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> it touches more routers, and takes up more fiber capacity, so it costs more, but the customer isn't charged more. From a consumer protection standpoint, how
by henrikschroder 15y ago
> it touches more routers, and takes up more fiber capacity, so it costs more, but the customer isn't charged more.
From a consumer protection standpoint, how would you communicate this to the end user?
When you're dialing a phone number, you can look at it and know if it's local, long-distance or international, and you can make the informed decision to make the call or not given your phone company's price list.
But when you're on the internet, how would that work? A popup before each TCP connection is established? What about "local" webpages that use "international" resources, like embedding jQuery from Google?
No, the business model is already taken care of, the various providers are organized in tiers with peering agreements, and everyone pays to their upstream link.
- kijin 15y agoThere are already countries where international traffic costs more than domestic traffic. Ever rent a server in South Korea? International traffic is often limited to 1-3% of your monthly quota, depending on who your backbone provider is. Overage fees on international traffic usually run an order of magnitude higher than usual. A policy like that has more than merely economic impact. It discourages people from interacting freely with foreign web services, contributing to a relatively isolated online culture. Korea might be doing this for economic and technical reasons only, but you can be sure that China has cultural and political agendas. Bringing the same policy to consumers, on the other hand, would be insane. Even in Korea, consumers only pay a flat rate and the ISP absorbs any cost difference.