All to the point, but I wanted to talk more about the 10 cents a gig figure mentioned above. I believe I was the first to use that number, a while back reporting on a wall street briefing by Tony Werner, and I’m glad it’s getting around. No one will speak on the record because it’s so political, but several with the real information said it was about right for then.

However, the 10 cents was the cost to the carrier, and I think there’s nothing wrong with a reasonable markup. The 1000% markup in almost all the capped plans is an absolute ripoff, but I’d make a point of saying 10 to 20 cents is about right. Adjusting that ten cents for Moore’s Law drops in bandwidth costs, a large carrier is paying 4-7 cents. (Small and rural a different story.) So 10 cents might be a little draconian.

The other implication of that 4-10 cent cost for a large carrier is that folks like Telstra mentioned above are ripping off their customers, and probably also the ISPs who muct by backhaul form them. That’s true of BT in Britain and Bell Canada, but I haven’t looked closely at Australia. 250 gig free (Comcast’s suggestion) is fair based on industry cost numbers (I’ve written the DSL industry news for a decade.) 5 gig (the now canceled Frontier plan. Thank you Om for the coverage) is off the wall, and Time Warner’s 40 gig is not about real bandwidth costs but rather a disguises price hike and attempt to prevent competitive video, based on everything I know about cable costs. db

>That last mile, so fraught! When I asked the data head end guy out
>here why the subscriber up/down speeds were asym, he said, People
>are asymmetric.
Yes, they generally are.

>6 down, 1 up. Crazy, especially when the segments at the zone
>level can dynamically allocate the backhaul to take advantage of
>idle or low usage at the subscriber switch side.
I’m not sure what you’re saying here. Operators don’t manage their
backhaul so tightly that they allocate bandwidth on a moment by moment basis.

>It’s all made up, this argument of scarcity. They have plenty of
>idle bandwidth in the terrestrial plants (cable), and they are just
>trying to set up the squeeze. DSL is a bit different, but not
>terribly so.
Work for an operator and you’ll know differently. The challenges around last mile for share technologies such as cable and wireless are real.

>There will be a new portfolio of wireless broadband ventures that
>will put the whammy on the incumbents when and if they start metering.
>Then we get our caps lifted.
Be my guest. Residential wireless broadband will always be magnitudes less than wireline technologies.

With metering the carriers might also be willing to raise their speeds since higher speeds does not necessarily mean greater consumption.

It seems that market forces are working very well here. As the demand for bandwidth has increased, providers can charge higher prices. The tiered pricing model seems fair to those who consume less bandwidth. Metering of bandwidth is also in line with my thought process as a proponent for metered pricing for high value SaaS (Software as a Service) offerings.

this is an opportunity for multiple biz apps…”

What do you mean by multiple biz apps?

Priceless!, but so true. As an Aussie ~$70US for 60GB then its 64k, its the undersea cable thats costs the money really as more data is offshore(from the US)you have to expect its going to start costing more.
The US has peering agreements ect ect but for any traffic abroad theres only one fast way to deliver it and that costs a bunch to maintain. Cables get broken all the time and the initial cost of deployment is massive. There is only one way it can remain affordable to deliver the bandwidth and that is for the providers investing in this rather then phat CEO paychecks. If they are generating the bandwidth they(Google, microshaft, Yahoo)should be assisting in the infrastructure deployment to help users gain access else USB drives are only going to get more popular and the advertising model WILL fail!.”
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First:
What the heck does USB have to do with ISP and internet access. Last time I checked that was a method on connecting devices to a PC. Outside of connectiong your modem to the pc via USB you still have to pay for the access from your modem to the net(WAN).
Second: Just becuase you would prefer to roll over and let your ISP’s take advantage of you doesn’t make it right. The ISP’s complain about infrastructure costing so much so before they build they get Govt. subsidies to pay for most of it. Then they pay their costs off for infrastructure and running cost and begin to build a profit, once it gets to the point that they have to expand they either buy another ISP we helped pay to startup. They know they cannot get the subsidies they did before so they turn predatory with their charges. Some people say it’s only fair they pass the cost off to their subscribers, but they do not do this. They change the pricing and reap even higher profits without adding infrastructure. Then when they build the infrastucture they advertise it as a totally new service and jack the price up yet again. This is akin to paying millions of dollars in taxes to build Highway’s and Interstates then waking up one day to find them all privatized into tolls. Thats fine that the toll pays for the cost of laying the highway but when the taxes paid the emminent domain prices and higher for property on which it is laid, then the drivers have a right to be upset.

It may yet be an eventual reality, but come on people, one single warning and suddenly the world comes crashing down around us?

Capitalism in the US now consists of a few big companies partitioning the country between them, and getting government buy-in to legislate against any newcomers. Not only that, but they can usually con the government into paying for most of their infrastructure, too.

It’s not capitalism, it’s corporatalism.

this is an opportunity for multiple biz apps…

create the next generation adblock+ app that not only allows the user to block ads (which saves cap/bandwidth), but it also calculates the actual amount of data/bytes that these ads consume.. massage the data.. make the data available to isps/businesses.. offer this app up to the isp for them to offer to their end users on a subscription basis.. let them roll the price into the monthly rates…

think biz opportunity here guys!!

peace..

WTF is going on over there?

Mind you, here in OZ we have metered already, but I get about 70GB (a mix of on and off peak) for $80 so maybe we’re not ones to talk.