Bandwidth-related Payment

[Jonty]

Hello

(Boring background story ahead ) I was recently looking at mobile GPRS connections to the Internet and, to my surprise, I found that you could pay a fixed amount which was proportionate to the bandwidth used (e.g. x pence per megabyte), instead of paying a fixed subscription.

Anyway, do you think such a system would be useful for more conventional Internet connections? Say, for example, you could purchase an Internet connection from your provider. You would pay £x for the equipment and installation, and then you would be billed monthly/quarterly etc. purely for the amount of bandwidth used, rather than paying a fixed subscription. This would allow lighter users (those who merely use the Internet for checking their email and occasional browsing etc) to pay less, and those who place the most strain on the provider's systems (those who constantly downloading DivX movies, streamed media etc) would be charged more.

Would you prefer this kind of payment system? Or are you in the latter category, and so would end up being penalised? Your thoughts, if you please!

Kind Regards

 

[Deadmanwalking]

Depends as obvious the faster the connection u have the more bandwidth it takes just to say its alive if u know what i mean.
Liek on 56k it can only handle X amounf a second so its less then having some Phat pipe.

Or do u not mean mbps/kbps?

 

[Will]

I far prefer paying a flat fee. Paying for bandwidth worries me, and not because I'm a heavy bandwidth user, I just like peace of mind. And bear in mind you would be billed for a DOS attack against you.
I also think it would scare people new to broadband so much they just wouldn't bother. May flat fees last forever.

 

[Jonty]

Good points guys And I agree, flat rate fees do have their 'peace of mind' advantages. I was just interested that people were exploring other ways of paying for the net. Creativity is good

Kind Regards

 

[Tom]

Orange recently changed their gprs tariffs, you now get a heck of a lot more per month (and no i cant remember how much)!

 

[.Cask]

This might be a good idea for small or new starting ISPs. They could gamble that a smaller pipe would be sufficient for low bandwidth users that would be attracted to the service, which would offset the reduced profits. If everyone decided to download at the same time the service would grind to a halt though.

For bigger established ISPs I doubt it'd work so well. People would switch to the new pay-as-you-go if it was saving them money over the flat rate. That'd reduce profits for the company which can't really reduce it's pipe size due to the number of flat rate users. Cuts would have to come from things like customer service and future upgrades

I'm thinking more about home connections, don't know much about that mobile doodilly.

 

[Xavier]

Originally posted by Tom[SHOTTEH]
Orange recently changed their gprs tariffs, you now get a heck of a lot more per month (and no i cant remember how much)!

the base package went up from half a meg to 2mb