No.
The issue here is "incremental" cost. Once the circuits are all provisioned, it doesn't matter what you send over them, true. But it's not the *loops* that cost you money. It's the backbones. It's the *aggregate* total of the speeds of the *router ports* (which is what you're charging for, anyway), not the aggregate total of the speeds of the *loops*, that is the real issue here.
The telco charges me the same thing for the loop regardless of howmany timeslots I provision the customer for in the router.
I hear what you are saying here. But do you not think that these costs can be quantified, and reduced to a common denominator? Should not the cost of provisioning "excess" bandwidth be part of the BASIS cost you pass on to customers? Should not other networks who currently dump traffic to you "freely" pay that cost as well? In a simplified sane model: My Cost: Circuits c Power p Space s Equipment e Other o ---------------- c+p+s+e+o = C(ost) C + P(remimum) = Cost to Customer C + T(arrif) = Cost to Providers The cost (C) must be paid for every bit that traverses my network, either from customers or "peer" networks. The current non-quantified C is paid for completely by customers - SOMETIMES and MAYBE, since we bill on an average instead of a value. Some customers pay for other customers traffic, and some get traffic for free. Does your stock broker bill you on an average number of shares for a set of transactions? Or does he charge you a per share fee? Are you SURE?
Since that's true, it's useful to have *some* way to allow the provisioned bandwidth to float up a little closer to the aggregate usable bandwidth in my backbone, since it does *in fact* not cost me anything.
(Anyone whose provisioned their backbone to 100% of their aggregate access bandwidth -- in an access network, not a server farm one -- just doesn't understand the business. *Everyone* bandwidth-surfs. The billing approaches we're talking about are just a slightly better way of matching the two numbers.)
Cheers, -- jra -- Jay R. Ashworth jra@baylink.com Member of the Technical Staff Baylink The Suncoast Freenet The Things I Think Tampa Bay, Florida http://baylink.pitas.com +1 727 804 5015
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