Slashdot Mirror
What Kind of Alternate Business Models Could ISPs Use?
esocid writes "After reading multiple stories over the past few months about the practices of ISPs within and outside of the US I have started to actually contemplate the benefits of the pay-per-use broadband service. Monopolistic practices have strangled broadband to the throttled money-draining cesspool that it is today. Would a pay-per-use option, or some other strategy, be better than the flat fee offered by companies today? When you think about it you are paying for an XMbps connection, when in actuality you get an 65-85%XMbps connection that you may or may not use all of the time. In addition to that, speaking as a Comcast customer, you get a throttled connection that limits your usage of certain protocols. Essentially you pay about $60-70 for a connection that you only squeeze maybe $35-45 worth of usage out of it. If a pay-per-usage option were implemented, how do you think the best way to charge for it would be? Is there some other scheme that would deliver customers the kind of QOS and value they seek?"
Promising what they don't deliver fscks up Adam Smith's invisible hand.
If that's true, then Smith's hand has been bitten off by a lying doberman. Have you seen the Visa commercials where the guy with cash slows down the line, instead of the other way around like the real world? Where "We build excitement" is Pontiac's way of saying the brakes are shit and the handling's worse? Where Chevy's "like a rock" means it won't start? Where the hamburger on the screen never looks anything like the hamburger in the box? Where "your mileage may vary (MAY???)? Where Microsoft "innovates" (somehow or another, nobody's ever pointed me to a MS innovation yet)?
Today's corporations are, without exception, run by liars, thieves, and con artists intent on sucking the government's teat while railing against welfare for the poor. You don't run a big corporation unless you are a lying sociopath without morals or scruples or a shred of human decency.
I would dearly love to be wrong. But I'm not.
mcgrew's razor: Never attribute to stupidity that which can be explained by greedy self-interest