April 14th, 2008The argument for capped and metered broadband
What’s better, unlimited wired/wireless broadband access or pay by gigabyte? Here’s why I think you want to pay by gigabyte. There’s a few problems with the way we get access to the net.
One being the major providers of pipes are also significantly vertically integrated media and telco companies. Conflict of interest number 1 and not situation that will chance immediately (though greater competition and some enforcement of net neutrality could go a long way).
The second problem is the all-fixed costs model of offering unlimeted access. Which creates incentives for ISPs to sread their bandwidth as thinly as possible, shape, throttle and upgrade capacity as little as possible, if at all, once subscribers are safely subscribed.
By metering bandwidth the pipe-provider has incentive to offer as much effective bandwidth as possible to subscribers and to continually grow that pipe. Now the provider and the users incentives are aligned. The provider wants the user to be able to get as much value(bits) from the pipe as possible, which is exactly what the user wants too.
Why shouldn’t bandwidth be metered like electricity? a few cents a gig for wired access, a few dollars a gig for mobile wireless say. Would you go for it? Would you go for this plan if it cost the same or more as you are paying now but gave you much faster and unfettered access to whatever you want to use?
photo credit: mybloodyself
