Goodbye to a flat rate for broadband?

[erol]

Originally Posted by TheMole

Well, individuals who dump x amount of rubbish have to pay to dispose of it at the local tip, whereas us that dispose the odd bag get it for free. Heavy users of anything are always charged more. For example, why do I pay £50 more than your average person for my mobile phone contract? Because I use it heavily.

When you use things more than everyone else you expect to pay more. This is not an ideal world, remember!

Because the cost of dealing with rubbish (or providing water) is incremental on usage.

If it cost the same to deal with any amount of rubbish (or provide water) then such incremental charges on such important services would be madness.

[erol]

Originally Posted by andygrif

I'm coming into this discussion a little late, but the thread did make interesting reading.

np. good to have you here

Originally Posted by andygrif

However, important as the internet is (and as much as I hate these silly analogies which bear no relation to a unique product, e.g cars) they did it with water meters, and water is a matter is a matter of life and death.

as above, the cost of providing water _is_ incremental on usage. The argument with modern packet based digital networks is that it is not.

Originally Posted by andygrif

Another angle is that internet providers buy bandwidth based on useage. However, why is this? If I am an ISp and I pay for 1TB link, surely I should be negotiating a price based on using the 1TB, not if I use half of it. If it is good enough for the ISP's to charge their customers on this bases, why don't they negotiate the same deal with their providers?

Almost all transit bandwidth bought by ISP's is not paid for by usage. They pay a flat rate for a certain size of connection, regardless of how much they use it. Why is that ? Because almost all of the cost of such bandwidth are fixed, regardless of usage

Originally Posted by andygrif

I think the bottom line for most people can be summed up pretty easily - neither for nor against, as long as it works well and doesn't cost any more a month.

I would like to see both options available to users. Pay for MS's used and flat rate. Both are commercialy viable.

[erol]

Originally Posted by TheMole

So you think all users should pay the same? From the old boy who collects his email every day to the warez kids who saturate their upstream all day?

As I have said many times before I would like to see both options available (that is pay for usage and flat rate)

What I do not want to see is _no_ flat rate options available.

[orangebird]

Originally Posted by ianathuth

NTL are a major telephony provider, call 18866 are not, they just buy carriage from major suppliers. I would assume that call 18866 make a profit out of their international calls so what must NTL be making and why the differential in the NTL prices of 20p per minute and 5p per minute for the same call.
<snip>

Who do you think has to make enough money to afford salaries and maintenance of the phone network??

[ian@huth]

If you consider the internet to be a vital service that everyone must have then where do you put all those people who are not currently internet users? Cable systems in particular do not have unlimited scope for expansion of the user base. Where does the vast amount of money required to maintain, improve and increase the capacity of the network come from. It can only come from increased prices paid by users or by putting more users on the existing system and controlling (capping) their usage. If the networks continue to have low, fixed priced subscriptions then they will eventually be subject to congestion so severe that the service is unusable. On top of all that there is also the problem of some users wanting even more and more bandwidth.

[ian@huth]

Originally Posted by orangebird

Who do you think has to make enough money to afford salaries and maintenance of the phone network??

The phone network owners of course who also have to cover R&D and other costs and then generate a profit. But that does not explain the disparity between charging 5p and 20p for the same thing and how they can sell carriage to suppliers such as call 18866 who can resell it for 1p and still make a profit. I cannot see that they are selling that carriage at below cost price.

Originally Posted by erol

Because the cost of dealing with rubbish (or providing water) is incremental on usage.

If it cost the same to deal with any amount of rubbish (or provide water) then such incremental charges on such important services would be madness.

So it costs the same to transfer 10TB a day as it does 1TB a day? If so, please email me which data carrier you are using and I will sign up my employers with them straight away!

Data carriage still costs a pretty penny. :/

[lincsat]

FWIW, As the NTL newsservers are Virtually non-existant (for Binaries anyway) I do pay by the GB for premium newsgroup access, Astraweb in my case.

[erol]

Originally Posted by TheMole

So it costs the same to transfer 10TB a day as it does 1TB a day? If so, please email me which data carrier you are using and I will sign up my employers with them straight away!

Data carriage still costs a pretty penny. :/

Transfer from where to where ?

If it is from point to point and the volumes are that high, then it may well be sensible renting,leasing or even laying some fibre (lit or unlit in the leasing rental case). If you went down this route then usage would not figure, just the capacity of the fibre you rent. All fixed cost you see.

If you are saying that they transfer 10TB per day onto and or off of the internet then I would have to ask what they are doing ? Without knowing what they are doing it is hard to offer any input.

[Dingbat]

Originally Posted by ianathuth

The phone network owners of course who also have to cover R&D and other costs and then generate a profit. But that does not explain the disparity between charging 5p and 20p for the same thing and how they can sell carriage to suppliers such as call 18866 who can resell it for 1p and still make a profit. I cannot see that they are selling that carriage at below cost price.

They're not selling below cost price, just renting out spare capacity in their vastly over-sized international links which are still there, partly as a result of the massive expansion in the 90s.

And as for the price disparity, most telcos, like most businesses, will try to maximise revenue by pricing at what the market will stand rather than cost-based pricing (ie cost plus overhead plus a little profit). As little companies like 18866 have such low overheads, they can afford to charge rock-bottom prices.

[erol]

This thread and the discussions prompted me to try and write an 'essay' about the 'old' and 'new' worlds of telecomms.

It is not finished but is just a draft and very much a 'work in progress'. It totaly peters out towards the end, due to fatigue. However I offer a link to it here none the less in the chance that it might be considered interesting to some.

A warning however if 'essays' are not to your tastes then it most definately is not for you

http://www.visionmatters.co.uk/oldandnew.htm

[ian@huth]

Originally Posted by Dingbat

They're not selling below cost price, just renting out spare capacity in their vastly over-sized international links which are still there, partly as a result of the massive expansion in the 90s.

And as for the price disparity, most telcos, like most businesses, will try to maximise revenue by pricing at what the market will stand rather than cost-based pricing (ie cost plus overhead plus a little profit). As little companies like 18866 have such low overheads, they can afford to charge rock-bottom prices.

Companies price as you point out because in general the British public lets them. They do not look for the best deals, they prefer the safety of staying with those they know. Look at the gas and electricity supply position and how many people have not changed suppliers even though they know that they could save money by doing so. It's not that people don't know about changing suppliers, there are enough knocks on the door from different suppliers trying to get your business. There is quite often a lot of talk about things being cheaper in the USA. One of the reasons for this is the American mentality towards saving money. Shop in any American supermarket and the locals are all pulling wads of money saving coupons out. Americans by and large will not allow companies to make excessive profits and vote with their feet if they think they are paying too much.

[ian@huth]

There is an interesting article called "The contentious debate on peer-to-peer management" at http://www.adslguide.org.uk/

There is a point made in this article that bargain price products may come onto the market to woo the light users. If light users take up these services it could leave traditional fixed price ISPs with mainly the high bandwidth users and it would be financially unviable to run the service with just those.