[ NNSquad ] Re: Canada goes crazy

[Rahul Tongia <tongia@cmu.edu>]

I am writing from India, which has some of the cheapest DSL (and
mobiles) in the world - low barriers to entry = good.  DSL usage is
capped.  As long as the cap is high enough to be fair, and the
*incremental costs* reflect *true network scarcity* then why not?  If
these are just marketing and media/content driven, that it becomes
problematic.

Let's assume an ISP says average consumption is X GB/month.  Say they
want (using the Canadian example) about $1/GB over-usage.  Would they
be willing to offer me a rebate/discount of the same $/1GB as I
decrease my usage?

If we go back to a model of telecom costs I published a few years back
at TRPC (splitting costs, roughly, into Hardware & S/W (one time),
Installation/other one-time (incl. marketing), maintenance and
operations, and uplinking (transit/bandwidth).  Hardware can be cheap
(esp. assuming the physical pipe is available ala DSL or cable).
Transit isn't much more (on *average* reported to be a few
dollars/month in the US only thanks to the beauty of stat muxing).

Again, would I still be eligible for the same level of rebate?  Else,
would this not prove that the over-usage charges are just arbitrary or
driven by deeper marketing calculations?

Rahul

On Fri, May 7, 2010 at 9:30 PM, Bob Frankston
<Bob19-0501@bobf.frankston.com> wrote:
> Can you give me a guide to buying Data SIMs in Europe? I did manage to
> succeed in Istanbul and almost in Amsterdam. Does anyone have a summary of
> all the info I'd need for traveling around the world?
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: nnsquad-bounces+nnsquad=bobf.frankston.com@nnsquad.org
> [mailto:nnsquad-bounces+nnsquad=bobf.frankston.com@nnsquad.org] On Behalf Of
> Markus Peuhkuri
> Sent: Friday, May 07, 2010 10:58
> To: nnsquad@nnsquad.org
> Subject: [ NNSquad ] Re: Canada goes crazy
>
> Nuno Garcia wrote:
>> We have seen the opposite trend here in Portugal (and Europe in
>> general), users were invoiced for how much traffic they would consume,
>> and now, most ISPs charge a flat rate. Exceptions are the mobile
>> operators that still charge by the byte.
> And in Northern Europe flat rate for mobile data is the standard. You
> can get also either per-MB pay or then some fixed amount, but those are
> not significantly cheaper per month than flat rate (starting 10€/month
> for "384kbit/s").
>
> Consumers just like that you pay fixed amount each mont and have no
> surprises. Only exception being roaming data that is still very
> expensive (was 0.15€/50 kB or so when visited Switzerland), where one
> may get very large bills. But there is coming in force regulation that
> the bill may not exceed some amount without notifying user.
>
>
> t. Markus
>
>
>