[plug] Re: Bandwidth prices [was School Web Page]

[Craig Ringer]

> but sometimes 
> the service can be almost overwhelming compared to the service you would 
> expect here.

Yeah. My ex-boss, who moved back to the USA about a year ago, has a 3 
mbit un-metered cable connection for $60 US / month ( I think ). 
Overwhelming? Just a bit...

I wouldn't mind so much that what we have here is of less-than-ideal 
value if it werent' for the (IMHO) incredibly painful way its done. BYTE 
CHARGES ARE FUNDAMENTALLY STUPID, a fact that will become obvious to 
random bobs # 1 , 2 & 3 only once unmetered accounts become affordable 
(if ever). There's a lot of stuff I can do on slower connections like 
56k and (apparently) DoV ISDN that is not an option on ADSL. Examples:
	internet radio
	streaming video
	VNC

Aren't these the things ADSL is usually marketed / hyped as being _for_? 
  But yet with a 3 gig cap (~ std) you can listen to 128kbit 'net radio 
for only (fires up calc) 6.8 hours before hitting that cap and either 
being shaped (if you're lucky) or getting charged at $0.50/min ( 
assuming 6c/mb) thereafter. And that assumes that 'net radio is all you 
use your link for.

THIS IS ABSURD. ADSL is being crippled to be less functional than std 
56k services, just faster. It is _not_ something that only affects the 
techies, as more people are becoming aware of the streaming media 
services etc available on the 'net. Then they get their service bills....

The average aust user uses <1g mainly because the average user is 
prevented from using the full capabilities of the connection by the 
stupid pricing structures. Sure, most people wouldn't use most of an 
un-capped link at first but as it became more common more people would 
hear about what they could do. As it is, if I wanted (after getting 
ADSL) to remote-admin the NT server from home for more than a very short 
time I'd have to do so by dialing out on a 56k and enduring the 
cripplingly awful speed (for vnc).

I think I'll be getting a 2'nd phone line and dual ISDN. It may be 
obsolete, slow and expensive (and I'd have to give money to telstra) but 
at least I'd get a constant reliable service w/o massive cost spikes. 
Shaping is marginally more reasonable than the other offerings of DSL 
providers, but shaping _to_ _56k_ is overdoing it IMHO.

There is the flip-side admittedly. While data transfer _does_ _not_ cost 
money , the infrastructure to support large transfer rates does and as 
customer bases and connection speeds increase, that infrastructure must 
be upgraded. I still think that byte-charging is a backwards way of 
doing it - it reduces the upgrades req'd by making customers too afraid 
to use the full capabilities of their link as well as providing the more 
benificial and focused-upon "user pays" aspect.

I think that Aust broadband pricing will come back to bite us - hard - 
in a few years as the rest of the world begins to make real use of the 
high-speed links and we can't.

-- 
Craig Ringer
GPG Key Fingerprint: AF1C ABFE 7E64 E9C8 FC27  C16E D3CE CDC0 0E93 380D
	-- if it ain't broke, add features 'till it is. (or:)
	while (! broken) { features ++ ; broken = isBroken(features) }