Comments on: Metered Internet: The Death of Web Work?

By: NSK Nikolaos S. Karastathis

NSK Nikolaos S. Karastathis — Sun, 26 Oct 2008 00:48:17 +0000

In fact the bandwidth for my servers in datacentres is cheaper than what was being charged here by ISPs a few years ago, or even today in specific plans. Metered services can kill a technology, but not unmetering also has advantages: when ISPs advertise “unlimited” connections in fact what they mean is “you use it as long as we allow”, and when you go past an undefined limit you are considered a cost rather than a revenue. With metering you know, at least, that when you buy some GBs of usage you can use them all without any surprises. But when metering is used, the caps are usually so absurdedly low that everyone would prefer the “unlimited” connection even with the risk of surprises. Of course the perfect solution would be a truly unlimited connection without any surprises. But this cannot happen if one telco has a monopoly. The problem is one of free markets and competition: if we have lots of competing ISPs with no monopolies then the only limit will be technology and infrastructure itself. But if the market is dominated by a monopolist or if there is an oligopoly which colludes then there is little hope for the clients to get better service.

By: Gwinky

Gwinky — Mon, 04 Aug 2008 13:58:57 +0000

The people who left the last comments “big deal” are definitely part of the conspiracy. Does anyone know how much money gets sucked from all of us penny by penny, dollar by dollar? Does anyone remember what happens when you go over your cellphone minutes? I had a family medical emergency that ended up costing my family an extra $1000 in cell phone overage charges!!! Don’t think that we all won’t rely on the internet just as much in a few years!!!

By: friarminor

friarminor — Tue, 29 Jul 2008 01:46:11 +0000

That would be … brutal! I know some inet companies in Australia does this and it’s totally ridiculous. Why don’t they just stick to offering premium services for a fee and leave regular services as it is.

Best.
alain
Mor.ph

By: walter wimberly

walter wimberly — Sun, 27 Jul 2008 02:02:22 +0000

I think you will see people have to watch what they do. 5 or 10 gigs doesn’t sound like much, but it is, unless you spends lots of time downloading large files (P2P, videos, etc.).

We also might look at changing how we work to be more efficient. Instead of working with a browser based tool, we might use one that lets us work offline, then update at the end of the day, so less data is sent, etc.

By: brightshark

brightshark — Sat, 26 Jul 2008 07:59:41 +0000

Here on the southern tip of Africa, we’re paying around US$10 per gigabyte… and still South Africa is one of the largest communities on Facebook worldwide…

By: HeavyG

HeavyG — Thu, 24 Jul 2008 17:24:08 +0000

Ahh…reminds me of the 1980′s when I used to pay CompuServe $12.50 PER HOUR via a 1200 baud connection.

Those were the days.

I guess it is true what they say – what’s old is new again.

By: Jake

Jake — Wed, 23 Jul 2008 15:33:26 +0000

Wow, they would stand to make quite a bit of money, right? I thought online services were already well overpriced ($50 a month, generally), but I guess they want to jack them up even more. Whatever happened to the concept of having "Free Wifi" cities? Did the internet companies hose this plan down? The city I lived in, Fort Wayne, was supposedly working something out to have that within the next few years. Jake NoteScribe: Premier Note Software

By: Brian Carnell

Brian Carnell — Wed, 23 Jul 2008 02:37:28 +0000

Keonne is exactly right. If ATT goes forward with this all they’re going to do is piss of their customers and make them switch to something else. You can just see Verizon FIOS marketing folks with $$ in their heads.

I’m always amazed by folks like Dangerfield. Some of us a lot of bandwidth for routine reasons. My web browsing *alone* is easily >1gb per day of bandwidth. Everyday I download and additional 10-15gb of data related to personal websites I maintain.

I currently pay about $70/month for a 10mbs/2mbs plan and typically download around a terabyte a month. I can’t imagine paying $70/month for 30gb total bandwidth.

