The Great Exchange

Thu May 28 14:14:17 UTC 1998

On Thu, May 28, 1998 at 03:19:26AM +0000, Michael Shields wrote:
> Until I can make a one-hour call from DC to Moscow for the same price,
> or even a similar price, as a one-hour call to New York, it's not
> equitable that I can ftp for the same price.

Which resource is it that you are pre-empting, Michael, when you FTP
that file?

Circuit switching (TASI notwithstanding) and packet switching have
different scarcity, and therefore pricing, models.

> Could be.  I think the economic basis is there; I just don't know if
> it's strong enough to overcome customers' love of flat-rate.

I think that it is not, and I don't think it's worth it to a whole
bunch of people to buy three times as much router CPU to do the work.

> Probably it will never make market sense to have distance-sensitive
> traffic pricing for "low-speed" users, where the cost of providing the
> service is mostly the cost of tech support, billing, dialin or xDSL
> aggregation, &c., and bandwidth is a small proportion of the cost.

With current trends, will the actual bandwidth _ever_ be more than a
small fraction of the cost?  Except _maybe_ on trans-oceanic lines...
and bet on that situation to get better, not worse, as well.

Cheers,
-- jra
-- 
Jay R. Ashworth                                                jra at baylink.com
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