An Attempt at Economically Rational Pricing: Time Warner Trial

Alex Rubenstein alex at corp.nac.net
Sun Jan 20 20:02:15 UTC 2008


> > As long as the companies convince people that the "cap" is large
> > enough to be essentially the same as unmetered then most people
won't
> > care and will take the savings.    

I don't agree.

When we sold boatloads of dialup in the mid to late 90's, people did not
like caps, no matter how high they were. We sold a product early on for
$20/month which gave you 240 hours/month -- that was an average of 8
hours/day. However, most users never used more than 20 to 30 minutes a
day -- but we often got told they were moving to other providers because
they were 'unlimited.'

So, we adapted.

In any event, I've been watching this thread, and I'd have to say that
going down the road of metered pricing will only cause other providers
not to do this, and then market against TW. In fact, I'd bet on it. 

Am I the only one here who thinks that the major portion of the cost of
having a customer is *not* the bandwidth they use?




More information about the NANOG mailing list