11 ms·

Why don't ISPs bill by the gigabyte and be done with it?

jbverschoor 6y ago
BC billshock scares people away. It would set us back to the early '90s
wwwhizz 6y ago
So watching Netflix and YouTube gets more expensive? No, thanks. I'm fine with European net-neutrality and pay for bandwidth.
101008 6y ago
It would be horrible to live in a world like that. Imagine deciding to watch a shorter film on Netflix because you will pay less.
- ffpip 6y ago
  That's basically what happens with mobile data plans in India. Fixed speeds, pay X amount per 1 or 1.2 GB
  - SL61 6y ago
    It's also how Google Fi works. Every time I loaded something, in the back of my mind I'd think "this page is costing me two cents". It makes everything you load feel like an individual transaction, making it super uncomfortable to use.
freedomben 6y ago
Because customers lose their minds with that model, largely as a result of conditioning that "internet" is an unlimited resource (which of course it is when instantaneous demand <= supply, but during high traffic periods that isn't the case). Personally I understand the economics around it, but still don't like the idea of paying per GB. I would end up skipping some Netflix and would get mad at kids for playing Netflix to an empty room (much like I currently get mad when they leave the lights on in an empty room). It's nice on a personal level to avoid that.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- tyfon 6y ago
  That kind of depends on the price pr gb. To use the power analogy, when I was young the price of power was relatively high but in recent times it has now dropped to 0.6 NOK / kWh so even charging the car from 10-80% (~61 kWh) cost 40 NOK or $4. I do not get mad at the kids leaving the light on like my mother did to me. I (or rather my job) currently pays about 1000 NOK/ month for unlimited 500 MBit synchronous fiber internet. I transfer maybe 500 GB/month so for it to be cheaper for me it would be under 2 NOK/GB or $.2 which sounds really high but that is what I currently pay with my usage.
  - Dahoon 6y ago
    I thought internet in Norway was cheaper than in Denmark. Interesting. For comparison I pay 449 DKR/month for 1000/1000 unlimited fiber with a guaranteed bandwidth of minimum 950 (they are upgrading the network atm. hence not a guarantee on the full 1000 yet as some customers equipment is too old). Is it a normal connection or a business connection perhaps?
    - iso947 6y ago
      Bandwidth to where? Do they really have 1gbit per customer peering with say level3? And with cogent, and telia? And a full non blocking internal network? And enough packet buffers to ensure that microbursts don’t saturate any link?
      - ShroudedNight 6y ago
        Depending on the SLA, or lack thereof, they could have enough peering for a sustained +(x = 3?)σ demand spike without having a full dedicated peering for each customer, and still reasonably guarantee throughput availability.
        6y ago
liability 6y ago
Why won't ISPs stop advertising 'unlimited' service that is actually limited to N gigabytes a month, where N is substantially lower than what's possible given the speeds they provide? Because they can get away with it.
- colechristensen 6y ago
  Because it is insanely expensive to actually provide that. The nature of internet traffic is short bursts, not 100% utilization. In a commercial setting you can purchase fixed pipes that are entirely yours and they’re tens or hundreds of times more expensive. Why wouldn’t you want to pool bandwidth with your neighbors so you could all get faster speeds when you were using it instead of rate limiting everyone?
  - jeromegv 6y ago
    The issue is that there's no way to know what this limit is. I understand the cost, but then tell us exactly how many GB I can use at full speed and when does it start to throttle. Instead I have to rely on internet anecdotes.
    - selectodude 6y ago
      They do. I'm pretty aware of what my data transfer limits are on both my home and wireless connections. Granted my new ISP has no data caps and symmetric gigabit speeds so I'm a bit spoiled.
      - rand49an 6y ago
        Unless you work for that ISP though, you don't know what the limits to their network are or how many people you actually share that line with. It's gigabit speeds until all your neighbours suddenly want to download something too.
    - proverbialbunny 6y ago
      The problem is my fiber gigabit duplex internet throttles me from the first KB. Net neutrality is dead.
gkfasdfasdf 6y ago
Agreed, this would align incentives nicely. Maybe we would see more innovation in compression technology that way.
hysan 6y ago
