

techs

Lifer
Inspired by the telecoms cutting off users who exceed a secret bandwith limit.
Is "pay by the byte" internet billing the goal of the telecoms?
 
that is how it used to be , back in the '90's , before AOL introduced "unlimited" dial up internet, eveyone paid by how much they used

😕
 
Originally posted by: FoBoT
that is how it used to be , back in the '90's , before AOL introduced "unlimited" dial up internet, eveyone paid by how much they used

😕
Click to expand...

Do you think the telecoms will force us back into that scenario?
 
Originally posted by: FoBoT
that is how it used to be , back in the '90's , before AOL introduced "unlimited" dial up internet, eveyone paid by how much they used

😕
Click to expand...

it was by how often they used, not how much... it was hours of logged in time. aol also wasnt "online" unless you opened their ie browser inside their software. most crap you saw in aol was in their own little world, not on the actual web.
 
i think it depends on competition

ISP's started offering unlimited service due to competition
AOL was growing and growing and unlimited service was a marketing tool to get people to switch to them

as long as people have choices of ISP's, i think unlimited service will be available/the standard
 
If they do I'm going to be suing for all the ads I have to download. I'm not paying for someone to send me an ad.
 
Originally posted by: FoBoT
that is how it used to be , back in the '90's , before AOL introduced "unlimited" dial up internet, eveyone paid by how much they used

😕
Click to expand...

AOL introduced it like Al Gore invented the internet. AOL was one of the last to adopt all you can eat pricing, they got forced into it because everyone else had it already and their customers were leaving in droves.
 
It will be really hard for this happen because the moment one or two companies try to make this move you will see tons and tons of their current customers canceling their service in favor of another ISP which is still offering unlimited even at a lower speed. At best, they will move to having a plan which has a limited amount of "bytes per month" which costs the same as the current all you can eat plans as well as another plan which is still all you can eat but it costs more. I hope this doesn't happen though. 🙁
 
Originally posted by: FoBoT
i think it depends on competition

ISP's started offering unlimited service due to competition
AOL was growing and growing and unlimited service was a marketing tool to get people to switch to them

as long as people have choices of ISP's, i think unlimited service will be available/the standard
Click to expand...

I agree that competition prevents shifts to inferior service, but there are a few exceptions I can think of.
1) A number of mergers results in only a few big players (even fewer than the few choices that there are now, like say only one provider in some regions), but antitrust laws will hopefully prevent monopolistic control, and I'd say provider coverage is only increasing, not decreasing, leading to more competitors per region.
2) Some form of legislation fundamentally changing the economic landscape of ISPs, like net neutrality. This is certainly a possibility
3) Bandwidth demands exceed supply, causing rationing and stricter caps, eventually paying per byte becomes more economic for casual internet users. For this to happen, the number of users multiplied by the average consumption would have to out pace improvements in transmission/routing protocols, transmission media (copper vs fiber), and availability (# of lines per region). I don't particularly see this as happening, unless some new form of bandwidth intensive data arises that everyone has to have.
 
Originally posted by: nonameo
It won't happen. People will quit using the internet so much if it does. I know I would.
Click to expand...

This is also true most likely. So much money will be lost by so many businesses if unlimited access becomes less common.
 
Time Warner is currently running a trial of pay per usage in a Texas.

http://apple.slashdot.org/arti...02/05/1322213&from=rss

What really bothers me about this is TW provides on demand TV/Movie/Music content. So does Apple with iTunes, Neflix & other services. Going pay per usage would make using anything but TW's VOD service absurdly expensive. That's a conflict of interest & anti-competitive. Also, what about the people that use almost no bandwidth because they just check their e-mail. Are they going to get a significant discount on their service? I highly doubt it.

Since they're able to identify the 5% of the users that are using 50% of their network's bandwidth, charge those 5% on how much they burn up and leave the rest as is.
 
Doesn't seem too ridiculous if it's merely an alternative. Would make sense for mom and dad users who only use it for email and casual surfing if it'll lower their costs. I kind of see it as prepaid cellphones
 
It's going there. There will still be all you can eat plans but they'll cost more. The most likely model is a 95 percentile charge like a burstable service. This allows providers to build super high speeds and accurately engineer their traffic.

When a small percentage of the customers are consuming most of the resources but not generating any more revenue something is very wrong.
 
Originally posted by: elmer92413
If they do I'm going to be suing for all the ads I have to download. I'm not paying for someone to send me an ad.
Click to expand...
Do you have cable TV? About 25% of the timeslot for a show is devoted to commercials. Pay $50/month? $12.50 of that is so that you can have the privilege of watching ads.

Yes, you can timeshift through some of it, but you can't get past product placement, or those damned animated logos that take up more and more of the screen while advertising some crappy show on the network.



Originally posted by: Kaervak
Time Warner is currently running a trial of pay per usage in a Texas.

http://apple.slashdot.org/arti...02/05/1322213&from=rss

What really bothers me about this is TW provides on demand TV/Movie/Music content. So does Apple with iTunes, Neflix & other services. Going pay per usage would make using anything but TW's VOD service absurdly expensive. That's a conflict of interest & anti-competitive. Also, what about the people that use almost no bandwidth because they just check their e-mail. Are they going to get a significant discount on their service? I highly doubt it.

Since they're able to identify the 5% of the users that are using 50% of their network's bandwidth, charge those 5% on how much they burn up and leave the rest as is.
Click to expand...
Interesting point. It sounds like it goes against net neutrality.
 
Very high for some people and I am glad to see these people are getting what they deserve now. They started it and it went back around to them.
 
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