Fair Use Policy

Jimmy Hess mysidia at gmail.com
Thu Aug 23 00:41:52 UTC 2012


On 8/22/12, Bacon Zombie <baconzombie at gmail.com> wrote:
> I how you are talking about 3G or there is a typo.
> An ISP with a 5GB cap that is charging the end user more then 5$ total
> {including line rental} a month should not be allow to operate.

I don't believe $5 even covers an ISP's typical cost of having a line,
let alone getting data through it, maintaining, supporting it, and
providing upstream networking.  Last I checked you can't even buy
dial-up services from national ISPs for that low a price,  before the
per-Hour usage charges,  and those require simpler less-costly
infrastructure to maintain for the ISP.

With residential broadband, if there is not a heavy degree of
oversubscription,  the ISP will either go broke, or the cost of
residential service will be so high that the average person would not
buy it.   "I want my line speed 24x7"  is a technical argument,  it is
a numbers game, and  the average subscriber does not make that
argument,  or at least,  rather, the
average res. subscriber is not willing to bear the actual cost
required to actually pay
what it would cost their ISP to satisfy that  for every user trying to
utilize so much.

Why should the end users who transfer less than 1GB a month, with only
basic web surfing, have to suffer periods of less-than-excellent
network performance  or pay increasing costs to subsidize the purchase
of additional capacity for users at the same service level expecting
to use 100GB a month?

There is a certain degree of fairness there.

Even if   the metric is wrong --  the idea of metering bytes
transferred is broken,
because it does not positively reinforce the good behavior.

It's like trying to reduce congestion during rush hour on the freeway
by imposing a  "40 miles of travel per day"  limit  on each vehicle
owner.

That gives no benefit for those effected by the limit to adjust what
time of day they travel those 40 miles,  however.

A  "X=10 gigabyte per  4 hours"   rolling average  limit  would make more sense.


Where "X"  is varied,  based on the actual congestion of the network between
other users of the same service level.

> And if your infrastructure and handle 25% at a minimum maxing out their
> connect them don't advertise " unlimited " since you can't provide it and
> it is false advertising.

There's no such thing as unlimited, period.    Even if the provider wanted to,
there will be some physical limits.

I agree the use of the word is confusing... when they say unlimited
what they are
often indicating is  "You are not  limited  by the provider in the
number of hours a day you can be connected to the service".

> The world would be a better place if ISPs that either throttled, cut off or
> added on extra charges to the end users bill were fined to hell for false
> advertising and repeat offenders were named and shamed on a public website.
[snip]

There might be no residential ISPs left

--
-JH




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