Some thought experiments for you to try: - Does this guarantee that you get the speed that you pay for? If not, then should the price during heavy congestion cost less per GB? I’ve had the unfortunate luck of having lived in areas where the internet is unusable for anything other than email and light browsing during peak hours. Bonus: Do you know why this happens? If not, I encourage you to research this. - How will this affect the advertising model of the entire internet economy? If you, like me, have lived your whole life on a mobile data plan that is priced based on data usage, you’ll realize just how much bandwidth is consumed by advertisements (worst are the video/audio types that auto play). - How will this affect “future” technology such at smart homes? Most devices send data back (Amazon Echo devices) and the growing security camera ecosystem that sends recordings to the cloud would suddenly cost users a ton more. - Speaking of cloud, what will happen to the gaming industry that is heavily cloud based? Many games don’t even ship in a completed state anymore. Instead, part of the install requires downloading a ton of additional updates. Not to mention online play, DLC, etc. There a many many more everyday examples like this that would be heavily affected by pricing per GB. Your question sounds like a simple solution but like many things in life, that is rarely the case.
- gkfasdfasdf 6y ago
  I think the answer to most of these questions is, let the market decide. E.g. consider this: congestion during peak hours is bad now, but there is currently no penalty on an ISP for being slow. However if billing was based on bytes moved, for an ISP to underserve during times of demand means lost revenue. Thus ISPs would be incentivized to provide the best service.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  - hysan 6y ago
    With respect to the US, this answer is incomplete. The theory of letting the market decide only works when there is a free market. Most places I’ve lived has only had a single choice for ISP effectively making them monopolies.
colechristensen 6y ago
Because their costs aren’t based on usage, but installing and maintaining the infrastructure then collecting rent on it. Actual usage is an exponential curve and if you bill on it you have a few angry users paying for everybody else’s infrastructure.
slyall 6y ago
Well in New Zealand we used to charge-per-byte but as things got cheaper this has largely gone away. Some of the cheaper how fibre accounts have something like a 100G/month limit but I guess it isn't worth the trouble to charge even here where bandwidth is much more expensive than the US.
- geoffmunn 6y ago
  Flashback: I was on Actrix which charged $5 per megabyte. Downloading Netscape Navigator 2 nearly bankrupted me. I used to browse the internet with images disabled, which ironically gave me an appreciation for accessibility issues which served me well later in life. When Xtra came out at $2.50 per hour, it was a complete game changer.
  - brokenmachine 6y ago
    Netscape Navigator 2 is 8Mb, for anyone who was wondering.
  - phire 6y ago
    I remember when Xtra bought out their $27.95/month unlimited dialup plan. It changed our internet browsing habits so much. With hourly charges, you would try to plan out what you would do before connecting and instead of reading webpages, you would save them to disk for reading later. With unlimited, you could just sit there and browse. Or leave it on overnight to download files. At some point we got a second phoneline and I was downloading torrents on dialup all day and night for years before we finally moved somewhere with ADSL in 2006.
- driverdan 6y ago
  100Gb/month is practically nothing. I primarily use a hotspot for internet access and routinely do way more traffic than that.
  - slyall 6y ago
    If you don't use video then it'll be plenty. Plenty of people get their TV the old-fashioned way but still want fast Internet. Looking at pricing for Spark (one of the largerproviders). [1] For each of the fibre speed plans you can get 60GB/month, for another $10 you get 120GB/month and for a further $10 you get unlimited traffic. BTW: "Mb" = Megabits, "MB" = MegaBytes [1] https://www.spark.co.nz/shop/internet/plans-and-pricing/ https://www.spark.co.nz/shop/internet/plans-and-pricing/
Hamuko 6y ago
I imagine the data whales would not cover the loss revenue from people who just use online banking yet pay the same amount. I've used 15 TB in the last 5 weeks with my torrent client alone (and considering my Backblaze backup size, that's not nearly all of my traffic), but how many people like me are there in the general public?
bsder 6y ago
Because then people will get REALLY grouchy about ads. In addition, it gives people a solid measure over which to sue you. If you aren't delivering, you're headed to court. The ISPs like all the vagueness.

