Open Media?

[Jason Carson]

> Jason Carson wrote:
>> But that aside I still don`t want to have to pay by the byte. I run my
>> own
>> email server and personal web page on my DSL connection and although I
>> don`t have a large amount of traffic to the site or a large volume of
>> email. The little traffic I do get would now cost me money.
>>
> Actually, usage based billing has a lot in favour of it.  With flat rate
> billing, the light user is subsidizing the heavy user.  Why should
> someone who only reads a bit of email and does a bit of surfing pay as
> much as someone who's constantly downloading large files, videos etc.
> Perhaps a better way would be to have a separate connection fee, well
> below what we currently pay and then pick from a selection of data block
> sizes.

I guess I would have to see what the rates are before I support that
business model. The big downloads I have are Linux ISO's and game updates.
Both of which don't happen all that often but I wouldn't want to be hit
with a big bill for downloading them.

>It would also allow over use at fees that, if encountered
> frequently, would encourage one to go for the next size up.  Throughout
> the history of telecom, usage based billing has been far more common
> than flat rate.  Flat rate local phones have been pretty much unique to
> North America and other packet based networks, such as X.25, frame
> relay, ATM were typically usage based billing.  However, if the ISPs
> decide to charge UBB on top of what we currently pay, then we'd
> certainly have cause to complain.
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