>Here's some food for thought. In Canada, there is >news that the Sympatico DSL provider is going to >charge based on the quantity of data transmitted/ >received. Apparently, other access providers will >follow suit in some fashion.
The way most providers would tend to implement this, it's going to suck tremendously for anyone who uses broadband because they need more than a modem (read: almost everyone). My guess is, there'll be no easy way to keep an eye on how much you're using, and no safeguard to prevent you going over your limit. IOW, it's a price gouge. Now, some might ask how this is different from the "per-minute" charges that voice telcos put on the line. The difference is that the telco pre-charges you line rental, but post-charges you for actual calls, and what's more, the basic pricing structure is made well-known at sign-up time, and is easily comprehensible by the average user. A typical broadband company is *currently* selling a fixed line rental and no bandwidth charges - what do they do with their existing customers? Change the contract? Kick them off and wait for them to sign up again? How do you expect an average user to monitor how much bandwidth they're using, when they like to teleconference, telecommute, and look at movie trailers before they see the real thing? The first thing they know, they're getting a bill from the cable company that's several times what they expected, and find they've been pre-charged the same amount for the following month too. I wonder if most people here realise how small 30GB per month actually is. Most users certainly don't. And 30GB per month is probably at the high end of what a domestic cable company will want to offer. I would put it as mid-range for a user's actual needs, especially given the broadband companies' advertising claims that would encourage the vision of a "media-enabled" Internet. If they bothered to use the traffic-shaping or QoS features they *should* already have in their network in an intelligent manner, they could simply start throttling users who are approaching their limits, effectively preventing them from exceeding the limits, while giving a cue that this is happening. This would be a great deal fairer on users, while still having the tiered price structure that I agree is necessary for them. It would also be a neat solution to the bandwidth-hog problem. >This news sucks for >those who work from home using interfaces such >as exceed or vnc. Alot of the data isn't real files >so much as graphical updates. As far as a network is concerned, graphics updates, software files, pr0n etc. are just packets. Lots of big packets. Online gaming is lots of small packets too. Don't expect an ISP to differentiate between them. >Just wondering >what more experienced/knowledgeable users >think about the end effect on users. If broadband wasn't an unregulated monopoly in many areas, they'd already have implemented a QoS system like the throttling I mentioned above. It's simply good customer service to protect the many ordinary users from the few bandwidth-hogs. The technology is most definitely there, it's just that corporates seem to forget how to use it. If something like this happened over here, we'd be off to the Office of Fair Trading or the Telecommunications Watchdog in arms. Right now, we simply have tiers based on line contention and overall bandwidth caps (set 24/7 at the modem) on most broadband ISPs, which is fine by me. -- -------------------------------------------------------------- from: Jonathan "Chromatix" Morton mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] (not for attachments) website: http://www.chromatix.uklinux.net/ geekcode: GCS$/E dpu(!) s:- a21 C+++ UL++ P L+++ E W+ N- o? K? w--- O-- M++$ V? PS PE- Y+ PGP++ t- 5- X- R !tv b++ DI+++ D G e+ h+ r++ y+(*) tagline: The key to knowledge is not to rely on people to teach you it. --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, mail [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the line: 'unsubscribe vnc-list' in the message BODY See also: http://www.uk.research.att.com/vnc/intouch.html ---------------------------------------------------------------------
