An Attempt at Economically Rational Pricing: Time Warner Trial
Mark Foster
blakjak at blakjak.net
Sun Jan 20 20:03:32 UTC 2008
On Sun, 20 Jan 2008, Buhrmaster, Gary wrote:
>
>
>> My guess is the market will work this out. As soon as it's implemented,
>> you'll see AT&T commercials in that town slamming cable and saying how DSL
>> is "really unlimited".
>
> If I were the DSL companies, I would consider advertising
> with a commercial recalling the fable of the tortoise and
> the hare. You see a starting line, the rabbit jumps out
> early (8mb/s), and then crawls forward (64kb/s). The
> turtle starts a little slower (3mb/s), but just keeps
> going, beating the rabbit easily.
>
... except that for the majority of users, the length of the racecourse is
well and truly within the sprinting distance of the rabbit.
Guys, this isn't exactly a new idea if you include parts of the world
outside of the USA.
For example, on my residential DSL service i've used 4.7G this month. With
1/3 of the month left, I have more than half of my self-selected 10Gig cap
available. (And I grabbed at least two CD ISO's the other day.)
The model works. What remains to be seen is whether it's actually
feasible in a market where truly flat-rate services are hitting the market
at margins where they can barely pay for themselves.
Mark.
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