The cost to the provider is irrelevant to the consumer. Cost to the consumer is all the consumer should be concerned with. Competition, industry and media would serve as the barometer to sensible or ridiculous pricing. There are a myriad of ways to measure usage. I'm not sure there are any certifications for any other billing relating to the Internet, so why start now? (My ISP doesn't charge for usage and I don't intend to until the industry makes that shift. I'm just debating this side.) ----- Mike Hammett Intelligent Computing Solutions http://www.ics-il.com Midwest Internet Exchange http://www.midwest-ix.com ----- Original Message ----- From: "Robert Webb" <rwebb@ropeguru.com> To: "Mike Hammett" <nanog@ics-il.net> Cc: "North American Network Operators' Group" <nanog@nanog.org> Sent: Saturday, January 9, 2016 10:37:23 AM Subject: Re: Binge On! - get your umbrellas out, stuff's hitting the fan. The normal consumer has no way to correlate what the "real" cost is as the providers keep their "costs" for bandwidth, transit, etc. proprietary secrets and always lie to the consumer and muddy the picture of what the ISP actually pays for regarding bits! Additionally, until there can be proper tools that are "certified" for measuring usage, then usage based billing will never be viable. Robert Webb On Sat, 9 Jan 2016 10:11:29 -0600 (CST) Mike Hammett <nanog@ics-il.net> wrote:
My point on usage based billing isn't meant to stifle anything, but to provide equitable service to everyone at a fair price. $10/gig certainly isn't a fair price for almost any network. People pay variable rates for water, electricity, gas, food, etc., etc.
Is it necessarily a bad thing if people stop to think about what their usage costs?
----- Mike Hammett Intelligent Computing Solutions http://www.ics-il.com