In message <980527212537.aafa@SDG.DRA.COM>, Sean Donelan writes:

...

I think it's a North American view of the world, unsurprising on NANOG :-) Traffic metering is the dominant charging mechanism for permanent connections in Oz and Connect differentiate traffic based on its source (domestic/cache/external).

Hasn't a price war just broken out in Australia, with the dominant feature being the introduction of flat-rate pricing?

i guess that there is always a 'price war'. it is called market forces. as far as flat-rate pricing -- yes -- the two largest retail ISPs have introduced flat-rate-pricing, as a precursor to AOL entering the australian marketplace with fixed pricing per month. typically, there have been smaller ISPs already offering flat-rate, however the largest players now offering it is something new. this is an entirely different issue to traffic metering of WHOLESALE capacity - which is what the rest of this thread was about. all of the large providers who offer wholesale capacity, with national networks across australia, do so in some kind of form of $x per megabyte. some do news traffic cheaper, proxy traffic cheaper, proxy hits cheaper and other variations. cheers, lincoln.