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?"

Comments

Re:Very simple solution

[electrictroy]

I agree, but I think you listed your ratios backwards?

Rather than throttle P2P, youtube.com, or itunes.com, Comcast should identify their customers who downloads terabytes of information, impose a limit on those people, and then tell them, "If you go over 100 gigabytes, you will need to pay $100 a month to gain unlimited downloads." i.e. a Tier system:

$15 == 20 gig
$30 == 50 gig
$45 == 100 gig
$100 == unlimted

The more you desire to download, the more you will have to pay. Vice-versa, the less you download (me), the less you have to pay. That is entirely fair to charge customers based upon actual usage.

Re:first post

[electrictroy]

There IS a good car analogy, but you're not going to like it. Buy a Ferrari that gets 20mpg and drive 1000 miles a week. You're going to pay more because you guzzle more. Vice-versa buy the same Ferrari but only drive it once-in-a-while; maybe 10 miles a week. You're going to pay less because you guzzle less.

Internet should work the same way. The more you guzzle, the more you pay. The less you guzzle, the less you pay.
Like so:

$15 == 20 gig
$30 == 50 gig
$45 == 100 gig
$100 == unlimted

That is entirely fair to charge customers based upon actual usage. And a FAR better solution than throttling P2P, youtube.com, or itunes.com.