 djrobx
join:2000-05-31
Valencia, CA
kudos:1
 ·VOIPo
 ·Verizon Wireless..
 ·RoadRunner Cable
 ·AT&T U-Verse
·PHONE POWER
| Most people don't know what a kilowatt hour is either. I'm no fan of usage based internet billing, but the electric company has been billing me in "kWh" units for decades. My water bill is even in a strange unit of cubic feet. My natural gas is billed in "therms". Most people don't understand the units, but have figured out how their usage habits impact their bill anyway.
Accurate meters, and access to functional realtime meter monitoring seems like a more important issue than understanding what a gigabyte is.
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AT&T U-Hearse - RIP Unlimited Internet 1995-2011
Rethink Billable.
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| The real problem is that greater usage on the part of a customer does not correlate with greater cost on the part of the ISP, which is something the ISP really doesn't want to explain. |
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 BF69Premium
join:2004-07-28
Camden, TN | reply to djrobx
said by djrobx:I'm no fan of usage based internet billing, but the electric company has been billing me in "kWh" units for decades. My water bill is even in a strange unit of cubic feet. My natural gas is billed in "therms". Most people don't understand the units, but have figured out how their usage habits impact their bill anyway. My water is billed in GALLONS and gas is billed in cubic feet. You live in a weird place.
Accurate meters, and access to functional realtime meter monitoring seems like a more important issue than understanding what a gigabyte is. |
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1 edit | reply to djrobx
Utility companies' units are also less important because the government more or less sets their profit margin. Customers don't really need to know more than that they a paying their fair share. My utility bill is based on the number of toilets, which is kind of too simple, but the cost is low and the water system operates to break even so it's OK. Metering imaginary bandwidth costs with possibility of generating infinite profit like ISPs is simply fraudulent. |
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Reviews:
 ·Frontier Communi..
| reply to BF69
said by BF69:My water is billed in GALLONS and gas is billed in cubic feet. You live in a weird place. Your gas meter reports cubic feet but your utility almost certainly converts this to therms before they bill you. A therm is simply a measurement of the actual energy content (1 therm = 100,000 btu) of your gas supply. The energy content of a cubic foot of natural gas depends upon the purity of that gas and other factors.
Water utilities around these parts do bill in gallons though. I've never seen one that bills by cubic feet but it's equally valid as billing by the gallon. A quick Google search reveals that a cubic foot of water is 7.48 gallons.
said by BF69:if you understand that a Netflix movie on your phone is using 2 GB then you'll understand what a GB is pretty quick. A meter is basically useless if you don't know what is using all the data.
Fortunately there are a number of apps that can track data usage by application. I use one called 3G Watchdog Pro even though I have unlimited data; it was worth the $3 to see where my data usage is going. There are free ones available in the market as well. |
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Reviews:
·Frontier Communi..
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said by Wilsdom:Utility companies' units are also less important because the government more or less sets their profit margin. Might that explain why we have a crumbling electric infrastructure while the internet manages to keep up with and even surpass demand?
Be careful what you wish for; the internet grew into what it is today because it was unregulated. Do you really want to see it turned into the PSTN, whose "innovations" were limited to caller ID and call waiting for many decades? |
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BF69Premium
join:2004-07-28
Camden, TN | said by Crookshanks:said by Wilsdom:Utility companies' units are also less important because the government more or less sets their profit margin. Might that explain why we have a crumbling electric infrastructure while the internet manages to keep up with and even surpass demand? If they are keeping up how come
A) we went for unlimited to caps
B) there are many people still waiting for internet. Say what you want about the electric companies but if I move into a place I can get the electric turned on. I can't say that about internet. |
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 Simba7I Void Warranties
join:2003-03-24
Billings, MT | reply to Crookshanks
said by Crookshanks:Fortunately there are a number of apps that can track data usage by application. I use one called 3G Watchdog Pro even though I have unlimited data; it was worth the $3 to see where my data usage is going. There are free ones available in the market as well. There is also one built into Cyanogenmod 9 (ICS). Works rather well on my Captivate.
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Bresnan 30M/5M | CenturyLink 5M/896K
MyWS[PnmIIX3@3.3G,8G RAM,500G+1.5T+2T HDDs,Win7]
WifeWS[A64@2G,2G RAM,120G HDD,Win7]
Router[2xP3@1G,768M RAM,18G HDD,Allied Telesyn AT2560FX,2xDigital DE504,Sun X1034A,2xSun X4444A,SMC 8432BTA,OpenBSD] |
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Reviews:
·Frontier Communi..
| reply to BF69
Internet isn't yet regarded as a life essential service in the same category as POTS or electric. Frankly I'm not sure that it should be; people out in the boonies have to spend large amounts of money to drill wells for access to running water and install/maintain septic tanks to dispose of waste water. Running water and waste water treatment are much more important than having access to the internet (nobody has ever gotten cholera or typhoid from going without internet access) but nobody expects people in suburban/urban areas to subsidize septic tanks and wells.
You might get me to concur that everybody should have access to the internet but I do think they should have to pay the true cost of obtaining said access. It's a fact of life that last mile costs for any earthbound utility (electric, water, sewer, gas, telecommunications, cable, cellular) go up in areas with lower population density. |
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