BTW, I’m always amazed that my cable company might get annoyed that I downloaded, say 1TB a month, but my hosted webserver is serving out about that much a month and I never come close to my bandwidth limit there even though the bandwidth portion of my bill is roughly equivalent to what my cable internet bill is.

By: David

David — Wed, 23 Jul 2008 00:26:06 +0000

Odd that we’re treating this like new, when there were plenty of ISPs with this model in the past. Granted, time-based connection fees were more popular, but it was certainly a pay-per-use scenario.

That model died out partly due to cable modems, but mostly due to the market.

Unfortunately, unlike dial-up ISPs, there are very few broadband providers in areas (if there’s a selection at all) and if competitors collude like this, consumers are left taking it or disconnecting.

If Verizon doesn’t hop on board, this pricing model will die when a very large chunk of users change providers.

I realize most consumers won’t know much about the limits, but if a competitor keeps an unlimited model, they’ll definitely advertise the hell out of it.

By: MEllybook

MEllybook — Tue, 22 Jul 2008 22:36:42 +0000

Here in Canada, the only decent internet provider allready has this plan, 30 bucks for 2GB bandwith. It’s the price I pay for a stable connection, but no youtube for me!

By: jshultz

jshultz — Tue, 22 Jul 2008 22:26:32 +0000

It’s funny (and sad) that the broadband carriers are moving to cell phone type plans and the cell phone carriers are moving to “all you can eat” plans.

By: Tara

Tara — Tue, 22 Jul 2008 22:18:12 +0000

This is a very big deal. A pay-per-use model would punish the big-bandwidth players like YouTube. Are you going to post pictures of your kid’s birthday party on Facebook if you have to pay extra for it? The socialization of the web would take a giant step backwards if bandwidth became an issue.

The ISPs are working towards a greedy cell phone-esque model. For the best article ever breaking down “freecomnomics” – the idea that bandwidth is very nearly free – check out this story from Wired. Once you grasp that, you see it’s all greed.

This affects far more than telecommuting. It would throw the web back to the stone age of low-graphic websites and hamstring the burgeoning video-based iteration of the web we’re all waiting for.

By: MLO

MLO — Tue, 22 Jul 2008 22:11:09 +0000

At what level are they talking about? If AT&T, Quest, and the other backbone providers charge for bandwidth amounts, well, that is just going to be handed off to end-users – and new companies will not be able to afford to offer uncapped usage.

The backbone is the issue here. It is getting clogged because we are not investing in infrastructure in the USA. Nope, too busy lining the pockets of criminal CEOs. (Think Enron and the former Global Crossing.)

By: Dangerfield

Dangerfield — Tue, 22 Jul 2008 21:56:56 +0000

$1 per Gb over the limit? And that’s going to kill you? How many Gb can you possibly use? I can only assume you mean Mb.

I don’t get it. I am in Australia and we don’t really have unlimited plans, I currently pay $70 a month for a 30gb business account. Expensive but I don’t think it’s going to bring the industry down.

By: Keonne

Keonne — Tue, 22 Jul 2008 21:47:28 +0000

Big Deal.

They’ve done this in the UK. What happened was a huge amount of non capped ISPs flooded the market and brought prices way down. Economics 101.

Case in point. When I first moved to the UK I was paying 60 GBP a month for capped internet (I forget where it was capped, but it was enough to stop me using bitorrent for awhile).

Two years later when I moved back to the US I had uncapped 7mbps internet, digital cable television, and a phone package for 50 GBP/month.

I hope this happens. Prices will fall. And more Americans will make the switch over to broadband.

Keonne

By: Jason

Jason — Tue, 22 Jul 2008 21:34:30 +0000

I don’t think web working would die, per se. In some EU countries, they pay by the kilobyte and they’re able to telecommute. I just think we’d have to be more selective on the type of work we do and would have to conserve bandwidth. OMG that sounds weird to say.