Fergie (Paul Ferguson) wrote: "The popularity of file-sharing is costing the largest Internet service providers $10 million per year each in bandwidth and network maintenance costs, CacheLogic said."
Michel Py wrote: $10 million a year for the largest ISPs is a drop in the sea; _if_ the figure is accurate (sounds reasonable to me) what's the point anyway? The largest ISPs serve directly or indirectly millions of users that each pay $20/mo which is $240/yr, 10 million bucks a year is nothing.
Patrick W Gilmore wrote: I don't care if you are Microsoft, $10MM a year is a large enough sum that the company should not spend it if the company can avoid spending it. The hard part is the caveat. If you block customers from sharing music on your network, will you still have customers? If not, then maybe the $10MM is COGS?
That's what I meant, thanks for rephrasing. $10M a year is definitely something that any size company will try to save; I remember posting here not that long ago that a $500k line card is definitely something I do not buy without a good reason. That being said, the speed that allows users to download faster large (and pirated, mostly) files is the #1 selling argument for broadband providers (look at their add campaigns). If you are a residential broadband provider and if you block customers from sharing music on your network, you will not have customers. Michel.