Comcast/etc....

[Bradley Miller]

At 12:19 PM 1/25/02 -0600, JD Runyan wrote:
>I don't totally disagree with your idea, but your commodity analogy is
flawed.
>Bandwidth is not a consumable like gasoline, electricity, food, etc.  It is 
>more like a highway.  When it rush hour, more people are on the highway, thus
>traffic moves slower.  During the day, fewer people are on the highway,
and thus 
>traffic can move at more rapid speed.  The road does not go away, nor does
it change
>in some way, because it is more heavily used.  Neither does bandwidth go
away, it just
>offers less speed when their are more users.  When I receive 4MB of data
from some 
>site on the Internet, I do not consume 4MB of bandwidth that cannot be
regained.  I 
>only use some portion of the bandwidth for a fixed amount of time, and then 
>return it unchanged.  A more accurate analogy would be a car lease.  You
lease
>a car over a certain time, and you have a mileage limit.  If you go over
that limit
>you then pay a premium for that overage.  You could look at us leasing the
Internet
>connection, and they could monitor the transfer volumes, and then charge a
premium
>for those that go over.  

Very good point.  But as in car leases, you can pick what you drive.   If
you pick a Metro to lease, it's not going to have the same costs as a
Porsche.  Likewise, if you pick a Metro you are going to accept the fact
that you are only going to be able to go about, say 95-100 mph.  Meanwhile
you can crank that Porsche to 150++ mph.  

I think the "pay for overage" model would be easier to adopt.  I say this
as I stream MP3's via Shoutcast to my PC and download them to harddrive.  ;-)

-- Bradley Miller