BC billshock scares people away. It would set us back to the early '90s

So watching Netflix and YouTube gets more expensive? No, thanks. I'm fine with European net-neutrality and pay for bandwidth.

101008 6y ago

It would be horrible to live in a world like that. Imagine deciding to watch a shorter film on Netflix because you will pay less.

ffpip 6y ago
That's basically what happens with mobile data plans in India. Fixed speeds, pay X amount per 1 or 1.2 GB
- SL61 6y ago
  It's also how Google Fi works. Every time I loaded something, in the back of my mind I'd think "this page is costing me two cents". It makes everything you load feel like an individual transaction, making it super uncomfortable to use.

freedomben 6y ago

Because customers lose their minds with that model, largely as a result of conditioning that "internet" is an unlimited resource (which of course it is when instantaneous demand <= supply, but during high traffic periods that isn't the case). Personally I understand the economics around it, but still don't like the idea of paying per GB. I would end up skipping some Netflix and would get mad at kids for playing Netflix to an empty room (much like I currently get mad when they leave the lights on in an empty room). It's nice on a personal level to avoid that.

deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
tyfon 6y ago
That kind of depends on the price pr gb. To use the power analogy, when I was young the price of power was relatively high but in recent times it has now dropped to 0.6 NOK / kWh so even charging the car from 10-80% (~61 kWh) cost 40 NOK or $4. I do not get mad at the kids leaving the light on like my mother did to me. I (or rather my job) currently pays about 1000 NOK/ month for unlimited 500 MBit synchronous fiber internet. I transfer maybe 500 GB/month so for it to be cheaper for me it would be under 2 NOK/GB or $.2 which sounds really high but that is what I currently pay with my usage.
- Dahoon 6y ago
  I thought internet in Norway was cheaper than in Denmark. Interesting. For comparison I pay 449 DKR/month for 1000/1000 unlimited fiber with a guaranteed bandwidth of minimum 950 (they are upgrading the network atm. hence not a guarantee on the full 1000 yet as some customers equipment is too old). Is it a normal connection or a business connection perhaps?
  - iso947 6y ago
    Bandwidth to where? Do they really have 1gbit per customer peering with say level3? And with cogent, and telia? And a full non blocking internal network? And enough packet buffers to ensure that microbursts don’t saturate any link?
    - ShroudedNight 6y ago
      Depending on the SLA, or lack thereof, they could have enough peering for a sustained +(x = 3?)σ demand spike without having a full dedicated peering for each customer, and still reasonably guarantee throughput availability.
      - 6y ago

liability 6y ago

Why won't ISPs stop advertising 'unlimited' service that is actually limited to N gigabytes a month, where N is substantially lower than what's possible given the speeds they provide? Because they can get away with it.

colechristensen 6y ago
Because it is insanely expensive to actually provide that. The nature of internet traffic is short bursts, not 100% utilization. In a commercial setting you can purchase fixed pipes that are entirely yours and they’re tens or hundreds of times more expensive. Why wouldn’t you want to pool bandwidth with your neighbors so you could all get faster speeds when you were using it instead of rate limiting everyone?
- jeromegv 6y ago
  The issue is that there's no way to know what this limit is. I understand the cost, but then tell us exactly how many GB I can use at full speed and when does it start to throttle. Instead I have to rely on internet anecdotes.
  - selectodude 6y ago
    They do. I'm pretty aware of what my data transfer limits are on both my home and wireless connections. Granted my new ISP has no data caps and symmetric gigabit speeds so I'm a bit spoiled.
    - rand49an 6y ago
      Unless you work for that ISP though, you don't know what the limits to their network are or how many people you actually share that line with. It's gigabit speeds until all your neighbours suddenly want to download something too.
  - proverbialbunny 6y ago
    The problem is my fiber gigabit duplex internet throttles me from the first KB. Net neutrality is dead.

gkfasdfasdf 6y ago

Agreed, this would align incentives nicely. Maybe we would see more innovation in compression technology that way.

