On 8/21/07, Steven Alligood <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > The issue here isn't what services should or should not be open, but > what makes the company providing the service money, and what looses them > money. > > Say they charge $30/month for the cable modem service. After > infrastructure costs (helpdesk, installation, fiber runs, routers, > servers, etc) and bandwidth costs, what is left is profit. You cannot > change most of the infrastructure costs, but you can affect how much > bandwidth people use. Add to this the need to stay competitive and > constantly show users that you allow them tons more than their > competitors, and at the same time not wanting any user to cost you more > than you make. > > It is true that most users do not come anywhere near the limits, but the > 5% that do cost a lot of money. > > Example. > > Suppose that Internet bandwidth costs $20/megabit. Now suppose that > your top 5% bandwidth users mostly are using torrents (or any peer to > peer), and averaging 6 megabits of traffic each. That becomes > $120/month of cost, whereas they only make $10/month on that customer. > Sure, the other 2000 customers on that router blade combined are only > averaging 20 megabits (together) and the company overall makes money. > Now put pressure on the CEO to make even more profit, and where can it > be found? Again, the top 5% of the customers, each of which can be > charged more (profit) or restricted to lower bandwidth (lower expenses) > or annoyed enough to leave (lower expenses). Even worse is if they have > to add another router to handle the traffic on that particular hub, and > they will be even more inclined to let the peer to peer users go away. > > > -Steve > > > Clint Savage wrote: > > My friend Christer Edwards posted an article about how he is getting > > the shaft when it comes to torrent traffic. He's just sharing his > > torrents for Ubuntu. I disagree with Comcast charging him for his > > bittorent traffic as if its not appropriate. There are a lot of > > reasons we need to keep them from doing this, but I think Christer's > > article says it best. > > > > > /* > PLUG: http://plug.org, #utah on irc.freenode.net > Unsubscribe: http://plug.org/mailman/options/plug > Don't fear the penguin. > */ > >
Not to agree or disagree, but bandwidth costs money. As worthy a cause it still costs money. Maybe xmission has a better approach. Give a cap. Once the cap is used up, allow the customer to purchase more. Then it really doesn't matter what the customer, to a certain point, is doing with their connection. Stephen PS I don't like comcast anyways, they cut my fiber, :/ /* PLUG: http://plug.org, #utah on irc.freenode.net Unsubscribe: http://plug.org/mailman/options/plug Don't fear the penguin. */
