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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?"
Yet another "end-user" who doesn't realize what the ISPs are paying for bandwidth.
$50 or $60 per month for 6 or 8 or even 10 megabits/second downloads, and a couple megabits/second upload? That's incredibly cheap. Go price a dedicated T1 for your home. It will cost you, at the VERY least, $200/month. And that's if you live in a MAJOR metropolitan area. In most of the country, a full T1 would cost you around $700/month.
The entire ISP model is built on oversubscribing. That isn't going to change. There isn't enough bandwidth available to give everyone all the bandwidth they want all the time. It's not "screwing the customer", it's REALITY.