4 ms·

all communication is free My internet and cellular bill say otherwise. Edit: OP's comment is almost nonsensical I feel it might be AI. "Traditionally youtube

all communication is free My internet and cellular bill say otherwise. Edit: OP's comment is almost nonsensical I feel it might be AI. "Traditionally youtube would cost hundreds of dollars"??

saulpw 2y ago
Communication is not quite "free", but it is effectively unmetered. Compare with pre-internet communication, where "long-distance" calls (outside your area code) were billed per-minute. An hour-long conversation with your boyfriend who lived an hour away? $5. Across the country? $10. Across the world? $100. For data, Compuserve charged $5/hour for access, regardless of whether you used 300bps or 28.8kbps. So a 1MB download could cost anywhere from 50 cents (28.8k at night) to $10 (2400bps during the day). And that was in addition to the cost of having a phone line in the first place, not to mention the hardware--a decently fast modem cost several hundred dollars, and needed to be replaced every couple of years as the tech was improving relentlessly. A service like Youtube with on-demand streaming video of just about any content you can imagine would certainly be worth hundreds of dollars a month. Hell, cable television with 50 channels was $30-50/mo (or more depending on whether or not you splurged for HBO/etc), and that was whatever grab bag of content they decided to include. Remember too that all these are 1990s prices, so you need to at least double them to account for inflation.
- AStonesThrow 2y ago
  > Communication is not quite "free", but it is effectively unmetered. Yet we're in a conversation about data centers, and our concept of "unmetered communication" only refers to one end of the line. What does it cost companies and orgs to communicate with us? What does it cost them to keep a server operational, functional and sending data to us? It's "free and unmetered" for you to watch YouTube, run yt-dlp, put up your ad blockers and PiHoles, but what cost for everyone but you? I would also consider time/effort costs in communicating. Compare having a rotary-dial phone, the ultimate "thin client", with a general-purpose computer or smartphone. How much time and effort do we put into fiddling with them, upgrading them, fixing settings, troubleshooting whatever communication software is on top of them? Newspapers cost us $0.25-$1.50, but that's a highly subsidized cost like riding public transit.
- staplers 2y ago
  it is effectively unmetered My $30 data cap fee says otherwise.
tpmoney 2y ago
Relative to the beginnings of the internet, your current internet bill is closer to "free" for communication than just about any other time in history. In 1996, AOL introduced their "unlimited" dialup plan. For a mere $19.95 / month, you too could browse the information super highway at a blisteringly fast 56kbps. At today's prices, that would make it $40 / month. But that was their unlimited plan. In 1995 AOL charged you $9.95 for 5 hours and the $2.50 per hour after that each month. Assuming you wanted 24/7 access like we all do these days, AOL would have cost you ~$1,800 per month, or ~$3,700 / month in today's money. Even assuming you don't want 24/7 access, the average internet user today supposedly spends 6 hours a day online[2]. Even at that rate you're still looking at ~$435 / month (or $898 / month today). And that was just your access costs, you still needed to pay for the phone service. According to the FCC[1] you could expect to tack another $20 / month on to those costs, just for your local phone service. And all of that would have probably been enough to service one user online at a time. If you wanted multiple people in your household to be online at the same time, you at a minimum are going to want multiple phone lines, never mind the additional hourly access charges. [1]: https://transition.fcc.gov/Bureaus/Common_Carrier/Reports/FCC-State_Link/IAD/ref97.pdf https://transition.fcc.gov/Bureaus/Common_Carrier/Reports/FC... [2]: https://www.independent.co.uk/advisor/vpn/screen-time-statistics https://www.independent.co.uk/advisor/vpn/screen-time-statis...

all communication is free My internet and cellular bill say otherwise. Edit: OP's comment is almost nonsensical I feel it might be AI. "Traditionally youtube would cost hundreds of dollars"??

saulpw 2y ago

Communication is not quite "free", but it is effectively unmetered. Compare with pre-internet communication, where "long-distance" calls (outside your area code) were billed per-minute. An hour-long conversation with your boyfriend who lived an hour away? $5. Across the country? $10. Across the world? $100. For data, Compuserve charged $5/hour for access, regardless of whether you used 300bps or 28.8kbps. So a 1MB download could cost anywhere from 50 cents (28.8k at night) to $10 (2400bps during the day). And that was in addition to the cost of having a phone line in the first place, not to mention the hardware--a decently fast modem cost several hundred dollars, and needed to be replaced every couple of years as the tech was improving relentlessly. A service like Youtube with on-demand streaming video of just about any content you can imagine would certainly be worth hundreds of dollars a month. Hell, cable television with 50 channels was $30-50/mo (or more depending on whether or not you splurged for HBO/etc), and that was whatever grab bag of content they decided to include. Remember too that all these are 1990s prices, so you need to at least double them to account for inflation.

AStonesThrow 2y ago
> Communication is not quite "free", but it is effectively unmetered. Yet we're in a conversation about data centers, and our concept of "unmetered communication" only refers to one end of the line. What does it cost companies and orgs to communicate with us? What does it cost them to keep a server operational, functional and sending data to us? It's "free and unmetered" for you to watch YouTube, run yt-dlp, put up your ad blockers and PiHoles, but what cost for everyone but you? I would also consider time/effort costs in communicating. Compare having a rotary-dial phone, the ultimate "thin client", with a general-purpose computer or smartphone. How much time and effort do we put into fiddling with them, upgrading them, fixing settings, troubleshooting whatever communication software is on top of them? Newspapers cost us $0.25-$1.50, but that's a highly subsidized cost like riding public transit.
staplers 2y ago
it is effectively unmetered My $30 data cap fee says otherwise.

tpmoney 2y ago

Relative to the beginnings of the internet, your current internet bill is closer to "free" for communication than just about any other time in history. In 1996, AOL introduced their "unlimited" dialup plan. For a mere $19.95 / month, you too could browse the information super highway at a blisteringly fast 56kbps. At today's prices, that would make it $40 / month. But that was their unlimited plan. In 1995 AOL charged you $9.95 for 5 hours and the $2.50 per hour after that each month. Assuming you wanted 24/7 access like we all do these days, AOL would have cost you ~$1,800 per month, or ~$3,700 / month in today's money. Even assuming you don't want 24/7 access, the average internet user today supposedly spends 6 hours a day online[2]. Even at that rate you're still looking at ~$435 / month (or $898 / month today). And that was just your access costs, you still needed to pay for the phone service. According to the FCC[1] you could expect to tack another $20 / month on to those costs, just for your local phone service. And all of that would have probably been enough to service one user online at a time. If you wanted multiple people in your household to be online at the same time, you at a minimum are going to want multiple phone lines, never mind the additional hourly access charges. [1]: https://transition.fcc.gov/Bureaus/Common_Carrier/Reports/FCC-State_Link/IAD/ref97.pdf https://transition.fcc.gov/Bureaus/Common_Carrier/Reports/FC... [2]: https://www.independent.co.uk/advisor/vpn/screen-time-statistics https://www.independent.co.uk/advisor/vpn/screen-time-statis...