Did you EVER see ISP's charging by the byte? DUH!, NO! You never saw ISP's charging by the byte. Had ISP's had the comptence in the beginning (most are only now LEARNING how to do this) that is what you would have seen from the beginning.

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That kind of attitude is what stunted the growth of the internet in the first place, universal access should be just that universal access, flat fee pricing is a wonderful thing. While your neighbor may go online strictly for checking his e-mail and grabbing the latest recipe, you may go one for hours watching music video's and downloading the latest matrix trailer, no one prevents your neighbor for using his bandwidth he just doesnt have a use for it, if he didnt need that sort of bandwidth in the first place he should have stuck with dialup and not be paying the 40 or 50 bucks a month he's paying now, no one twisted his arm, but since he decided to contribute to a DSL system he's also helping pay for the rest of the services that the ISP is providing, there isnt anything unfair about that.

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AS AN ISP, a long term ISP... My thinking was ALWAYS that charging by the minute of connection time, or the byte of data was the MOST fair type of billing. When I set up my first personal ISP, I set up billing in that manner. If someone only connected to me for ten minutes of an evening, why should I bill them the same amount as the idiot with a redialer? It worked, actually it worked so well that my nearest competitor cracked my system and modified my billing software, not once but twice... While he had ALL his customers paying $23.95 per month for dialup, some of mine paid about $7.00 per month, others paid as much as $20.00 per month. BUT, EVERYONE PAID FOR THE SYSTEM RESOURCES THEY USED... It was fair.

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Your thinking is flawed. With broadband pricing per byte is going to be a disaster. Why should we all have to switch to by the byte billing when we have unlimited right now? Who is it exactly thats complaining about this sort of pricing scheme? The ISP? well then dont offer services at all, i promise you that if/when cable starts to switch to a by the byte pricing scheme DSL will become the clear winner of the broadband war. The same can be seen with alot of things, unlimited is king. I live in NYC and I am forced to take the train quote often so every month I buy an unlimited monthly metro card, though I may not use it to its fullest potential all the time it still makes sense for me to get it because I can when I want too. People like having the option of unlimited use, give the option to the user and ask them how they would feel.. I am real glad that I was never a subscriber to your isp. When you start charging each user by the time they are connected or how much they've been using it, they're usage of the internet drops therefor certain daily activities that they would usually do like spend hours looking through amazon catalogs of music or buy.com's electronics would most likely be curtailed for fear of a larger bill.. I can see alot of things that metered broadband usage billing would curtail.

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Well, whatever... I was ahead of my time. This *ABSOLUTELY WILL* eventually come to everyone because of market pressures. If I (as an ISP) want market share, and I want to extract from my existing system maximum profit, I am going to set up such a system. Why? Well because the other guy is going to do it if I don't, and if I do it first, he will do it after I do so he can stay in business.

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Ahead of your time? You mean you where trapped in a timewarp... the first usage of the internet was metered.. when we where all zipping around on our 9600 baud rate modems, and eventually one smart man came up with a flat fee unmetered usage. And NO this WONT eventually happen simply because of options. If my cable provider OOL decides to start charging me on a metered scale then I will simply switch to verizon dsl or some other dsl provider who wont charge me those kind of rates, and if you believe that DSL will switch over to metered usage its hard for me to believe that every DSL provider in new york will switch over to that. What market pressures..?? where is this push to switch to metered usage.. this is a AU and UK thing, apparently they enjoy limited their citizen's access to the internet.

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Honestly there are people who should be sold DLS at $5.00 per month, and there are others who should have to pay $50.00 per month for dialup.

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Its just fine the way it is now If you want to pay 5.00$ for your internet connection go grab a real cheap dialup.. i think 5.00 is a little low but i've seen some for 7 bucks somewhere.. Whats the point of a broadband provider to wire you up when they're going to be making 5.00$ off of you? just stick with dialup, when your internet usage becomes so dire as to need DSL then anti up and pay the 50 bucks and quit WHINING.

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It isn't so much how fast your connection is as it is how much you use when you are online... For the first two years my current employer was in business, he had one dialup user who used AS MUCH BANDWIDTH as ALL THE OTHER USERS ON HIS SYSTEM COMBINED... That situation remained until he broke 400 users... She was online 24x7 and she was streaming audio 24x7...

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I thought you ran an ISP, now you have an employer? which is it... That one dialup user had the absolute right to use her dialup any goddamn way she pleased because she was paying a flat rate to have UNLIMITED USAGE. Get it through your head, Unlimited is always better then metered.

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So... unless you know whereof you speak... learn something and come back. I don't bother wasting my time with the clueless, especially in hurricanes.

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Listen do me a favor... before you act like a pretencious know it all waste that you are try and consider the users on this board who I wouldnt neccessarily call light bandwidth users and what kind of prices they would be paying if the broadband industry suddenly decided to go in the backwards direction and start asking for metered fee's... BUY yourself a clue. then stop with your annoying rants.
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“The human mind ordinarily operates at only ten percent of its capacity — the rest is overhead for the operating system.” —Nicholas Ambrose

said by latez :

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Listen do me a favor... before you act like a pretencious know it all waste that you are try and consider the users on this board who I wouldnt neccessarily call light bandwidth users and what kind of prices they would be paying if the broadband industry suddenly decided to go in the backwards direction and start asking for metered fee's... BUY yourself a clue. then stop with your annoying rants.

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