Preventing Broadband Price-Gouging?

Wrighter the Pessimist asks: "I've been seeing a lot of stories recently about cable modem companies raising rates and baby bells winning monopolies on broadband. It seems that indeed cable companies are already raising rates, or will be in the near future. Shouldn't broadband be getting cheaper, with improvements in technology? Or has demand already surpassed the capability? Or, have the monopolies just decided to give themselves a raise? What can we as consumers do to prevent prices from going sky high?" The first article mentions the need for higher pricing for users who tend to use more than their fair share of the bandwidth. The second article is about AT&T raising its rates, which is not news to many Slashdot readers, I'm sure. I would think that in situations like this, that a tiered pricing approach might be better than applying a flat rate. Think you are going to be a high bandwidth user? Pay a fair price to your upstream. Web and e-mail only? Pay less. So do you think the current trend in broadband pricing is fair, or are broadband providers pricing themselves out of the market?

Comments

Said it before...

[Nidhogg]

1. I would think that in situations like this, that a tiered pricing approach might be better than applying a flat rate.

But it's not.

Even if you ignore the technical aspects of monitoring bandwidth usage and tying it to individual accounts you then run into the business cost overhead increase of changing your billing method.

Which is easier and/or cheaper? Flat-rate billing all of your customers regardless of bandwidth usage or doing it as they suggest and charging the bandwidth pigs extra?

As the overhead goes up that cost gets passed along to the customers as well.

Well, the answer is quite obvious

[Anomolous Cow Herd]

Consumers can't really do squat about price gouging. Sorry to disappoint you.

OK, I'm not being 100% truthful. In a free market system, prices are tied to demand. The higher the demand, the higher the price. However, I didn't mention the one way out of this because it would involve sacrifice, which seems to be a foreign concept to most of Slashdot's readership. That's right, kids, you'd have to boycott broadband and live with 56k until enough people dropped the services that the providers would be forced to lower rates to attract people back.

There really isn't any other way to deal with "gouging", except to pass more laws and create more government bureaucracy in an ill-concieved attempt to implement price controls. This is obviously a bad idea, so basically it boils down to "if you don't like it, don't buy it."

AT&T is raising upstream bandwidth!!

[SlashChick]

I'd like to quote this message I received from AT&T Customer Care regarding higher upload speeds on AT&T Broadband. I was concerned about the 128K upload cap.

Take a look at this:

Hello! Welcome to the Online Customer Support Center for AT&T Broadband service. A message from a customer care specialist should appear in the chat window shortly. Your session ID # is 2142439.
In-Kevin Roberts has joined this session!
In-Kevin Roberts says, Hello and thank you for contacting AT&T Broadband. My
name is Kevin & I'll be glad to assist you today. I see you have a question regarding higher upload speed . Can you please give me a little more detail ?
You say, Is there a service plan which provides me with greater upload speeds
than 128k?
In-Kevin Roberts says, Yes, AT&T broadband is coming up with higher upload speed.
You say, when will this be available?
In-Kevin Roberts says, This will happen anytime between May 2002 to December 2002.
You say, what is the pricing?
In-Kevin Roberts says, The pricing will be the same.
You say, what will be the new speed?
In-Kevin Roberts says, The new speed will be 256kbps.

So, to appease cable modem customers, AT&T is rolling out more bandwidth on the upstream side. If you'd like to confirm this, log in to AT&T member services and join a chat room of theirs -- that is what this transcript is from.

I hope this helps those of you who are concerned about higher prices. I, for one, am a very satisfied AT&T cable modem customer.

RCN in San Francisco Bay Area

[linuxlover]

I live in San Mateo (zip 94401) and I have RCN (http://www.rcn.com)
- cable tv
- broadband
- phone line
for about $80/month. No contracts!

All services are _great_. Trust me I know. I have been with AT&T and other DSL providers. By far RCN is far better. I only had to contact their customer service a couple of times at start and they were very knowledgeble. The average service rep knew about /sbin/ipconfig parameters! I was impressed. I had dealt with too many tech morons who would say 'sir we dont support Linux, or broadband will not work with Linux' :-)

Their upstream cap is around 700kbps (that cool compared to the 128kbps by AT&T and all other DSL providers). I get about 700-1500 kpbs downstream. I just use SSH but even if I ran a small FTP/webserver they are not that anal. I have LimeWire running and people have been downloading stuff off me @ crazy speeds (e.g 100 kBps, yes with a capital B). I don't share any illegal crap, just typical opensource programs and some copylefted MP3s.

If you are in the same area, please consider these guys.