[clug] Query re Transact costs.

[Alex Satrapa]

On 26 Nov 2004, at 21:52, Paul Wayper wrote:

> You know, if ISPs had some sort of saving system, where you got to 
> keep your unused quota for future months, or gave you a discount on 
> your next month if you used less than your quota this month, it'd make 
> a lot of sense.

That doesn't really make sense. The "GB quota" system is really another 
way of expressing "% utilisation". In the old old days, you'd buy data 
lines at a certain speed with a certain level of utilisation (eg: 
9600bps at 30% utilisation).

If an ISP is paying $1500/month per Mbps, their number jugglers might 
decide that this translates to $3/GB per month for each customer. Their 
"GB quota" system would then reflect that calculation - the price per 
month then becomes cost of provision plus cost of traffic plus profit 
margin (which these days is very small or negative).

The ISPs providing "unmetered" access are betting their profit margins 
on having enough people who use little or none of the available 
bandwidth to compensate for all the people who use it all. From what 
I've heard, once an ISP has over 1000 subscribers this bandwidth game 
will work. The hard part is building the customer base when your 
wholesale ADSL costs more than other ISPs are offering unlimited plans 
for. Good ol' tiered pricing. But that's another story for another 
time.

Anyway, I've got to get those Samba/LDAP notes finished up to be 
published next week...

Alex