How is it 'messing about'? It's merely paying for what you use. Currently I pay €35 for my 6mbps. No matter if I use 0GB a month, or 1TB a month, I pay the same. That's awesome if I frequently consume 1TB a month. Not so awesome if I only use 1GB a month. If I'm a lightweight user, I'm effectively being taxed to pay for the folks using 1TB. What part of that is fair?
Originally Posted by Agent
Another point I was making earlier - there could be both options, alternatively get a cheaper package (possibly capped) it's not like anyone is forcing you to pay that. As I've said before some people need to download a lot for what they do so what you said would be turned around - why should people have to lose a fair share of their income because they need to download stuff?? It also goes back to the water analogy - if you don't have a meter you always pay the same - what about neighbours who have a giant swimming pool and take 5 baths a day (yeah unlikely but so is 1TBpm)?
If downloading lots of stuff is part of their livelihood then their pay/expenses should reflect that. Again, other users shouldn't be taxed to pay for bandwidth hogs.
No they shouldn't, which is why ISPs offer more than one plan - some for light users (less than a tenner a month from a lot of ISPs), some for heavy users - you choose one based on how much you use it, if you're a light user it's a bit of a daft move to choose an expensive plan... Anyway I'm getting seriously bored of this debate so I'm gonna remove it from my subsciptions so don't expect a reply...
But as said, why do they "need" to download a lot?
What if someone "needs" to eat more, or they "need" to drink more etc.
Going back to the pool argument it sounds very much like your in favor of usage based charging?
When people pay a flat fee, they pay for the RISK on top of what they are EXPECTED to use.
So if you where a little old dear, who browsed the web only to go to church on sundays, using 1GB a month, for the past 8 years, and 1 GB cost 10p, odds are her monthly bill would be well in excess of £1, because she *might* use more, and they can't afford a loss in her flat fee plan. Where as on meter'd she would just be 10p + service fee (which if wireless, is likely to be free, same thing as we saw with PAYG mobiles....)
Now thats not to say the contract market dosen't better tailour to a heavy user. As a result you get network priority at peak times, and on my web n walk, it would cost me a LOT more each month on PAYG.
Actually the more i think about it, the more I wounder why I didn't bring in a PAYG analogy a lot sooner. Yes they are plenty of PAYG users paying £20 a month who would be better on a contract, but there are plenty of old grannies (like my last surviving one) who pay about 50p.
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OK I just noticed this on the main page so one more reply - the point I was making about the swimming pool is that no-one, to my knowledge, minds if a neighbour fills a pool, even though they are getting better value for money than the rest of the street or whatever. I kind of agree with this PAYG internet to a certain extent, but only as long as it's alongside existing plans (just like mobile phones) and not if it meant prices shot up for pay monthly plans. Yeah, you do pay for the risk but IMO it's nice to know you'll pay the same regardless for example if you wanted to download a game or something which on a PAYG plan might cost a bomb. It's also nice to get (sometimes huge - most for new games are way over 2GB) demos first but on a PAYG plan you might just go ahead and get the full game which might be crap, just because you didn't want to have to pay for extra bandwidth.
So instead of paying 10p for the demo or whatever, you pay £35 for a potentially crappy game?
You still pay for downloading the demo with flat fees. The point you're missing is, even if you don't download the demo, you're still paying for it.
Hmm you're not really understanding my point, I don't really know how to make it clearer than I like the idea of knowing I'll pay the same regardless of what I download. That's all...
The reason why 'PAYG' usage typically cost more than contract calls, is because PAYG users are, again, effectively taxed to make heavy usage contracts cheaper. The issue isn't that PAYG usage costs the carrier more to support, it's that they're getting screwed for the benefit of 'better clientèle'.
The problem is, when you move the same principle to ISPs is, the majority of light-moderate users are getting shafted for a minority of bandwidth gluttons. And unlike contract mobile phones, the minority of bandwidth gluttons aren't pulling their weight, they don't pay anything if they exceed 600 gigabytes.
I understand you'd be more comfortable with being able to download as much p0rn as you'd like all day long and not have to pay more for it. But it's ultimately unrealistic, and unfair on the users who don't gobble up bandwidth.
OK, this is getting silly; aidanjt, you're merely being insulting for no reason. Leave aside the fact that there's a healthy dollop of unsupported assumption in your reasoning reagrding mobile pricing models (I don't suppose it occurs to you, for instance, that contract customers provide a predictable income which helps when you're doing your financial planning, will typically use less than their minutes, which means that they're probably overpaying by comparison with PAYG customers, and if they exceed their inclusive minutes will be paying per minute anyway?), you (and Phage) still haven't answered the point that flat rate access plans incorporating a FUP effectively eliminate the heavy user's ability to use more than their fair share of bandwidth anyway. If they have a FUP allowing 10GB per month, and hit that in the first few days of the month, then get limited to, say 256kbps thereafter, they don't have the ability to take any more than that, do they? So they physically can't take more than their "fair share". And if they don't like being throttled, then they pay for a package with a greater FUP allowance - a greater "fair share", if you will. How is that unfair? The FUP can, of course be a regular daily allowance before throttling - pay more, get a bigger daily allowance, but you still only get your "fair share". You don't get completely cut off, you still pay a flat rate per month, but you don't get a disproportionate amount of usage.
watercooled (06-10-2009)
That's just immature really isn't it??
And FYI I doubt I exceed the bandwidth what's offered on cheap packages most months but, again, it's good to know I can download more if I need to without having to pay more - new Linux distros I want to try, for example or new game demos/games.
Another point I was trying to make - there is more than one flat-rate package available - if you download very little then get a cheapo <£10pm deal or if you want more+unlimited access you pay more. I also fail to see why that's unfair...
I'm at a loss to see why you consider that paying for a commodity by the amount you use is unfair? If you use twice as much electricity as your neighbour, you pay twice as much for it. Similarly with gas, or fuel for your car. Bandwidth is also a resource - why shoudl you not pay more if you consume more?
As I said earlier, the Zen/mobile phone model may be the way things go - you pay a rflat rate for your connection which has an inclusive allowance, and once that allowance is used, you pay by the unit of data downloaded - be that per byte, megabyte or Gigabyte. Megabyte probably gives the right degree of granularity.
And guys, lets keep personalities out of it! Its a good debate, and I wouldn't want to see it closed unnecessarily - and let's lighten up a bit on sensitivity - I'm sure many of the comments are said tongue in cheek - keep thegoing!
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My broadband speed - 750 Meganibbles/minute
Read what nichomach said - that's pretty much what I'm trying to say.
Edit: sorry I changed that after peterb posted.
Last edited by watercooled; 06-10-2009 at 11:40 PM.
Well, electricity is in a sense unlimited - particularly if you take wind power as an the source. In fact that is quite a close analogy.
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Only if one were to assume that one's leccy came exclusively from renewable rather than consumable sources - and we are so far off that ever being true (renewables provide a vanishingly small proportion) that it really breaks the analogy pretty effectively
It is a close-ish analogy but with electricity it's a bit different - if it were free people would draw massive amounts and massively overwhelm the grid. With Internet, it's in a way free now (in that you don't pay for how much you use) and it copes just fine - people don't all download at the same time. Like what I said before - it's not broken so don't fix it. They say they are doing it to get more money to improve the network but they've managed alright up to now haven't they? So yeah there are more people using it so more equipment is needed but because more people are subscribed that means there's more money to do it with. I fail to see why he thinks his statement makes sense - it doesn't to me...
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