[...] Malik just posted a piece on the prices of wholesale Internet bandwidth specifically Om writes.. the wholesale Internet bandwidth that is sold to Internet services [...]

[...] to new data from research firm Telegeography, the global cost of wholesale bandwidth continues to drop. Among other findings, the report [...]

[...] Already we are seeing speed and data caps being instituted by these gatekeepers even though the wholesale rates for Internet bandwidth is dropping across the [...]

[...] Truth: Stock Hits $350 Sam Diaz: Trying to increase productivity? Send your employees home. GigaOm: Wholesale Internet Bandwidth Prices Keep Falling Photos: Messenger returns to Mercury Christopher Dawson: Google is your [...]

[...] Wholesale Internet Bandwidth Prices Keep Falling - GigaOM [...]

[...] (link) [...]

Thanks, this is really interesting.

What does metering have to do with the price per throughput?

Time Warner and Comcast are increasing their advertised (and even delivered) speeds while introducing metering, after all.

Decreased prices for backbone speeds doesn’t much affect last mile capacity, anyway.

Om, at the end it is following the exponential growth of performance/costs that Ray Kurzweil predicts for most technologies: doubling the capacity/$ every year. It is the equivalent of the Moore’s law applied to communications. Read more
(link)

hopefully this will trickle down to consumers at some point! Or am I just a lousy shopper?!

Is there a discount when you’re using many gigaE ports?

I can imagine companies like and google and youtube to use a few hundred of these ports in their datacentres.

and now from the US carriers, 10GigE’s are now down in the low-single digits to $4/mbps.

Hopefully, as prices go down, things will move away from prepaid mobile to prepaid mobile broadband.

I’d love to pay to not have a contract, but still be able to use my laptop in the airport or in a remote place where a cell signal is possible.

The funny thing is that as part of the overall costs of running a network the cost of IP-Transit are only very limited. Most of the money is in Capex. Given a good peering and transit mix and some careful oversubscription the cost of Transit per customer would be somewhere in the dollar per month range for most ISP’s. (Back of envelope, no hard calculation) Certainly for the likes of AT&T they are on the receiving end of most transit deals and do not pay for transit to others as they are a Tier 1 provider.

Actually come to think of it… dropping income from transit deals might drive the likes of AT&T to put the squeeze on customers to get more money on that end of the two-sided market.

Also have a look at this peering and transit explanation (yes, by me)
(link)

@John Thacker

But metering isn’t really about last mile capacity, that’s just the carriers’ Big Lie. Metering is a tool to keep profits high (keep consumer Internet access constant while carrier’s price falls) and make it harder for TV over Broadband to compete with TV over cable/satellite. That carriers are so determined to ration access to the Internet is surely one of the factors driving falling Internet access prices.

@Rudolf

You assume a level of integration within these companies that isn’t there. The last mile network people are just another customer to the backbone guys and the backbone guys are just an ISP they are forced to deal with to the last mile guys. The rates charged to the last mile guys are pretty arbitrary, as after all the backbone guys have a monopoly. The benefits of good peering deals are not passed on to the last mile guys — they’re used to offset the backbone O&M. By the same token, loss of peering revenue will not be passed directly on to the customer. Instead it will be reflected in a lower O&M budget. The customer will feel it in terms of reduced quality of service (reduced support, slower network upgrades, longer turnarounds on field service requests, etc.). Remember, at the corporate level; sales makes money, operations costs money.

To the commenter who wanted mobile broadband on a month to month basis. such a service exists and I use it. I have had it about two months so far and am very pleased. It costs $60 a month, no contract or deposite or anything. You can read about it at the following link
(link)

There is also info on DSL Reports just search their site for it.
Enjoy!

The fall in prices of IP transit reflects the reduction in costs of providing IP bandwidth and to a certain extent - at least in the US - increased competition, and thus, marginal pricing. The likelihood of this getting translated (proportionally) into retail broadband prices is low.

For a new broadband network (i.e. new access) - true in many developing countries that either have no copper or haven’t unbundled their local loop, Internet bandwidth contributes just about 20-30% of total cost; as content becomes more local, this proportion reduces further. Simultaneously, the cost of laying and/or upgrading last mile is going up.

It is a matter of time before backbone networks - even in over-supplied regions - run out of capacity and will need additional investments. At this point in time, about $5-8 billion is being invested in new submarine cable projects in Asia-Pac, Middle East, Africa, etc. Ten to twenty times more will be needed in enhancing access networks. Fixed rate, unlimited download packages cannot support such investments - undoubtedly, the cost of using Broadband in many markets incl. USA will go up in the next couple of years.

Om - In the list of ‘..the more well known IP Transit providers’ I find it iteresting that you leave of Sprint. Are you implying that Sprint is either not well known, or not an IP Transit provider? The answer to both should be no. Sprint, as a Tier 1 ISP should make your list as they even provide transit to some of the providers you listed. The point of your article though, is right on. Competition and comodity based nature of the IP Transit market will continue to drive prives lower.