It sounds to me like Cogent is "cherry-picking" the customers that are easy (low cost) to service, leaving others to pick up the more difficult (high cost) to service customers. If all ISPs did this, we could expect to see access charges that varied (more widely) based on how much any particular customer cost to service. What we have now works more like (but not exactly like) the original phone company's "universal service" approach, where it was believed that there was a public service benefit to getting *everyone* onto the network, and so rates were kept the same no matter how difficult a particular customer was to service.
Its somewhat disingenuous to claim that Cogent is "smarter" than other ISPs because of the fact that they picked a business model that "games" the system in a fashion that wouldn't work well if everyone else did it, too. To me, their approach is akin to that of a person who thinks that they are brilliant because they find a way to cut to the front of a line, not realizing that everyone else knew *how* to do that but chose not to because it would cause chaos. I don't know if this is really what Cogent is up to, but if it is I don't have much use for them (not that they care what I think).
Any rule-based system can be "gamed," but that doesn't make the person/organization doing the gaming "smart," it makes them anti-social. Of course, the anti-social folks will disagree with me.
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It sounds to me like Cogent is "cherry-picking" the customers that are easy (low cost) to service, leaving others to pick up the more difficult (high cost) to service customers. If all ISPs did this, we could expect to see access charges that varied (more widely) based on how much any particular customer cost to service. What we have now works more like (but not exactly like) the original phone company's "universal service" approach, where it was believed that there was a public service benefit to getting *everyone* onto the network, and so rates were kept the same no matter how difficult a particular customer was to service.
Its somewhat disingenuous to claim that Cogent is "smarter" than other ISPs because of the fact that they picked a business model that "games" the system in a fashion that wouldn't work well if everyone else did it, too. To me, their approach is akin to that of a person who thinks that they are brilliant because they find a way to cut to the front of a line, not realizing that everyone else knew *how* to do that but chose not to because it would cause chaos. I don't know if this is really what Cogent is up to, but if it is I don't have much use for them (not that they care what I think).
Any rule-based system can be "gamed," but that doesn't make the person/organization doing the gaming "smart," it makes them anti-social. Of course, the anti-social folks will disagree with me.