MFS WorldCom/WilTel/LDDS

Thu Aug 29 04:37:20 UTC 1996

Tim Salo writes...
> 
[...]
> The easiest point to measure traffic is undoubtedly on the link between
> the customer and its ISP.  I believe that many ISPs are already
> measuring the total amount of traffic into and out of each customer.
> I even saw a complicated pricing formula from one ISP which added a
> surcharge cor customers which passed a lot of traffic over the last time
> period (some number of months, I seem to recall). So, at least at one point,
> we already have at least one example of an ISP which had a component
> of its pricing based on the amount of traffic transferred over a 
> dedicated connection.

Metered pricing is already a reality with at least a couple of
providers that I know of.  Interestingly enough, I switched primary
providers a few months ago because my provider at the time was
switching from a flat rate scheme to a metered one.  The end result
was that at my current usage level, my monthly rate would more than
double.

I'm not exactly sure what conclusions you can draw from this, so I'll
just stop now.
-- 
Matt Ranney - mjr at eit.com

This is how I sign all my messages.