The Great Exchange

Thu May 28 04:07:57 UTC 1998

In message <980527212537.aafa at SDG.DRA.COM>, Sean Donelan writes:
>>I think it's a North American view of the world, unsurprising on NANOG
>>:-) Traffic metering is the dominant charging mechanism for permanent
>>connections in Oz and Connect differentiate traffic based on its
>>source (domestic/cache/external).
>
>Hasn't a price war just broken out in Australia, with the dominant
>feature being the introduction of flat-rate pricing?

i guess that there is always a 'price war'.  it is called
market forces.

as far as flat-rate pricing -- yes -- the two largest retail
ISPs have introduced flat-rate-pricing, as a precursor to AOL
entering the australian marketplace with fixed pricing per month.
typically,

there have been smaller ISPs already offering flat-rate,
however the largest players now offering it is something new.

this is an entirely different issue to traffic metering of WHOLESALE
capacity - which is what the rest of this thread was about.
all of the large providers who offer wholesale capacity, with
national networks across australia, do so in some kind of form of
$x per megabyte.  some do news traffic cheaper, proxy traffic cheaper,
proxy hits cheaper and other variations.

cheers,

lincoln.