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Preventing Broadband Price-Gouging?

Posted by Cliff on from the combating-digital-inflation dept.

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?

1 of 400 comments (clear)

  1. RCN in San Francisco Bay Area by linuxlover · · Score: 5, Informative

    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.