More Sidgemore on per-bit pricing

dirk at power.net dirk at power.net
Sun Dec 6 01:29:49 UTC 1998


Well, if you ever want to download DVD's or (HD DVD's in the future)
in anything approaching realtime or less then we need some way to
make 10-100Mbit pipes into homes economical.

Current high bandwidth pricing ($100K/month or so for OC3 Internet
connectivity) is just ridicuolous and in no way related to the 
value that is created for the customer (you can argue that point
since some people are paying...)

Computers have gotten faster by a factor of x over the last n years
yet bandwidth costs have hardly changed in the last 10 years. This is
despite the fact that the capacity of fiber already in the ground
keeps increasing by leaps and bounds. Somehow this problems needs
to be solved.

If some sort of usage based pricing doesn't do it then we'll have to
wait for super high speed, auto configuring wirelss networking in
each PC. Everybody has a 100Mbit connection to all PC's within
"earshot". The higher the local computer density, the higher the
available bandwidth (with some upper limit of course based on how
much frequency space gets allocated to this). Problem solved,
phone companies roll over and dies.

Dirk


On Sat, Dec 05, 1998 at 04:06:30PM -0800, Michael P. Lyle wrote:
> One notable thing about per-bit pricing, as well, is that once one
> provider really rolls it out and pushes it at a low cost, it's bound
> to become a surety.  Suddenly the provider with per-bit billing will
> be able to steal all of the low-usage customers, while leaving the
> expensive near-saturation customers at other providers... effectively
> raising their cost per DS1...  
> 
> As to the merits of per-bit pricing.. I could certainly see myself
> purchasing a lot more bandwidth if I could use it on demand, even
> with the possibility of someone deciding to smurf me.  And think of
> other positive effects-- there will be real economic forces urging
> customers of providers not to be smurf relays, etc.  
> 
> Mike
> 
> -- 
> Michael P. Lyle
> Senior Security Architecture Analyst
> Exodus Communications, Inc.
> icee at phoenix.lyle.org    <- PLAY
> mlyle at exodus.net         <- WORK



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