[clug] Query re Transact costs.

[Martijn van Oosterhout]

On Fri, Nov 26, 2004 at 11:27:32PM +1100, Paul Hampson wrote:
> To my mind, the way to go is less quotaing, and more either pay as you
> go or unmetered Internet. Choosing between the various Quota/Price
> combinations is always a hassle, to my mind.

Like you say, saving up quota just presents an uncertainty for the
provider. After all, the ISP is paying for a fixed amount of bandwidth
irrespective of how much is actually used. The ISP doesn't actually
save any money by you using less. The whole point of the limits is to
stop people singlehandedly sucking up all of the ISPs available
bandwidth.

Ofcourse, all of this is only an issue because the ISPs overcommit the
bandwidth available by somewhere between 20 and 120 to 1. If they're
heavily overcommitted then only one in 100 customers would need to be
downloading all the time to completely use up all of the ISP's
bandwidth.

> TPG's recent 1.5Mbit unlimited ADSL plans will hopefully do interesting
> things to the Internet market. I'm hoping the "here's some quota, but
> we'll punish you if you overshoot it, and you get nothing if you
> undershoot it" plans will give way to more straight-line plans (think
> cost VS usage. ^_^)

It'll get cheaper probably, the question is how much. The standard plan
in holland is currently around EUR27 (AU$45) for 416/160 (pretty much
the slowest available) totally unlimited (no it doesn't slow down after
some threshold either). You pay the ADSL provider (KPN, like Telstra)
seperately from the ISP (yes, two bills). The raw ADSL cost is EUR20
(AU$33) and the plan cost is EUR 7.

Hope the parentheses didn't confuse you all :)

Have a nice day,
-- 
Martijn van Oosterhout   <kleptog at svana.org>   http://svana.org/kleptog/
> Patent. n. Genius is 5% inspiration and 95% perspiration. A patent is a
> tool for doing 5% of the work and then sitting around waiting for someone
> else to do the other 95% so you can sue them.
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