Pay-As-You-Use High-Speed Internet?

Fri May 14 22:53:33 UTC 2004

James,

> I'd rather keep paying more for unmetered service rather than pay by the
> byte. I can host a popular site for a couple months, download a few cds,
> upgrade all of my machines, without having to worry about explaining to
> my wife why my monthly bill has doubled or tripled.
> 
> For $850 a month, I have an unmetered T1. Though I usually only use
> 15-20 gigabytes a month, on some months I can quadruple that.
But I'm talking about using T3 connections to serve a building or an area.
> 
> Basically, with metered service, first I'd become paranoid about usage,
> then increasingly unhappy as time passed. I'd be very unsatisfied with
> myself as I turned away projects like gnuarch because I didn't know how
> much it would cost me to host them. Then, I'd become infuriated at you
> for charging me for bandwidth that I didn't want in the first place --
> spams, web based ads, so forth and so on.
As for turning away projects - you wouldn't have to. You can set a limit 
of how much you want to pay and buy bandwidth up to that limit. Also, 
the market fluctuates as the supply/demand goes up and down.

As for spam, etc., nobody said that you had to download it from your 
ISP's mailserver. However, I do see your point. To be perfectly honest 
with you, thats not one of the concerns that our current customers have.
> 
> I could just imagine saying to myself "I just downloaded the new Debian
> CD. My bastard of a provider just charged me five bucks"
That may be true - but also think about all the time that your *not* 
paying for the connection while your at work or out doing something else.
> 
> Though I pay a lot now, I know that whether I'm using 20 gigs a month,
> 80, or 400, the bill will remain the same predictable amount.
I agree with you that knowing what your bill is, is very nice. However, 
if you had a T3 plugged into your apartment building for mass 
consumption, that would be nicer, wouldn't it? :)

> 
> Now, if you want to sell me a T1 with a /28 for $600 a month (not
> including local loop) , and then each month offer me a $570 rebate 
> for the bandwidth that I don't use -- well, now we can talk!
> 
If we had facilities where you are, then i'm sure it wouldn't be a 
problem - but we wouldn't have to give you a rebate, as we wouldn't 
charge it to you in the first place :)

-- Jonathan

-- 
Jonathan M. Slivko
Network Operations Center
Invisible Hand Networks, Inc.
help at invisiblehand.net
1-866-MERKATO (USA)
1-812-355-5908 (Intl)
<http://www.invisiblehand.net>