hysan 6y ago

Some thought experiments for you to try: - Does this guarantee that you get the speed that you pay for? If not, then should the price during heavy congestion cost less per GB? I’ve had the unfortunate luck of having lived in areas where the internet is unusable for anything other than email and light browsing during peak hours. Bonus: Do you know why this happens? If not, I encourage you to research this. - How will this affect the advertising model of the entire internet economy? If you, like me, have lived your whole life on a mobile data plan that is priced based on data usage, you’ll realize just how much bandwidth is consumed by advertisements (worst are the video/audio types that auto play). - How will this affect “future” technology such at smart homes? Most devices send data back (Amazon Echo devices) and the growing security camera ecosystem that sends recordings to the cloud would suddenly cost users a ton more. - Speaking of cloud, what will happen to the gaming industry that is heavily cloud based? Many games don’t even ship in a completed state anymore. Instead, part of the install requires downloading a ton of additional updates. Not to mention online play, DLC, etc. There a many many more everyday examples like this that would be heavily affected by pricing per GB. Your question sounds like a simple solution but like many things in life, that is rarely the case.

gkfasdfasdf 6y ago
I think the answer to most of these questions is, let the market decide. E.g. consider this: congestion during peak hours is bad now, but there is currently no penalty on an ISP for being slow. However if billing was based on bytes moved, for an ISP to underserve during times of demand means lost revenue. Thus ISPs would be incentivized to provide the best service.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- hysan 6y ago
  With respect to the US, this answer is incomplete. The theory of letting the market decide only works when there is a free market. Most places I’ve lived has only had a single choice for ISP effectively making them monopolies.

colechristensen 6y ago

Because their costs aren’t based on usage, but installing and maintaining the infrastructure then collecting rent on it. Actual usage is an exponential curve and if you bill on it you have a few angry users paying for everybody else’s infrastructure.

slyall 6y ago

Well in New Zealand we used to charge-per-byte but as things got cheaper this has largely gone away. Some of the cheaper how fibre accounts have something like a 100G/month limit but I guess it isn't worth the trouble to charge even here where bandwidth is much more expensive than the US.

geoffmunn 6y ago
Flashback: I was on Actrix which charged $5 per megabyte. Downloading Netscape Navigator 2 nearly bankrupted me. I used to browse the internet with images disabled, which ironically gave me an appreciation for accessibility issues which served me well later in life. When Xtra came out at $2.50 per hour, it was a complete game changer.
- brokenmachine 6y ago
  Netscape Navigator 2 is 8Mb, for anyone who was wondering.
- phire 6y ago
  I remember when Xtra bought out their $27.95/month unlimited dialup plan. It changed our internet browsing habits so much. With hourly charges, you would try to plan out what you would do before connecting and instead of reading webpages, you would save them to disk for reading later. With unlimited, you could just sit there and browse. Or leave it on overnight to download files. At some point we got a second phoneline and I was downloading torrents on dialup all day and night for years before we finally moved somewhere with ADSL in 2006.
driverdan 6y ago
100Gb/month is practically nothing. I primarily use a hotspot for internet access and routinely do way more traffic than that.
- slyall 6y ago
  If you don't use video then it'll be plenty. Plenty of people get their TV the old-fashioned way but still want fast Internet. Looking at pricing for Spark (one of the largerproviders). [1] For each of the fibre speed plans you can get 60GB/month, for another $10 you get 120GB/month and for a further $10 you get unlimited traffic. BTW: "Mb" = Megabits, "MB" = MegaBytes [1] https://www.spark.co.nz/shop/internet/plans-and-pricing/ https://www.spark.co.nz/shop/internet/plans-and-pricing/

Hamuko 6y ago

I imagine the data whales would not cover the loss revenue from people who just use online banking yet pay the same amount. I've used 15 TB in the last 5 weeks with my torrent client alone (and considering my Backblaze backup size, that's not nearly all of my traffic), but how many people like me are there in the general public?

bsder 6y ago

Because then people will get REALLY grouchy about ads. In addition, it gives people a solid measure over which to sue you. If you aren't delivering, you're headed to court. The ISPs like all the vagueness.